Mr Endurance

MURRAY WILSON/Manawatu Standard

ON YOUR BIKE AGAIN: Two decades on the bike and thousands of kilometres later, endurance cyclist and granddad Colin Anderson is warming up for Sunday's Tour de Manawatu cycle race.

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It's pitch black, 2am, with rain sifting on to the road. There is a soft chirr noise, the sound of tyres silking through puddles.

In a blaze of halogen headlights and a flicker of red tail lights, a dark shape looms, pedals pumping. You've just been passed by Palmerston North endurance cyclist Colin Anderson, perhaps 50km into a 400km ride. Lee Matthews writes.

Colin Anderson talks about 100-kilometre, 200km, and 400km, bike rides the way Saturday cyclists mention pedalling Palmerston North's Bridle Path. He makes it sound easy, but a good look at his legs gives the game away. With his heavy, hard-working quadriceps, gnarly kneecaps and calf muscles defined like wire, this 62-year-old granddad is a cycling powerhouse.

He is casually training for Sunday's Tour de Manawatu. He plans to do three laps of the longest, 116km course – 348km in total.

He will start at 10.30pm the night before, loaded with water, liquid food and electroytes, and he will pedal through the night. Based on what has happened when he has done this previously – multilaps in the Tour de Manawatu and the Round Taupo race – he will still have energy and stamina for a sprint spurt at the end.

"Just to show the young bucks how to do it," he says, grinning.

We're in his Palmerston North garage, looking at his bicycle. Anderson's legs aside, this is the machine that has already borne him 20,285km.

Built by Avanti, it's a 2007 Specialized Roubix S-works. Anderson obligingly gives a sprocket-by-spoke mini-lecture about what's special about it.

Twenty gears. Carbon fibre frame. Special shock absorption built into the front and rear struts, and under the seat there's a gel inset in the seat pole.

"Reduces the jarring. It builds up on a long ride."

The handlebar rack is heavily customised. There's the bike's standard handgrips, plus elbow rests. They're crucial. One of the hardest obstacles for endurance cyclists is the relentless posture demanded by cycling – the forward lean, upper body and neck fixed, the eyes tunnel-trapped into looking straight ahead at the oncoming road. Those elbow rests let Anderson shift position, wriggle around on the seat, and open up his upper body in on-bike calisthenic stretches.

The bike bristles with lights: four front headlights – halogens – and three red lights pointing back, and when Anderson's all tooled up for night riding, he has lights on his helmet too.

"Safety. It's a big issue. They've got to be able to see you."

The tool pouch carries a spare tube and tyre-changing tools, a puncture repair kit and a phone card. On the bike he has a hand pump and a gas-powered pump.

His concession to comfort is a back mudguard, which hangs on to the seat pole.

"Best $10 I ever spent at Pedal Pushers," he says. "It stops the backsplash when it's wet, all the slush and mud going everywhere. It used to end up on my hands and face and on the water bottles and then in my mouth ... "

Stripped to basics, the bike weighs about 7kg. Fully loaded, it's about 10kg, and Anderson estimates he carries about 3kg of water and liquid food supplements as well on a big ride. Tyres last between 3000 and 4000km. He has been through five, six sets already.

So, how did he get into long-distance racing? How did the kid who used to deliver the Dannevirke Evening News by bicycle go to being someone who cycles endurance races all over New Zealand and round the world?

It was those gnarly knees.

Anderson was an auto electrician in Dannevirke. After a couple of decades of that, he got arthritis in his knees – that handful-of-hot-ground-glass feeling. His doctor told him to get off cold, wet concrete and to keep his knees supple and moving. "Use it or lose it. Do you ride a bike? Good exercise for people with arthritis, low impact on hurting bones but plenty of work."

Anderson took the advice. He moved to Palmerston North and got a job as a postie, biking 20km to 25km a day, pedalling a bike laden with up to 25kg of mail. His day job could be viewed as the way he cools down and stretches after long-distance endurance rides. He also rides with the Marist cycle club, 30km and 50km fast rides. They get the heart working hard at a different area from endurance cycling. And he owes a lot to Manawatu Masters for cycling tips.

He began the big rides in 1998 – Palmerston North to Hastings, Nelson to Christchurch. About that time, the fun cycle rides started and suddenly e was on his bike, his eyes on the next big race.

In August 2007, he biked 1200km in the Paris-Brest-Paris race, in 66 hours and 22 minutes. In rotten, wet, cold weather, he lost feeling in his feet. But he knew he could do it, because in 2005 he biked 1200km in the Boston-to-Montreal endurance race. He did the first 24 hours non-stop. That's his game plan for really big races – 24 hours on the seat, then a sleep of about an hour and a half, then back on the bike, again, turning those pedals.

"Mid-60 hours, that's my time for those. I will admit it's hard to walk afterwards. You need the hot shower and the massage."

It's not just about exercise. Anderson fundraises while he bikes, for Heart Children, or for cancer. The cancer fundraising is close to home – his sister died of cancer, and his father died of prostate cancer, and Anderson himself was nipped by prostate cancer last year.

"2008 was the year from hell. I had the radical prostectomy operation for prostate cancer, and then I had a double hernia blowout. Maybe my stomach muscles weakened or something."

It didn't stop him. He couldn't ride in last year's Tour de Manawatu, so he stood on a corner and helped Fitzherbert Lions marshal the 1013 riders safely around the courses. The sidelines gave him a new appreciation for all the work that goes into building a safe cycle event.

He did ride in last year's Round Taupo event – two weeks after the hernia repairs.

"I wasn't in very good nick. I was going right round twice and I was also riding a leg for our Rotary team. So I did my first lap of the double, then the leg for Rotary, then I did my second lap."

He is using the three laps of the Tour de Manawatu as a warmup for this year's Round Taupo race.

For Taupo, he is fundraising for Heart Children again – 21 kids with heart problems need $1000 each to go to a camp at Taupo.

There are more details on the website fundraiseonline.co.nz, where people should look for the name Colin Anderson.

Anderson says the distances he bikes aren't unusual, but in New Zealand, his age and the length of time he's being doing it – more than 20 years – make him special. Not that he would claim that.

"Endurance biking, it's all in your head. I dedicate each ride to somebody who's passed on, and thinking about them gets me through the tough bits. There's always somebody worse off than you in this life."