For this woman in her 50s, endurance cycling is quietly radical – and about much more than sport

Bicycle Network Saskia Beudel’s book begins with a straightforward premise: how she prepared for one of Australia’s toughest cycling events.

The Peaks Challenge, held in Victoria’s alpine region, requires riders to cover 235 kilometres and climb more than 4,000 metres in a single day, taking in Tawonga Gap, Mount Hotham and Falls Creek.

Yet this book is about much more than cycling.

When she started the challenge, in 2021, she was in her late fifties.

As the pages unfold, Peaking becomes a story about ageing, endurance and the surprising possibilities that emerge when we push beyond our perceived limits.

Review: Peaking: One Hundred and Eleven Days on Two Wheels by Saskia Beudel (Monash University Press) Structured as a diary spanning 111 days of training, the book follows Beudel through familiar rides around Canberra and Melbourne, before she eventually arrives at the Victorian Alps and the challenge itself.

The diary format captures the slow, incremental nature of preparation.

In each entry she records distance, terrain and weather – but also her evolving experience of pushing her body to its limits.

Endurance emerges not as a single moment of triumph, but as an ongoing negotiation between capacity, expectation and doubt.

Saskia Beudel trained for 111 days to take part in one of cycling’s toughest events, in her late fifties.

Is age just a number? There is something quietly radical about taking on an event of this magnitude in your late fifties.

Beudel’s experience suggests midlife can open new possibilities for physical challenge and self-discovery.

What makes the book compelling, however, is its refusal to become an inspirational cliché.

Beudel is often uncertain, vulnerable and fatigued, and such moments sit alongside her achievements.