Bicycle NetworkSaskia 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.As a woman in my mid-fifties who also enjoys cycling, I found myself connecting with many of Beudel’s reflections. One observation in particular resonated strongly: “There’s always the feeling when you ride somewhere new, alone, out into the countryside of crossing a threshold into the unknown like setting out to sea.” I have not attempted anything approaching the scale of the Peaks Challenge. But her observations about ageing, resilience and the ongoing negotiation between confidence and limitation felt both familiar and authentic.As a result, Peaking avoids both triumphalism and nostalgia. Instead, it offers a thoughtful account of what it means to inhabit a changing body while continuing to test its limits.A bike of her ownBicycles occupy a special place in the history of women’s freedom. Beudel draws on this legacy through examples such as Simone de Beauvoir cycling through wartime France, an image that evokes both physical independence and intellectual liberation.Yet the promise of that freedom remains incomplete. Women continue to be underrepresented in endurance cycling events such as the Peaks Challenge. While Beudel acknowledges this imbalance, she doesn’t spend much time examining the barriers facing women riders today. It is one of the book’s most intriguing threads, and I found myself wanting more.One of the book’s greatest strengths is the way it explores the psychology of endurance. One of this book’s greatest strengths is how it explores the psychology of endurance. Bicycle Network Long-distance cycling demands a particular kind of attention. Climbs require patience; descents demand concentration. Hours on the bike create a space where thought, sensation and movement become closely intertwined.Beudel captures this experience well. Moments of immersion are punctuated by self-reflection, anxiety and doubt. Her challenge is not to eliminate discomfort, but to continue despite it. Endurance emerges as a mental practice as much as a physical one.Expands the possibilities of sports writingIn countries such as the Netherlands, cycling is embedded in everyday life and supported by extensive infrastructure. In Australia, cyclists often remain peripheral figures in a culture shaped largely around cars.Without becoming polemical, Beudel highlights the limits of seeing cycling solely as an individual choice. Participation depends on systems and environments, as much as on personal determination. Environmental conditions form a subtle but significant backdrop to the narrative. Much of Beudel’s training takes place during an Australian summer marked by bushfires. Smoke-filled skies and extreme heat transform otherwise routine rides into encounters with a landscape under stress.The final ride through Victoria’s alpine country offers moments of beauty and relief, yet ecological vulnerability remains present. Nature is not merely scenery: it is an active force shaping the experience itself.Photographs, maps and diagrams help ground the story in place, giving readers a sense of both the landscapes traversed and the scale of the challenge undertaken.Stylistically, Beudel balances memoir and reflection. Her academic background enriches the narrative, by weaving personal experience together with insights from history, philosophy and social commentary, though the shifts between diary entries and analysis can feel slightly uneven at times.Peaking succeeds in expanding the possibilities of sports writing. It is less concerned with crossing the finish line than with the accumulation of effort that makes such moments possible.Ultimately, the book suggests endurance is about more than physical achievement. It is about attention, persistence and a willingness to confront uncertainty. In doing so, it offers a thoughtful reflection on what it means to keep going — both on the road and beyond it.Sharyn Carnahan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.