Sir Mark Cavendish: ‘I Feel Old Now. I Feel Broken’

This isn’t the first time Sir Mark Cavendish has announced his intention to retire from the professional circuit. Last year, he confirmed his plans to call time on his cycling career, only to return and secure a record-breaking 35^th stage win in the Tour de France. But this November will see his final race, in Singapore.

But a history-making career takes its toll on the body. ‘I feel old now,’ he tells Men’s Health. ‘It takes me a while to get going. These days, I’m like a diesel engine – which I never was before.’ Just to get fit in general, the 39-year-old says, is ‘so fucking hard… You can’t take longer than a week off at this stage of your career because it takes so long to get it back.’

The precise and repetitive nature of cycling is particularly problematic, he explains: ‘I’ve had the same cycling position for 25 years, the same pedal revolution. So any slight movement, your body feels it. When you’re young you can change your seat height – it doesn’t matter. When you’re older, your body is so used to one position – it’s a killer.’

Dedication to the sport he loves has a painful pay-off: ‘The last bad injury was a broken collar bone, and there’s metal in there now… I had to get a bone graft from my hip to replace a gap in the bone on my shoulder. The hip took longer to heal than the collar bone.’

Mark Cavendish fronts the November issue of Men’s Health UK. Read the full interview here.

Scarlett Wrench is the Senior Editor at Men’s Health UK.

With more than 12 years’ experience as a health and lifestyle editor, Scarlett has a keen interest in new science, emerging trends, mental well-being, and food and nutrition. For Men’s Health, she has carried out extensive research into areas such as wellness in the workplace, male body image, the paradoxes of modern masculinity, and mental health among school-age boys.

Her words have also appeared in Women’s Health, Runner’s World and The Sunday Times.