Are You a MAMIL? Middle Aged Men In Lycra… they're everywhere apparently

If you are MAMIL and proud of it, join the MAMIL club of Great Britain at http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#!/group.php?gid=134256746618215&ref=ts

Baggy shorts over the cycle shorts, ergo I'm a closet MAMIL.

I guess since I've been cycling now for almost 40 years I qualify.

Tom

47, lycra clad and proud

When do you stop being a MAMIL and become a veteran cyclist?

I'm the bloke in the BBC web article that took up cycling to do LEJOG for charity, have become addicted and just rode up the Ventoux on my hols.

I've been surprised by some of the reaction to the MAMILs thing. I have found the cycling community really friendly at roadside but a bit more petty and judgemental in some cases online. I've wanted to ride for ages and wanted a road bike since I was a kid really as it's a thing of beauty, and being an avid tour viewer each year had always wanted to feel what something like that was like, but I'd been in too many shops whre I felt - and was made to feel - really uncomfortable because I wasn't a ready hatched bike spod - I couldn't change a puncture and I didn't know what the bike bits were called. That put me off trying to buy a bike for years. But eventually with a strong enough nudge I did.

6 months on and I've nailed LEJOG, gloried on the Ventoux lost more than a stone and got fitter - so I will live longer, look OK in lycra, helped get others into cycling, made new friendships, deepened old ones, had spiritual experiences, fallen in love with the sport, tried to support independent bike shops and web sites, learnt to be curteous to cyclists when driving and passed on the knowledge of the dangers we face.I've raised £3 1/2k for cancer research and been part of a team that raised £30k for charities in total.

Now, I can change punctures with my eyes shut and my chain and sprockets are generally sparkling - once I'd learnt how to clean them properly. I've changed tubes for others at the roadside and been helped by perfect strangers myself.

But only 6 months ago I was a bloke determined to buy a bike not knowing if it was a road bike for racing or training or sportives or whatever and there's a good chance that without the strong motivation I had to continue to buy my bike that I could have been put off again by sniffy staff or the sneering kind of cyclist.

Only good has come out of my finding this magnificent sport of ours, so if you do see someone struggling in a bike shop, offer them a hand, don't put them off for reasons of petty prejudice.

MAMILs is just a bit of a fun label, not a target to take aim at. Like blondes, brunettes, readheads, the tall, the short, the wide the narrow, the blue eyed and the brown, each MAMIL will be human and different. But from my own experience the more people we welcome into cycling the more good will be done, and the more people we sneer at and discourage from our sport the greater our loss. i've seen good and bad roadcraft from good and bad cyclists and I've exhibited both myself within the space of minutes despite having an advanced motorbike riding qualification. We're all human and stronger wit each other support.

I've been, and am, on a voyage of cycling discovery - and now I've discovered roadcc for the first time too so happy days!!

Welcome aboard robbielemac! I enjoyed reading your piece last Saturday.

Sounds like you've already packed in more than most of us. I've never ridden LEJOG or up the Ventoux… I'm saving myself

I've got no problem with the MAMIL tag either - I see it as a sign of success, even if it starts out being used for mainstream ridicule that's the first step to mainstream acceptance in my view. Plus there's no point us wishing there were more cyclists if when news start to appear we all adopt a prickly "well, I was here first" attitude. That is what I think rankles with some of the middle aged men in Lycra who were also young men in Lycra too the MAMIL tag doesn't differentiate them from the newcomers. But hey, those outside cycling have never been able to tell the difference between one middle aged man in Lycra and another anyway so we'll all just have to deal with it.

Nicely put robbielemac

please excuse my stupidity, but What's the thing with Lycra? do we have to wear it to join? I mean, I've heard of leather fetish and can kind of understand that, but Lycra???

Great comment Robbie, that's exactly what I would say. I've been riding since 1959...woops I guess I qualify being a MAMIL. Thanks for the article!

Am I a mamil?...........even my pyjamas are lycra....

The point about lycra is that it is the most practical and comfortable material for cycling kit. Anyone who is old enough to remember woolen jerseys and shorts with actual chamois leather inserts will tell you that. Your MAMIL is a bloke who wants to ride a bike and has the common sense to wear the most suitable clothes.

I proud to be a MAMIL. I tried ordinary shorts and running ones too but for comfort give me Lycra

Why would anyone admit to being a Mamil!!!???? Just because you've been riding for 40 years doesn't make you a Mamil. In my head that makes you the total opposite. I'm 40, I wear lycra, I race, have been for nearly 20 years but there is no way I'm admitting, ever, to being a Mamil. My bikes are functional, and do what they need to do to get me through races, not stupidly expensive in anyway. I wear lycra because, well, I look f**!!*g good in it not a pot belly in sight. It certainly ain't a fad for me and like all mid life crisis, it'll wear off, but us old timers will still be going strong. Oh, one good thing though, there will be plenty of bargain, good as new carbon around in a year or two.

I'm female and 60. One of the 6% of voters in the poll. I wear a pair of jeans, and a Marks & Sparks tee shirt. I have a pair of SPD shoes though, maybe that makes me a cyclist.

Like Robbiemac I became tired of being patronised in bike shops, "did your husband send you?" so I built my own bikes from frames. When I park my 700c Vitus (frame price £35.00) outside my LBS and pop in for a new tube, they now ask "who built that for you?" My first build was an MTB, I'm on that offroad, most weekends.

I've been cycling since 1961. My mother was still cycling a few years ago, she started in 1938 and can field-strip a Sturmey Archer. Neither of us wore lycra, although I've now got a pair of cycling shorts, which I've worn once. Getting dressed up in funny clothes to just do 20 miles to the shops and back, (my daily run) seems idiotic. Fortunately, I don't have a six-pack, or a carbon bike.

MAMILS seem to be increasing, not dying out. Gangs of them roam Hampshire on Sunday mornings, it looks like a homoerotic fetish club as they preen and fuss outside my local pub. Shaved legs, latex clothes, who are they showing off to? Eyebrow plucking and a slice of lemon, anyone? Most of the exposed Mamil legs I see on my daily rides would look better on a snooker table.

On the same manly tack I quite tittered at the carefully deprecating tone the Road CC review dishes out to Helen Pidd's new book 'Bicycle':

"the book nonetheless has a tone which, to my mind, will only appeal to a predominantly female, fashionable, urban readership. Pidd is scathing about much of the traditional cycling community and its kit, whilst simultaneously dipping into it herself through her various cycling based activities. There’s nothing wrong with a book that will appeal to a sector of society that might currently see the sport as ‘not for them’, and indeed it could be seen to have enough of a place doing just that, but it seems a shame that here this is only possible by alienating those who might be more traditional or ‘sporty’ in their attitude. There’s an enduring feeling of ‘them’ and ‘us’ throughout the book that grated slightly."

Leonie, the author of the above slightly toxic review also said elsewhere: "Every woman spends her life searching for the perfect pair of jeans." I'm afraid not. I've spent my life doing other stuff, Leonie.

Out there on the roads, MAMILS and the sportive bunch are 'them', and then there's the rest of 'us' who cycle daily, and remain largely un-noticed. Middle aged women in jeans don't warrant an acronym. They are mainly invisible to other cyclists, and to manufacturers, and to Road CC hacks, as Leonie manages unconsiously, to prove.

We're Mammals, not Mamils.

way to have a sense of humour failure, snaff. i've read leonie's review of the rapha shorts too and if you want to take a flippant comment quoted out of context as proof of some kind of latent mysoginsm here, then knock yourself out. and it can be us and them if you want it to, but many people, including myself, are both 'us' and 'them' depending on what kind of riding we're doing. horses for courses. you want to do a 200km audax in your jeans, be my guest.

59 year old cyclist here, been riding since I was 8. The more people riding bikes the better although in my experience drivers are VERY inattentive at times and too distracted to operate their 5,000 pound SUV's safely, they sometimes just have the attitude 'I'm bigger and I don't care about you'

I ride across North Carolina every year, it's about 663 miles, along with 1,200 other middle-aged cycling enthusiasts and YES most of us are wearing lycra for it's aero and breathing qualities, not for its appearance.

Most of the guys I ride with can pedal 100 miles in a day when necessary.

And it is hilly and even mountainous in parts of North Carolina.

Just a few comments from the USA.

Safe Riding.

StingRay on Litespeed Ultimate 57cm

I've been cycling a lot since I was a kid and have built/rebuilt several bikes - a couple of MTBs, a road bike for my wife (later stolen), my racing BMX and a BMX for one of my sons. The Old Ridgeback my name refers to is 21 years old and has been used to commute across London for much of that time - I was clocking 20 miles/day on it for the first 3-4 years I had it and it's still going strong (just had a new chainset and bottom bracket). The frame, rear brake and front mech are all original but everything else has been replaced at least once - no surprise considering it's clocked over 40,000 miles. I have lycra but only wear it when necessary. To be honest, I wear the leg guards and arm guards I have for BMX training/racing more regularly these days.