Do cyclists' bodies need a regular health-check MOT?

With Rambo-esque pluck, CW’s David Bradford lances a finger and spills blood in the name of journalistic enquiry — namely, do cyclists benefit from biomarker testing?

Cyclists are obsessed with output. We spend fortunes on hardware and sof tware to monitor power, heart rate and calorie burn, to track our rides and compare ourselves with others. Meanwhile, we scarcely give a passing thought to our wetware — that is, the systems inside our bodies that make this output possible.

Of the internal workings of flesh, bone and blood we seem prepared to carry on in ignorance, free from any data beyond the rudimentary “Ow, that hurts” or “Oh God, I’m so tired I need to stop”. Why do we settle for such paucity of knowledge? It’s not as though we have to, now that keeping tabs on our biology is easier and cheaper than ever.

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