'Age and hormonal changes play a part of my cycling journey - but it is still possible to improve': The journey to ultra endurance racer

The first time I speak to Fatima Ahmed, it is by phone and she is walking into a bike shop. I can hear muffled shouts and metal clanking in the background, Ahmed hurriedly explaining that her road bike needs looking at. Does she mean her race bike, I wonder. There isn’t a moment to ask. “Can I call you back?” Yes, yes, I assure her I’ll call at a quieter moment. But quiet moments are few and far between in the life of the 51-year-old road safety manager who is in the process of turning herself into a long-distance adventure cyclist. 

Ahmed is in the thick of preparing for the Pan Celtic Ultra, a self-supported, ultra-endurance bicycle adventure starting on 6 July. She is aiming to complete the ‘short’ route, but don’t be fooled by the name – it’s 1,145 miles (the full is 1,426 miles), beginning on the Isle of Man with a 100-mile, self-navigated night time test. Racers are then ferried at dawn across the Irish Sea to Heysham, Lancashire, making their way through the Lake District before crossing the border into the epic wilderness of Scotland’s west coast and Inner Hebrides. After looping the Isle of Skye, the race cuts across the Scottish mainland and fi nishes in Inverness. It is a gruelling, glorious journey, with riders climbing over 84,000ft (25,600m) in total. There is no hard and fast rule for how long it should take; “you finish when you do,” states the organiser’s website. But if you want to make it to the party, you have 10 days to complete the race.

Ahmed is participating thanks to an initiative called the Ultra Distance Scholarship (UDS), a scheme set up in 2020 to help increase diversity in the “very niche and predominantly white sport” of ultra-distance cycling. Ahmed’s parents are from Jhelum, in the Punjab region of Pakistan. Although she has lived in London for the last 20 years, she was born and raised in Bradford, describing herself as “a proud Yorkshire lass”. 

As one of the three recipients of the 2024 UDS scholarship, Ahmed was allocated nine months’ training and support to complete the Pan Celtic Ultra. The suite of prizes includes a custom bike from Stayer Cycles, bikepacking bags from Tailfin, apparel from Albion, coaching from Veloqi Cycle Coaching, bike-fitting from Foundation Fit, mentorship and more. It was the training, more so than the goodies, that excited Ahmed most.

“I was most interested in the endurance training, and understanding how to make it specific to me, a woman of my age,” says mother-of-three Ahmed, who is currently going through the perimenopause. I ask how dealing with these physical changes influences her riding, and what gave her the confidence to take on an ultra race.

“Age and hormonal changes do play a significant part of my cycling journey and affect my training,” she muses, “but it is still possible to improve with the right approach.” Her current programme is heavy on strength training, augmented by pilates and lots of stretching. Ahmed exudes pride when she speaks of how much her body has changed in the few short months she has been working with coach Alison Wood. “I feel I am getting stronger by the day, and this is showing in my stats.” Ahmed’s Strava account shows massive increases in ride elevation. In the space of two months, she tripled her climbing from 1,000ft on a regular 60km ride to almost 3,000ft.

Community role model 

Prior to the pandemic lockdowns, Ahmed’s cycling was limited to commuting – and only as a novice at that. Her cycling journey began when a restructure at her workplace, the London Borough of Hounslow, placed her in charge of cycle training. “I needed to know what it was like to be an end-user,” she says, “to understand how people were accessing what we offered”. 

Ahmed had only ridden infrequently as a child, so began by enrolling in the borough’s adult cycle training sessions. “At the time, I could cycle but not confidently; I couldn’t lift my hand off the handlebar to do a signal.” Part of what kept her striving to improve was an awareness she was becoming a role model for her community. “I would purposely sometimes turn up in a kurta [a loose-fitting tunic, traditional Pakistani dress] because I wanted to show you can wear any clothes to cycle,” she chuckles. “I still do that. I rock up in a salwar kameez [loose-fitting tunic and trousers] and make it cool.” 

In 2016/17, there were under 100 adults participating in Hounslow’s adult cycling training sessions annually. Within a couple of years, Ahmed had brought the numbers up to over 1,600, a majority of whom were women of colour aged between 16 and 82. This achievement led to her being named one of Cycling UK’s 100 Women in Cycling 2019. But even then, her riding was solely a means of transport, not a passion

Bitten by the bug

In early 2020, as Covid confinements loomed, Ahmed had a change of heart. “I remember thinking I might as well just go out [on a social ride] before we go into lockdown.” Apart from the two ride leaders, only one other rider turned up to the session, a fellow Muslim woman named Samra Said. “It was only the two of us,” Ahmed recalls, “but we went on the ride, Samra and I exchanged numbers, and that was it.” The pair became firm friends, riding together throughout the pandemic and joining other local riders in the area. “We cycled with a group called the GOGs,” says Ahmed, “the Grumpy Old Gits – they call themselves that!” How did these “white men of a certain age” treat Ahmed and Said when they turned up to ride? “I know they were thinking, ‘Oh, how far are these two gonna go?’ But we did! Every Wednesday we rocked up at Ealing Town Hall to do the morning ride. They loved what we brought, and our consistency. We wanted to be there, and that’s what brought us together.” 

One particular member of the group, Murray Langton, took the pair of novice riders under his wing. “He was really eager to help us, to get us going,” says Ahmed. She and Samra cycled with 76-year-old Langton regularly, as though he were a third family member. “He was lovely. He explained about gears, how it all works.” The first time Ahmed rode to Richmond Park was with Murray and the GOGs. “They were all very encouraging.”

The unlikely friendship flourished, and with it the cycling community in Hounslow. Eventually, Ahmed and Said struck out on their own, setting up Cycling Sisters Hounslow, a local riding group with the aim of getting more women into cycling. “We got trained as ride leaders, learnt first aid, route planning… After that, there was no looking back.” After a couple of years on hybrids, Ahmed finally realised her dream of owning a road bike on New Year’s Day 2022. Th e second-hand Trek was the right size and in immaculate condition, but it had too small a cassette, 23mm tyres and a set-up too aggressive for long distances. Before long, it was time for an upgrade. “By this point, I’d sold my car. My life revolved around cycling, so every penny I spent I knew was going to be worth it.”

Ahmed ended up with a Trek Domane SL 6, tubeless with eTap, purchased later that year for her 50th birthday. “It was more suited to endurance,’ she says. Is it true that once you switch to electronic gears, you can’t go back, I ask? “That’s what I thought, but now for the Pan Celtic, I don’t know. Do I want that on my bike? The last thing I want is to be worrying about the battery dying.”

There is a lot to think about when approaching an ultra. How many miles a day, where to sleep – the route has not yet been released – and what to carry. How will she sleep? “We’ve been kitted out with a bivvy, a sleeping bag and mat,” says Ahmed, “but I’ve never camped in my life, so I’ll have to practise before the race.” Her current plan involves a mix of camping and accommodation. In order to get enough sleep, she is planning “no riding after 10pm,” with a 5am start to “cover at least 100 miles a day”.

What are Ahmed’s hopes for the race? “To finish, and not have an injury,” she says, modestly, adding that to be forced to drop out would be “really disheartening”. And that’s why she has been training on hills relentlessly. “If not now, when am I going to get better at hills?” she jokes.

As we wrap up, I ask if there is a place where she dreams more than any other of cycling one day? On the Zoom window on my computer screen, she smiles broadly. “Well, I’m going there in July – Scotland.”

The co-founder's view 

Samra Said, 41, is the co-founder, with Fatima, of the Cycle Sisters Trustee and Hounslow Group 

“My friendship with Fatima has been remarkable, and helped me become so much more confident on my bike. She’s an incredible navigator, so confident on the road, and I’ve picked up so many skills from her. 

“Cycling with Fatima also helped me reclaim Hounslow as a borough. I now know every alleyway, how it connects with other boroughs, all the green spaces. I’m now proud of where I live; we have a really good community here. Everything that I know about cycling is because of the collective, the ones who took a chance on me and helped me train. 

“Fatima and I set up Hounslow Cycle Sisters and it’s grown into something incredible. We’ve recruited a cohort of ride leaders, we’ve secured funding to train up more ride leaders, and we’ve come so far since our launch in May 2021. We now have mid-week rides and a road club. 

“Fatima is a very special soul. She doesn’t just want to better herself, she’s always thinking about who else she can bring up with her.”