IF I get any faster on my bike, they will have to introduce random drug tests.

Even I am wondering whether I have accidentally taken a performance-enhancing substance.

As I am writing this I am rewarding myself for my cycling efforts with a nice black pudding sandwich, but I don’t think that’s what they mean by ‘performance-enhancing’, even though it is.

Every time I arrive home these days, I ask my wife what it’s like to be married to a top cyclist. That’s because, by the time you read this, I will have completed 59 consecutive days in which I have cycled 20km or more. That’s more than 12 miles in old money. Every day. In wind, rain and shine (mostly wind).

And I don’t hang about.

The other day I hit 40kph. OK, it was downhill and I had the wind behind me, but I was going far faster than the traffic.

It’s not that difficult to outpace the cars in Swindon’s traffic jams these days, to be honest.

So: 59 days. That’s more than eight weeks of probably the hardest and most ambitious fitness campaign I have been involved in since I was a young man, when I ran a few marathons.

With my 55th birthday rapidly approaching, I think that’s pretty good going, and I reckon everybody around my age should give it a try.

At an age when you are increasingly aware of how fit, slim and young you used to be, anything that gives you a boost is worth taking, and if you hop on your bike, you soon get it.

Feeling fitter, slimmer and brighter has its own benefits, but you end up feeling even better about yourself by comparison.

I am amazed by the number of people, including young people, who I see pushing their bikes up modest slopes.

It does an old man’s heart really good to see somebody giving in to a little hill, especially if you’ve got yourself fit enough to get up serious ones such as Eastcott, which only takes a few weeks of regular exercise.

But, of course, for every person who gets off and walks, there are dozens who didn’t get on their bikes in the first place, or do any other kind of exercise, so you’re ahead of all of them too.

My only regret is I wish I had done it earlier.

If I am honest, I never much enjoyed all the running I used to do in my younger days, although the outcome was worth the effort.

Cycling, on the other hand, is mostly fun, and even the bad bits, like punctures and falling off, are mercifully rare.

As well as getting fit, I am also trying to lose weight, and have managed to finally shed the stone I unfairly put on over Christmas and the New Year.

I figured that getting it done in the spring and having the whole of the summer to look forward to, with warmer weather and lighter nights, was a good plan.

Not that summer brings any guarantee of warmer weather, of course, but nobody can deny us the lighter nights.

The worst thing about regular cycling is it is difficult not to get evangelistic about it, as I am now, but I am making no apology for enjoying my current fitness. I’ve earned it.

At my age it takes some will power and it could soon be lost again if I am complacent, so I’m making the most of it while it lasts.

Every hill I get up on my bike helps to convince me that I am not yet over the hill.