Adrian Barich: my 79-year-old mate rode 80km a day for 80 days before turning 80. What a legend

Life is a voyage of discovery, isn’t it? And guess what. Revelations can happen at any time — even when you’re walking your dog.

For me, it came when I joined up with a professor, a captain of industry and a local GP at the local dog park. The dog breeds involved were my cavalier-cross-French bulldog Frankie, a couple of border collies and something crossed with a poodle; maybe a Whoodle, Labradoodle, Goldendoodle or Aussiedoodle.

It’s probably unnecessary for me to describe the dog breeds but I couldn’t miss the chance to list off some of those poodle combinations — just how wonderful are those names?

Anyway, I was chatting with one of the dog lovers and talking you-know-what (which I seem to be quite adept at) when I asked: “So, what exciting things have you been up to mate?”

His reply floored me. He said he had recently ridden across Australia. His mantra was 80/80/80 — riding 80km a day for 80 days before turning 80.

I was incredulous. Talk about a voyage of self-discovery. Talk about looking at something old in a new way. My first thought, of course, was to ask “Why, you mad bugger? Would you ride across the Nullarbor on your own at age 80?”

But I had a feeling he would have just given me the old George Mallory answer about Everest: “because it was there”. He’s one of those sorts of fellas.

As a retired medical doctor, John seems to believe if you want to be healthier and happier, you should exercise, and didn’t he set himself a stunning goal?

He dipped his bike’s back wheel in the Indian Ocean at City Beach, and after eight weeks in the saddle, dipped the front wheel in the Pacific Ocean at Bondi Beach in Sydney.

Later in the year, he celebrated his 80th birthday.

What a legend. And the story gets better. On the Nullarbor Plain part of the ride, he was on his own, often sleeping beside the road in a tent. The way he described it, though, it was as if he was on a leisurely Sunday ride through Kings Park, except that when the really big road trains came past he would hop off the bike and plant his feet so he didn’t get blown over.

I thought he was winding me up, but he was being serious.

To say I was impressed was an understatement. I was struggling to imagine him riding solo 4500km across Australia at 79, setting off from here with his final destination somewhere in the east where his grandsons lived.

Fancy rocking up after eight weeks on the bike and saying “G’day kids, I told you I’d do it.”

Remarkably, a few years before that, at age 74, he rode from Melbourne to our nation’s capital, traversing the Snowy Mountains before ending at Parliament House — a journey of 900km with a cumulative climb of 9000m and a similar descent.

“I walked up the steep ascents at 5km/h while my younger colleagues pedalled past me and shouted encouragement,” he told me.

“I cautiously rode down the descents, especially when on winding gravel roads. However, on one long straight steep hill I abandoned caution to the wind and flew down at 65km/h. My personal best!”

Now I don’t know about you, but a 74-year-old flying down a hill at 65km/h is definitely something you don’t see every day.

Like author Marilyn Ferguson once said, “of all the self-fulfilling prophecies in our culture, the assumption that ageing means decline and poor health is probably the deadliest.”

We are always the same age inside.