Peaking

Name: Peaking
Price: 32.99 AUD
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ISBN: 9781923192867

One Hundred and Eleven Days on Two Wheels

Saskia Beudel

$32.99

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English

Monash University Publishing
01 May 2026

Memoirs; Feminism & feminist theory; Cycling; Travel & holiday

We're sitting around a wood stove as she tells these stories. There's a gale force wind outside, forest heaving. Another woman in the group ran the New York marathon a few years ago. 'I wouldn't do Peaks,' she says. 'It's beyond a marathon, more like an ultra-marathon. You'll be on the bike all day, maybe eleven hours.' She'd run the marathon in just over five.

The three peaks are Tawonga Gap, Mt Hotham and Falls Creek in the Victorian high country. Organisers describe the Peaks Challenge as the most demanding one-day cycle event in Australia

the ultimate personal challenge. In her late fifties, Saskia Beudel decided to take that challenge.

Peaking is her genre-defying record of the hundred and eleven days spent preparing for Peaks

and of the event itself. An accomplished writer of both fiction and nonfiction, Saskia weaves together her training notes and wide-ranging reflections, the history of the bicycle and her own personal stories of cycling. She tussles with the state of contemporary life and the questions that come after long hours in the saddle.

What does it mean for a woman to enter this male-dominated event? As our bodies age, what new things can we ask of them? How do we take pleasure from our bodies and nature at a time when the world seems to be collapsing around us? How far can body

and mind

respond? Ultimately, what does it mean to 'peak' (or not)?

By: Saskia Beudel
Imprint: Monash University Publishing
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 210mm, Width: 135mm,
ISBN: 9781923192867
ISBN 10: 1923192868
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 01 May 2026
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Saskia Beudel is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. She is the author of the novel Borrowed Eyes and nonfiction works A Country in Mind: Memoir with Landscape and (with Jill Bennett) Curating Sydney. Her books have been shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, a Dobbie Award and the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature. Saskia's essays have appeared in Best Australian Essays, The Saturday Paper, The Sydney Review of Books, Kill Your Darlings, HEAT and The Iowa Review, among others. Her website is www.saskiabeudel.com.