Off to the bustling megalopolis of Canberra today. Various tasks called, and as we’d also faffed around quite a lot in the morning, we only hit the road at about midday. Even worse, such was the haste of our departure that we neglected our morning coffee before setting out.

Now this is a complicated matter. I’m not saying we’re addicted – or if we are, it’s as much to the ritual as any effects of a triple-shot cappuccino that has us imbibing day after day. (For me, there’s the additional hit you get from the sugar which despite the advice of dentists and doctors, I still can’t do without.)

Most days at home we rely on a capsule in the old Nespresso and that’s that. It’s not an early capsule though – it’s the amazing Hitman Super Strong blend from Sydney gourmet roasters Crave Coffee. This will stiffen the loosest upper lip and put hair on the smoothest baby’s bottom (a bizarre image but bear with me).

Put it this way: this stuff is well named – one of these in the morning will blast the cobwebs from the grey cells and have you straining at the leash to get at the day. Now, I should declare an interest here – the good people at Crave are family friends but they don’t know I’m doing this and we’ve received no inducements whatsoever. The coffee’s just that good. 

So there we were, heading down the King’s Highway with a strange, nagging sense that something was missing. And of course, just when we were in the middle of nowhere, it dawned – we’d missed our morning hit! Luckily, just before withdrawal symptoms struck, we reached the charming township of Bungendore – which sounds a little like a house at Hogwarts – and there resides an excellent bakery with top-quality coffee, pastries, pies and . . . organic veggies! But it was the beans we were after. Having received emergency infusions of the required brew, we proceeded a lot more enthusiastically on our way.  That’s all it took.

Coffee didn’t used to have such a hold over me. I was quite wary of it, being a poor sleeper. A coffee after dinner is the prelude to tossing and turning, unable to switch off, until 4am. But then came that mid-life affliction that hits so many of us – the discovery of long-distance cycling and running and such events. Once fully immersed enough to be monitoring my heart rate and tracking my weekly kms via GPS, the benefits of caffeine to the endurance athlete became clear.

I’d be out with a peloton of expensively-mounted gentlemen (and the odd lady), and after a certain duration – around the 90-minute mark, I’d say – we’d all pull over to a likely café and take a coffee break. Just like this morning, once back in the saddle suitably fortified, we’d find a new lease of energy and stamina. And it’s not just psychological either – research has proven that you can go further and longer with a judicious measure of caffeine in the bloodstream. I’m just being guided by the science, OK?

I noticed this effect a few years ago when cycling the wonderful Cape Town Cycle Tour, a 105-ish-kilometre mass event on the Southern tip of Africa in which 35,000 people of all shapes and sizes circumnavigate Table Mountain by bike, with all the glory of its ocean views. The atmosphere is amazing, the support is first-class – but make no mistake, it’s quite a long way and you do have to crank up a few decent climbs.

And here’s the coffee bit: last time I did the Tour, I had a few energy gels which I’d snatched up at the expo the day before. I inhaled a couple of these at moments when the going seemed tough and then forgot about them.

As our group approached the high outlook point of Chapman’s Peak, it seemed that my dark, chilly winter of training in London had really paid off as I soared up without the expected pain and tiredness. It was only much later that the small print on the gel packet revealed that they were absolutely stuffed with caffeine. No wonder I felt so thirsty.

It’s also said that a couple of stiff shots of the dark, fragrant stuff has definite health benefits. This is the kind of broad generalisation that our media love to release over and over again – butter, for example, is bad for you; no, new research says it’s good for you; hang on, it’s bad for you again. But the current thinking is that it’s better to coffee up, within the bounds of moderation, every day. I’ll take it.

Apparently J.S. Bach once said, “without my morning coffee, I’m like a dried-up piece of roast goat.” Now I was always taught that for a good simile to work, it needs to tap into some kind of universal experience – and roast goat, fresh or dried, is beyond my ken. But somehow the old muso found a way of making his point, don’t you think? I just wonder what he’d have had to say about tea.