"I feel very fortunate. Kids don’t realise how lucky they are. They just take everything for granted," the 94-year-old Southland man said.
As well as training to beat the record in the first week of March, he will also be the oldest competitor at the New Zealand Masters Games in Dunedin, which are being held from Saturday to February 8.
The current record for his age group was 20km in one hour, but he was already cycling about 23km in that time, Mr Grandiek said.
His secret to staying fit was "just biking" as well as eating a reasonably good diet.
Mr Grandiek’s training regime includes about an hour on the bike twice a week, as well as fairly consistent gym workouts.
He has two tablespoons of olive oil every morning and night for heart health and eats oats with yoghurt, bran and flax seeds for breakfast each day.
He said he was looking forward to the Masters Games and catching up with some of the "old boys", but he did not expect anyone there to be his age.
"Ever since I’ve been 80 I’ve had no competitors."
In 2015, he beat a world record for his age group.
"Records are to be broken."
He was not nervous or excited yet though.
"It’s no good being nervous ... on the day you get a wee bit nervous and I think that’s probably a good thing.
"I’ll be excited when I beat the record."
He started cycling in the 1970s in Holland and had dabbled in many other sports, including Greek and Roman wrestling, but cycling was the one thing that stuck.
"I think once you start, in my case, I think you become a bit addicted," he said.
"You do it for yourself — I’m not doing it for anybody else."
He encouraged young cyclists to be honest with themselves and do the best they could.
He said he felt lucky to be living the life he was after enduring five years of oppression, hunger and starvation after Germany invaded Holland when he was 7.
"I didn’t really have a youth like people now," he said,
"I feel being here is a privilege."
