Recently I completed a 400km hilly bike race, earning a little derision from those who don't understand cycling, but raising the bar for most of my cycling friends. What goes through your mind on a journey like that? The race finished descending a 300 metre hill. Have your ever seen the look on a dogs face with its head out of a moving car window?, that's what goes through your mind.
All I can do is describe how I got started in my 40s. My first trip to the bike shop was a thoughtful birthday present from wife and grown children. I'd often ridden to school until I was 16 years old, and hadn't thought too much about riding a bike since; little did I know how my life would change, nor could I guess at all the fun and well-being that would follow.
Within 12 months I would develop a gargantuan appetite and still loose weight, ride my bike over Swiss Alps, pedal for 12 hours across 4 English counties. Yet on Day One I winded myself riding my new bike home from the shop, the knees were like jelly and it took beer to still them. I rode around the block, through the park, around the park, down to the river, along quieter roads, quickly developed an interest in detailed roadmaps.
This bike was an inexpensive mountainbike without suspension. The shop guys set me up so that I could reach everything comfortably. I tried a succession of saddles and after some weeks put smooth tyres on it, creating what's known as a hybrid - comfortable on the road, and equally at home on off-road tracks. I bought a cheap bike computer to clock my miles and see how fast I could go downhill, this incentive added much interest. If you walk in a muddy field you need wellies; if you ride a bike for any time, you need shoes that connect to the pedals and you learn how to rotate the pedals smoothly, with more efficiency there's better performance. You wear padded pants made of lycra, I used to wear baggy pants over the top until I got used to my new look.
After a month I became confident in light traffic and cycled regularly to work. After 3 months or so we'd go out in the car for the day on a weekend, somewhere I could cycle to, eat a hearty picnic, finish anyone elses plateful, and get a lift home for dinner. Looking over the right shoulder for following traffic became second nature, I learnt how to eyeball motorists about to turn into my lane, and how to claim my right to the road. Once you become a bit fitter you always ride three feet out from parked cars in case a door opens suddenly - its a nasty accident. In 60,000km I've never been hit by a vehicle and you believe that if you keep sharp, you can greatly minimise the risk. All those slow initial months riding for hours by myself helped greatly because I learnt to enjoy the bike without any pressure from others, and after about 2 years when I started bunch riding on a faster road bike, I found I was surprisingly fit.
The family found the first 2 Christmases easy - anything bike-related was sure to be a hit. Then they became sick of it and were forced to become more creative in their choice of gifts - anything not related to bikes. That was until I traded up to the roadbike, and my wife asked if I would help her adjust the seat height of my old hybrid so she could rehabilitate an injured knee, caused by a skiing accident. Once she was hooked, everything fell into place - we could now talk sprockets and she had the wind trainer setup in the bedroom. We planned and enjoyed weekends away, made new friends, thought about exotic biking holidays. Bike expenses were expected, not to be guiltily concealed.
Three years ago we were a group of 5 or 6 guys who met up some mornings each week at 6am to ride for an hour before the commuter traffic choked the roads. Now we are a group of 140 local men and women, we all participate and that's what matters, not who comes first. Mostly they start out uncertainly, then begin changing their bikes about, trying this and that, and as the fitness levels rise there comes a point when one by one, they become for a time the most ardent members of our informal group. Every now and then someone falls and hurts themselves, but we get together to discuss safety and try to look after each other. Maybe you too should give it a go, its good for your knees!
Contributed by A.B. Auckland
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