Did I mention hills?

Training day…

A couple of weeks ago I got my cycling top from MS Society. With the latest bike (I’ll get round to the pitfalls of bikes eventually) been serviced at Specialized Kingston, I thought I’d better get round to some proper cycling round Surrey.

So on an early Friday morning, where I’d usually be getting ready to head to work – panniers etc, I slung the saddlebag on and off I went. Through Esher, up Oxshott, yes I was being one of the weekend wheelies – but on a Friday!

Heading out of the burbs on a sunny weekday morning is wonderful. The majority of traffic is heading the other way and those going your's seem to be more relaxed as they note the ever-growing queues the other side of the dotted lines.

I was only ever really going out for a couple of hours but as I hit the Leatherhead bypass, I had butterflies and it wasn’t just the hurtling down at 40mph that was causing it. Could I get up Box Hill? If I couldn’t get up Box Hill, how on earth could I even think about Leith Hill?  I have done some hills before but there is something about those two, which made me gulp.

As I looked up at the south face of Box Hill, I took a deep breath. I'd walk up that hill with the dogs, I’d bombed down it on a sled, and yes I had cycled up it but that was some 29 years previously.

For the experienced cyclist, they saw this…

That’s not what I saw…

 Pushing onwards and upwards, I heard the tell tale click of someone who could afford better shifters. Looking behind, swish, swish, swish, swish, four club riders sped past me as my legs span and span hoping to keep up my own momentum.

I looked up to see them disappearing round the bend of the first Zig, thankful that they would probably be in the fast set rather than my probable start group.

As I turned the bend to head towards the Zag, I felt the presence of another rider – seriously, when roads are quiet you do sometimes get with the Jedi in realizing someone is approaching  - Amazingly, I could still talk.

“Mate, I’d overtake me if I were you,” I wheezed.

“I’ll try, but I’m not that much faster to be honest,” he wheezed back.

Liar.

He passed me and headed up the long stretch to the final Zag, his legs pumping as he occasionally stood up to gain speed. A few minutes later he was gone.

I on the other hand was down in the granny gear, pedaling merrily away, looking at the sights around me in the hope of distracting myself. 

Round and round span my legs but strangely, as I headed around the Zag, I realised something – I’d done it.  Without stopping, without having a heart attack, without wheezing like an asthmatic in a marathon, I had got up Box Hill.

I had beaten one of the hills that I feared. According to Strava, I had averaged 8 mph. With a steady pace, I was top of the world.

Of course, there was still Leith Hill to come….

Training weekend: 3 rides

3,700 calories

Av speed 15.2 mph

Top Speed: 38.7

Total elevation: 2,839 feet

Total time in saddle: 5 hours 50 Minutes

On the road....

So where to go on my first rides? I am fortunate enough to live in an area where Hampton Court and the towpath are easily available as well as some lovely country lanes after a mile so there was a good amount of safe riding for the returnee bear.

Safe riding…Safe riding can be pretty easy to do, but don’t think that going onto an off-road cycle path equates to safe riding.

No-one tells you about those little rats pretending to be dogs, yapping away, leaping into your path in a misguided belief that because they can bark/yap and have teeth they are as good a killer as a staffie from the worst estates.

Neither does anyone tell you about the kids bounding out in front of you, the elderly walker around the corner, the trendy 20-somethings that are walking along a riverside pub in the glow of an advertisement-led life blocking the entire bleeding path.

And no-one tells you about other cyclists.

Like all humans, cyclists are random, chaotic beasts prone to braking suddenly or veering out in front of you as they cope with hazards ahead of them or just because. 

Some are slow, some are ridiculously quick, some jump lights others have a cup of tea and chat as they wait for the lights to change – OK, I made that one up but some do take an extraordinary length of time to get going. 

Did I say others were slow?

No-one warned me that after 25 years of non-cycling how damn slow I was going to be.

I thought I was going fast until the first of many roadies bombed past me up the Portsmouth Road into Kingston.

Swish, swish, swish as they zoom past, inches from your elbow, leaving you no space at all.

You get your energy on, yahoo, let’s go. You push your pedals, heart picks up the beat, you see them getting nearer and nearer, you can do this. Push, push, push. Look! You’re catching them up, you can do this…

Oh, it’s a red light.

They pose in their expensive lycra, sitting on their 1kg carbon-fibred, racing frames, sipping out of their ergonomically designed bidons (water bottles to you and me), chewing their sports snack, without a care in the world.

Me?

Heart a-pumping, more sweat than the London Marathon, slumped over the handlebars, looking straight ahead in the hope that I am not noticed…

To be honest, some still do bomb past me, but I am a bear on a bicycle going at around 14mph on a gravel bike, and that will suit me.

It is quite weird having someone swishing past you at first and you quickly learn to carry out life-savers – that look around behind you to see what’s going on – for other cyclists as well as cars after all, there’s only so much swearing you can put up with.

There seems to be one particular type that comes out at the weekend. I think you can tell the difference between them and those that cycle every day. It's like what an old ex-army friend of mine used to reckon. He reckoned he could tell the difference between the weekend warrior and regular soldier just by looking at them – it’s an attitude.

They sit on their expensive machines, in their club or Sky tops, and they grimace around Surrey. I swear, they are not using their legs, it’s pure pain and rage. They throw empty bottles onto the road, leave empty gas canister and inner tubes in the road, they are angry. They should be at the top. They should be in the Tour de France. They should be a contender.

Either that or they should really be in therapy.

One other thing that people don’t warn you about is when you are behind one of these wannabes, one of these weekend wheelie warriors…

Spit.

There you are, minding your own business, happy with the pace you are going when a huge globule of phlegm comes flying its way towards your face…not nice.

And do you want to know how to freak out some of those grimacing their way around North Surrey or the Yorkshire dales, etc? Smile out them. Wave. Look like you are really enjoying your ride, even if, as an unfit bear, you are ten to twenty miles in, your legs feeling like jelly and you just wished you had stayed in bed that morning. Just smile. Say hello, wave. Freak them out by reminding them that cycling can be a happy thing as well.  

And for good measure, go on one of the forums and complain how no one smiles back or says hello. Everyone loves reading about that sort of thing... (actually don’t, that was a joke).

Looking the part

Now, I’m going to be frank here. I live on the Ride 100/Olympic route and every single damn weekend, you see hoards of Mamils (Middle-Aged-Men-In-Lycra) on their two-grand bikes and eight-man pelotons, clad in Rafa grimacing their way to and from the Surrey Hills.

Despite being in my forties, I was determined not to be like ‘that lot’. So at first, cotton t-shirts, cargo shorts and adventure sandals were my kit. I was wearing a second-hand helmet  from the bike seller and had bought a second-hand rack to bungee my rucksack to.

I was off.

But here’s the thing – there’s a reason why people riding more than 10 miles generally wear lycra – it’s very good at regulating heat.

And with lycra came a term that in my cotton rugby jersey playing days we had never heard off – wicking.

No it’s not about making baskets, wicking takes moisture, or sweat as we used to say in the day, away from the body so you don’t sit there in your own damp like I was doing with a cotton T.

To be honest, I hadn’t got round to buying a top but Aldi had a cycling special – I’ll talk about these in another post – so my mother in law got me some lycra shorts and a top.

Now wicking works when it is close to the body so I levered my way into the gear.

Now, those of you that cycle – be honest. We all hope that after we put on the lycra, we all look like superheroes, racing gods, kings of the track and rulers of the road…

The reality is somewhat different.

All your bulges and bumps, bear bellies and chins are all to see…

There is no hiding place at all…

To the Batcave

So I made a decision. I am going to cycle. I am going to cycle and see if I can ride to work. I am going back on a bike –but what bike?

You have had a WTF moment haven’t you? That sinking feeling as reams of information descend on your head and you think you will never get to the bottom of it? Well try looking at the range of bikes that are now available.

Road, Touring, Cyclo-Cross, MTB, Hybrid, Urban, Comfort, Dutch, Recumbents, Sit-ups, Pull-ups (OK (I think) I made that one up), wave upon wave of different styles, Oh boy things had changed since I was a kid.

You see, all those years ago it was very simple you had three types of bikes – a racer, a BMX or a cobbler – something that you cobbled together from the bits lying around in your dad’s garage.

I’d built my own bikes since I could ride, and as the youngest of four, had plenty of spares lying around.

Eventually my mum relented and I got a BMX – a cheap piece of shite that I needed to constantly carry an alum key around with for running repairs.

Eventually cars and girls took over so my biking days were over so I had no idea what a world it had become.  

I blame a friend who shall remain nameless for this change in events. It is entirely down to him that I was now looking at a vast gamut of velocipedes because it was him, yes him, that introduced the world to the Raleigh Bomber.

These simple categorisations that I grew up with (the occasional US import or chopper not withstanding) had begun to change with that bike I reckon.

Anyway, so onto the cycling sites I went to clear things up…

Or not.

What I gathered was that the mountain bike lot don’t like the road lot that don’t like the hybrid lot that don’t really care as they need to get to work on time.

Meanwhile the fixies look down their immaculately sculpted faces and salmon trousers that just show a little bit of ankle at the whole lot.

Bromptonites wobbled, ummed and aahed and decided that they should just concentrate on that bus…

For a bear avoiding a trike, it actually boiled down to the fact that I needed something that wouldn’t make me look too twattish…