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).

Boy, you're gonna carry that weight

So I have the bike, I have some gear – let’s get going…

But what do I take with me? To the interweb we go!!

So, as far as I could work out I needed some water and some substance like jelly beans to keep me going.

Stopping off at the local shop, I picked up a bottle of water that was big enough for the bottle carrier that came with the bike, and some jelly beans.

Then I packed my rucksack with the waterproof, puncture repair kit, two locks, two inner tubes, a pump, my phone, my wallet, the kitchen sink…

As I said, I had never done this. The fact that I was not going to be stopping (in theory) and it was a round trip did not stop me from lunking around a D-lock and cable lock, no siree.

As yes locks…

What do you do with your bike?

In my village, the trust had reached a point that the local police had had to write in the local magazine pleading with cyclists to actually lock their bikes up when popping into the local shop. I liked that about the village. It was the village that I grew up and then returned as a father and it had retained that part of the charm of growing up that alas was slowly disappearing even  here as the police had more and more bike thefts to deal with.

One of the things that people fail to realise is that the two most effective forms of theft prevention for bikes are 1) make it a pain for a thief to nick your bike which as a result b) makes your bike less attractive than another.

Bike thieves are, in the main, opportunists and do not like inconvenience so D-locks and another lock or two are very preventative.  You have a choice of being a pain in the butt to thieves or get Batman to patrol your area.

So, rucksack bungeed onto the rack and water forced into holder I was set to go.

After half a mile or so, I was beginning to realise something – I was cycling five miles. The last time I cycled five miles it killed me. Would I have enough fluid and fuel? Could I do this? Would I be found collapsed in a sweaty pile by the roadside, melting away in a puddle of unfitness?

I pushed on…

About another half mile after that I realized something else – why the hell have I brought all this stuff with me? Why take a puncture repair kit for five miles? Just either pump the wheel and limp home or if I couldn’t, put a new tube in and repair at home. Why take both?

And the locks. What on earth was I doing lugging these locks around when I wasn’t planning to stop anywhere?

I had a revelation...no matter how useful that kit maybe, just maybe, all that extra weight…only…slows…you…down.

Especially the kitchen sink!

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…

EBAY GUM

For a bear avoiding a tricycle, the most depressing thing is the price of these damn things.

Seriously. You ever looked at the price? I swear you can get a small car for the price of some of these – granted Korean or Chinese with a 3 n-cap but still…

So you go online for some advice. Well that’s the Tesco and Asda bikes out of the equation immediately and Halfords…well, let’s say they have a reputation…

Looking at how much cash I had, I thought eBay will be good.

You of course know eBay. It is one of the most frustrating systems known to man where right up to the last second you never know if you are going to be successful.

After about a dozen attempts, I spotted a Specialized hybrid that the web suggested would be a good start before the inevitable progress to drops.

Valiantly placing a bid, while setting maximum bid, I waited, and waited and…I won.

Bloody nora, I’ve got myself a bike.

So off I went to Hipster Central in East London and got the bike. It looked fine, cycled well and was cheap (ish).

In the sun, I bombed past London Fields, threaded through the City, over the Thames and into Waterloo. I was a cycling god. A Mercury on wheels...

I…

Was…

Knackered.

A five-mile ride sent rivers of sweat down my face and armpits. On the train, people backed away as I swayed like a drunk. Oh, my, God.

I hadn't felt this bad since I 'ran the world' in '86. Surely, I could do this. Five miles of relatively flat ground? Was it so long ago that I was vaguely fit? I walked everywhere, this couldn't be right. 

After copious amounts of water and fighting back the urge to be sick, my body returned to what I laughingly called normal and jumped off the train at the next major station and rode home. 

My re-introduction to cycling had begun…