First year back on the bike

After around 40 years, I am finally back on my bicycle... with a vengeance!

For quite a few years while I was still working, I nursed a dream of getting back on a bicycle and getting fitter by roaming the open roads of Sussex. I did all the necessary things - buying the bike, and a trainer, a helmet and the tools to keep the bike on the road. The only problem was, the first time I went out I discovered it was all too much like hard work. My lovely bike sat unloved in our spare bedroom for around 12 years, with only very rare outings to confirm that it was still far too much effort...

But cometh retirement, cometh the opportunity to try again! Armed with a newly upgraded bike (the same one, with better tyres and pedals), I ventured out into the wilds of Roost Hole, just outside Horsham. It turned out to be still far too hard - if anything moreso... an extra 12 years and several more kilos in weight were hardly helping....

When I was a kid, I had practically lived on my bike - out and about from morning till evening. On a whim I would cycle from Leeds to Manchester over the Pennines, thinking nothing of it. The joys of youth! But that was several decades ago - clearly I needed something to help me rediscover the freedom of the open road... so I got in touch with the local cycle club.

Horsham Cycling were very friendly and approachable. but for some strange reason seemed to think that being able to ride 'about 5 miles if it is quite flat' wasn't quite going to cut the mustard. 'Try to get a bit fitter and then get back in touch' they said - so I made it my mission to slog up and down the Downs Link until I could make the grade to cling on with their slowest and shortest group rides. And yes, it's a really excellent cycle club, I highly recommend it!

After around 6 months of riding two or three times a week, and dieting religiously to lose around three stone in weight, I finally tested my mettle with a ride from Horsham to Shoreham and back - around 40 miles of relatively flat gravel. With this triumph under my belt, I contacted the cycle club again, and joined them for a social ride on a Sunday morning. Somewhat to my surprise, I managed to keep up and reach the end without dying on the way... They were very kind to me, even though I clearly hadn't a clue about riding on the road in a group - and soon helped me to fit in and know what all those funny arm signals mean, that are there to keep us all safe. The picture below is from a typical group ride - in this case the last one of the year, a longish trip down to Brighton and back to sign off for 2021 and welcome in the Christmas break.

Cutting a potentially very long story short, the first year of cycling has been great fun... Over time I have been able to ride faster and farther, and to join other groups in the club that offer a bit more of a workout (there are many more rungs in this ladder to go - and no prospect at all that I could ever ride with the really fast kids on this block).

We have had a three day club ride to the Isle of Wight and plenty of other fun events - such as the 'downhill challenge' below (no, this isn't me - I am behind the camera) - how far can you go without pedalling on one of the backroads, with only a hill start to pick up momentum? I discovered that the secret to winning this particular event appears to be eating all the pies in advance...

The great thing about cycling these days, is that there is no end of tech to monitor our every pedal stroke, heartbeat and foot climbed... By the end of the year, I had been cycling seriously for around 8 months and had a raft of stats that looked quite impressive to me (though probably not to anyone else):

In practice, cycling the equivalent of from Horsham to Timbuktu and nearly 4 times up Mount Everest was not quite as romantic and exciting as it sounds - it basically involved a lot of slogging up and down the lanes of Sussex in sun, wind and rain, as shown by yet another marvel of modern data analysis - also known by my good lady wife as the 'Where's Wally got to now' chart:

So here we are - one year on and now a fully fledged (if hardly world class) cyclist. A genuine mamil (look it up - assuming I still meet the middle-age criteria, which I might well not).

2022 holds a few delights in store already, with a fun ride in Brighton and the 100 mile 'Ride London' to come. In May I am also expecting to receive, at extremely long last, my much awaited new road bike from Ribble - an Endurance SLR disk model in sparkly blue (I could not resist). It will only have been on order for 8 months... welcome to the new post-Covid reality of the bicycle industry. But it should be much lighter and faster than 'Gromit', my current trusty steed, and the winter 'Triban' bike that I purchased from Decathlon to tide me over - another remarkably good bike considering that it cost about half the price of the one I bought 12 years ago...

So here's to another exciting year of cycling. A chance to see just how far I can go before the great Monty Python foot of father time finally comes down on me with a vengeance and my stats all start going backwards...