No Line On The Horizon

I watch the Tour and I think about Bradley Wiggins. I think about his meteoric rise to where he is today, and how it seemed to come at such a late stage of his career. The Wiggins who was racing when I was, some 6 years ago, was the Wiggins who would come a hundred and something-or-other in the Giro, and would occasionally pick up a stage win in a week-long stage race, before mumbling something about the track and disappearing for a while.

In a way, many people pigeonholed Wiggins right there and then, and to them, nothing about the former track-man winning the Tour makes sense. But there is no accounting for what goes on in someone’s head, and Bradley Wiggins is a man who has long since had vision beyond his apparent horizons.

A friend of mine told me a story about Bradley Wiggins once. We were on the U23 national team, and we would only see Bradley occasionally when he would come and dabble on the road for a bit. I think by that stage he was already at La Francais des Jeux, and we were already all mightily impressed that he was wearing Pro Tour shorts and had bleached his hair like the pros did in 2003.

Anyway, on one of these trips my mate had roomed with Wiggins. When he came up in conversation at a later date, at some dinner table somewhere, he had said in absolute awe, “You know, when we were sharing a room once I asked him, ‘Brad do you think you could ever win the Tour one day?”

This, remember was at a time when Wiggins was focused on the track, and the only murmurs he had made about being good on the road had seemed more like lip service to his profession for the three non-Olympic years each cycle.

To my friends amazement though Wiggins response was thus, “He put his book down, considered the question, looked at me, and just said ‘Yeah, maybe one day- if everything goes right.”

It astounded my friend, because he really meant it. What astounded me was the fact that Wiggins mind hadn’t worked like the rest of ours. Normally, you start off believing you can win the Tour when you are a kid, and then you race more and more, and you get good, but you discover at some stage your level and your ambitions match that.

For most riders, this is formed in their first few years of getting a kicking in the pro peloton. The hiding’s you take temper your goals, and you learn what you could one day possibly win, and what remains way beyond your grasp. For most riders, the question ‘could you win the Tour?’ becomes a stupid one beyond the age of nineteen or twenty.

For Wiggins though, despite his apparent early limitations as a road rider, his goal remained winning the biggest race on earth. He has always seen himself as the rider he is now; it was just us, perhaps, who didn’t see it.

In a weeks time, everything could have conspired to go right, and whether he knew it or not those ten long years ago, should Wiggins win, it will, in my mind, remain testament to one thing; the indubitable power of innate self-belief. 

This Land Is Your Land

Sometimes you hear something you've heard a thousand times and you get it for the very first time.

This Land Is Your Land came on my iPod while I was out riding the other day.

There is a verse that goes:

The sun comes shining as I was strolling
The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
The fog was lifting a voice was calling
This land was made for you and me

That struck me as the most incredible bit of songwriting. 

'Strolling, rolling, calling' 

Lovely. 

What I talk about when I steal from Murakami...

... and talk about running. 

 

I did a running race the other day, well I say race. I don’t know that I would actually call it that, perhaps more of a mass participation event.

I didn’t really have a competitive desire to be involved in racing again so soon, I think some folks are naturally incredibly competitive, while others, such as myself, actually get a little worn out with competing day in and day out for 17 years.

However, I had coaxed my girlfriend into doing the Bristol 10k as a way of having a goal to set herself to train up for, and naturally, I had in turn been coaxed into taking part myself.

It seemed pretty easy really, the coaxing was perhaps the hardest part of the whole thing, but as a recently retired full time athlete you would think it should be.

But, what struck me while doing the run, and trying to talk my girlfriend through it, was that I am not normal and neither was anyone who I have worked alongside throughout most of my adult life.

By about the 6km mark, Georgie was beginning to struggle, and I was trying to get her to lift the pace to make sure she ran a time that she would be proud of.

For her it was a decent achievement to be doing the 10k with little notice and less preparation, regardless, I knew she was fit enough to do it, and do it respectably. So I pushed her a little, increasing the pace gradually up each drag, and all the time steadily lifting the pace toward the final kilometre when I knew adrenaline and crowds would get her through.

And yet she suffered. Of course she suffered, but what the athlete inside of me just couldn’t comprehend was how little she seemed to be suffering. She could still talk, she hadn’t thrown up, she was composed, and all that was really hurting her was a burning in her lungs and the thudding of the pavement.

I couldn’t understand it: it seemed to me that she wasn’t pushing herself at all.

I thought to the days that I had pushed myself on a bike, not only in races but up and down hillsides in the middle of nowhere, with no-one watching, and no-one timing me, and there being no other goal than a virtually abstract bunch of numbers and figures that I had set for myself in my head, with the sole purpose being to improve myself enough that I could then push myself further the next time.

I thought about those moments I’d been stationery in a garage staring at a sweat drenched heart rate monitor counting down the final twenty seconds of an effort that made my heart beat as many times in a minute as it possibly could; burning, dying, fighting, aching…

I was frustrated because I thought, ‘if you don’t push yourself now, you’ll finish and be disappointed. It has to be now, now, now.’ The thing was, when we run together casually all that pushing is never, ever an issue to me at all, I listen when I am asked to slow, we talk - I enjoy the experience, but the fact that there was a finish line there changed me.

I am no runner by any stretch, but that part of me that had been encouraged so much throughout my life as a cyclist was awoken. As soon as the finish line was in my mind, for some strange reason I had been prepared to push myself to the limit of my physical abilities to cross it in as little time as possible.

The difference between my girlfriend and me though at that stage suddenly seemed two-fold. As a normal, happily balanced human being, she had never had the need, nor desire, to physically push herself to her limits so- as far as she was concerned- she was trying hard as hard as she could. Also as a normal, happily balanced human being, she knew that the finish line wasn’t the only thing in the universe, and that life would go on if she was beaten by the group of strangers I had randomly picked out on the start line and said “right, we just have to beat, him, him, her and him.”

And there it was, the difference between athletes and others perhaps. The fact that you just push so far for so long, that hurting yourself in ways that others couldn’t imagine becomes such routine that when you aren’t doing it, anything else feels like you aren’t trying. 

The Truth Revisited.

I came across an interesting thought the other day, it was wedged between social media, my MA and some serious philosophers.

For my masters I had to write a contextual essay (to explain what the hell I thought I was doing), and I decided for I don’t know what reason to investigate the truth in non-fiction books. This is a pretty interesting topic simply because truth is such a difficult thing to define, and almost non-existent in any narrative form.

It went something like this:

The notion of truth in non-fiction is something that ultimately we understand, when engaging in the reading process, will on some level be flawed. On a psychological level ‘The human mind must think with the aid of categories’. (Allport: 1954) Human beings need a framework in which to see things to make sense of the world, but even those frameworks that allow us to understand the world are in fact constructed by our imagination. Kurt Vonnegut explained that writers seek to bring ‘chaos to order’ because ‘There is no order in the world around us’. (Vonnegut: 1988, p.155)

But the definition of truth is more for Plato the Greek than it is a cycling writer… or is it?

Not only did it allow me to examine the difference between some fantastic books (‘Ma verite [My truth] or Positively False anyone?) as well as the others that bend the truth on a much more subtle and calculating level, it also, while distracting myself for a moments respite looking at a social networking site made me think about the eternal debates about bikes and kit. Shimano or Campag, or Trek or Colnago?

We don’t see life in a linear fashion: instead everything we do or see is affected by the bearing of an enormous depth of previous experiences, emotions and feelings. In the same way that it is completely impossible to view a situation or a conversation entirely objectively, one cannot look at a bike with Campag and see the same things as the person next to them.

The facts of the situation would be: do the brakes stop the bike? Do the gears change? Does everything function efficiently?

At the top level all kit will function very similarly within these parameters of truth. So your choice will always have to be based on personal preference and not which is actually better.

Many people have now caught on to the fact that the professionals just ride what they are told, not what they want to ride, or what is necessarily the best, and this is true.

But in second-guessing, people are also missing a massive point. That bike equipment choice is, much like the truth itself, entirely subjective. So what watching those professionals ride, depending on how you look at the riders and if you are prepared to invest emotionally in them as idols, they will still influence your decision.

It is true though that Professionals have no say in what they ride, and likewise that when they ride a bad bike can they ever say anything about it.

I’m no longer a professional though, so here goes: The worst bike I rode was a Boardman with Dura Ace & Ritchey Wheels. The one I made go the fastest was Cannondale with Record. The one that broke the most was a Ridley with Ultegra. The one that got the most admiring glances was a DeRosa with Record, and my favorite was the RCS Condor with Dura Ace.

And you are only racing when you are on tubs. Ain’t that the truth.

The Constitution

There are a lot of things that go into making a good cyclist, but I strongly believe that first and foremost being a good cyclist comes down to one thing: constitution.

There are those that have it, and those that don’t. There is no real way of properly defining constitution, or indeed testing for it in a lab. Some of the most unlikely souls seem to be possessed of the most rugged constitutions, and there are plenty of dilletantes who think they should have it but who just don’t.

You can't create or replicate constitution any more than you can sprout wings and fly. It is something you either have or don’t, and it is apparent in all walks of life. Lou Reed had constitution, Keith Richards & Margaret Thatcher had constitution. Like them or not, they were people who could live off scant hours of sleep, and still work at an incredible rate, without making themselves ill.

To be a bike rider you have to have constitution simply so you don’t miss races by being sick or injured. These days science fights an ongoing and impressive battle with constitution. Riders only have to show a glimpse of talent at a young age before they can be supported by all sorts of practitioners and specialists who work so hard to make human bodies that keep failing, keep going.

Injuries and sickness are often tagged as bad luck, but being slow to recover, or being sick or injured in the first place, is often natures way of telling the human body that it is beyond its limitations.

However the fact remains, you will always have to have constitution to be a bike rider at the highest level. You will have to not injure easily, not get sick through periods of physical and mental exhaustion, and you will have to keep digging deeper and deeper into reserves that won’t deplete.

I was made up to find then, during some research, the palmares of this man: Benoit Faure´.

http://www.cyclingarchives.com/coureurfiche.php?coureurid=3826

Not only was Faure´ 8^th in the 1930 Tour de France while riding as a ‘Tourist-Routiere’ he was a professional cyclist for a remarkable twenty years, racing between 1925 to 1945. Conditions for cyclists in that era were unbelievably arduous compared to today’s standards (even without the world being at War for the last 5 years of his career).

How he managed to keep going for twenty years at that time is beyond me. Faure´ wasn’t a real winner, taking only 24 victories in 20 years, the most important of which being the Criterium International in 1941. But he must have had enough to keep slugging away.

All I can say judging from the few photos of him, the remarkable career length, and his 80 years on the planet, is that there was a man with a constitution, a man cut out to be a professional bike rider.

Winter of content.

For a long time I thought the world would end when I stopped bike racing. It didn’t. Fortunately. My slow extraction from the sport may have saved myself the total shock that many riders can face when they finally stop racing.

The fear of it was there though. I think that when you are racing properly, cycling demands so much concentration and focus that you really can’t see beyond it. To quote Bill Shankly, “it’s not life and death, it’s much more than that”. If cycling isn’t living and dying, then what on earth are you doing there?

The trouble seems to be for many people when they quit that they just don’t know what they are doing anywhere. I am sure somewhere there must be a statistic on the divorce rate amongst newly retired cyclists, and there is probably a nice correlation to the numbers of years you spend on the job. It is staggering just how many of the homes that riders spend their time dreaming of returning to, fall to pieces as soon as they are actually living there full time. Unlike joining the mob, you can get out of it while your alive, what you might not be able to do is get out with your life in tact.

I have to admit; it is pretty easy now though, as it’s winter and there is no competition for me to be missing. Only a fool would miss the time of year that as a rider I couldn’t stand.

I haven’t actually faced a winter in quite a while, I’ve run as far as I could from the cold dark days that I used to ride around swearing at when I was a kid in Cornwall. The thing I have noticed though is, the weather really doesn’t mean that much to me anymore.

For over ten years it was my prime concern each morning, the day began there. The assessments of the kit I was going to have to wear, which direction I would be going in, and on the rare occasion, whether or not I would be going to work that day.

These day’s I’ve been just as busy and probably twice as productive. But the weather makes not one iota of difference to my life. I have realised that without going out on your bike, most people’s exposure to the elements is sadly limited.

I’ve been doing a bit of office-based freelance for an experiment. I walk down past my grandfather’s house to the train station each morning. It’s about twenty minutes from my house. It is the main line between my town and the nearest big city- Bristol. The station is packed at 8 am every morning, but I think I’m the only one who gets there on foot. Most people are dropped off like little kids going to school.

I am not really a fan of the cold. Anyone who has stood near me on a start line at a race in below ten degrees can probably attest to that. It really helped me to verbalise what I was going through on those freezing start-lines.

It can admittedly be cold while I wait for the train, but that is it. I know the train is coming. That is as hard as it gets. I’m not 40 miles from home watching the skies darken, with the blood fully retreated from the tips of my fingers, my fuel supplies dwindling, and my only possible mode of transport to get home being a bicycle.

It almost seems like fucking madness now. I used to place myself almost daily at the mercy of the winds, with nothing more than a rain cape as insurance. Now, it is the man made weather of editors, politics, economics and the crappy rail network that I throw myself to the mercy of. I have to admit, that while it is good to only have to look at the weather out of a window, it just isn’t the same.

I do of course still ride a bike as often as I can; it is a shit load of fun when you are doing it because you want to. The only problem being that my body seems to have wilfully forgotten the tens of thousands of kilometres that I have previously pushed it through. It seems almost ridiculous to me that only a few months ago I could actually go and compete in bicycle races. I struggled through 85km this morning, not even a half day.

So while my mind is happy to remember, my body that was to be fair, doing all the hard work, seems to hell bent on forgetting all about it. Fat chance I'll let it though.

Retirement 2.0

After 17 years of bike racing I am very happy to announce that I will be officially putting my racing days behind me at the end of the 2011 season. My last competitive outing will be the Ritchey Oktoberfest 8-hour endurance Mountain bike relay event in Bristol on October the 15^th. I would have loved to finish on the road at the Sun Tour, but the opportunity wasn’t there, the way that this event is run though will mean I can compete in a team with my good mates: Simon Richardson, Jonathan Tiernan-Locke and Zak Dempster.

I have seen cycling change a phenomenal amount in the time that I have been involved, not just within this country, but also within the sport as a whole. Like seeing a photo of someone close to you and suddenly realising that they’ve aged, often in cycling you can be too close to the sport to see how the differences have begun to add up.

When I began racing I dreamt of being World Road Race Champion, I didn’t ever get to be, not many do, however I did at least get to line up and try for it on six occasions. Even the start line of the World Championships can be a long, long way from Penzance, Cornwall.

I have had a remarkable time, met some extraordinary people, as well as some fairly ordinary people who could do extraordinary things. I have learned a few languages, been around the world plenty of times, I have raced some of the truly great bike races, and seemingly all of the very, very bad ones. I have come out of it with much more than I went in, which is fairly rare for me.

I would consider that I had a career of two halves. The first half went pretty much as planned on the bike and those successes mean a lot to me. But the second half was a lot nicer, and allowed me to do things on the terms that I wanted, without having to deal with the evil, corrupt, shameless mothers who put me off doing what I loved the first time round.

I was fortunate to have been in some great teams, on both sides of my 2006 ‘half time’, and I considered Rapha Condor Sharp a real gem. John’s teams are always excellent, and I got to line this one with people I actually consider friends; something I know is actually a real rarity in this sport, despite all the PR bullshit that says otherwise.

In June I finally knew that knew this would be my last season racing. The fat lady was waiting for me at the Boucles de Mayenne and her rehearsals have been getting louder and louder ever since. The good news is she has quite a voice.

I have been studying for my Masters in Professional Writing since last January and as that is due to be finished in the New Year, the timing compounded the fact that I think now is the right time to stop. I consider myself incredibly lucky (I always have) to have found something else that I am passionate enough about to conceivably be able to keep squeezing life on my terms out of it. I am really looking forward it.

I also of course have a few thank-yous to put out there; Gary Dowdell, Mike & Pat Taylor, John Herety, Theo Hartogs, all cornerstones of my eleven years spent racing full time. There are many more people who I will take the time to thank too, but of course I wouldn’t have gotten past the Tamar River without an enormous amount of help and support from my family. In particular my old man, who I began the adventure with, driving the length and breadth of the country to get to races all those years ago, and who, more than anyone helped shape the imagination that allowed me to conjure those dreams up to begin with.

Thanks all. It’s been quite a time.