When I was a small cub, your bicycle was your passport to freedom. No longer did you have to rely on your parents to get to the library or to go to the nearest shopping area, you were free.
You’d jump on your bike and you were off. It is a cliché because it was true but in those days, you’d head off at sunrise and return at dusk.
These were the days of ET and BMX, of jumping on the bike and thinking nothing about heading into London on the A3, yep the A3 that blistering, thin fast road where nothing has really changed except the speed limit and cameras. We would happily head along it on the way to London and the comic shops and marts.
I even decided to cycle to Brighton to see if I could do it, not realising that you don’t go via Guilford, adding an extra 15 miles to my ride.
Distance, and time, was nothing to us…when you were on a bike that is. For some reason, sitting in the back of your dad’s car, or going to your mate’s nan’s in Hounslow seemed an eternity away.
But something happens. In those years from invincibility to mortality, distances start to appear longer. How long? You’ve got to be kidding?
Of course the lack of bike fitness at the start doesn’t help – where cycling five miles appeared to be a very quick way to the cardio unit – but even so, as you start and progress, distance still seem immense.
When I decided to start increasing my distances, I scoured the maps like Livingstone looking for the start of the Nile. The big journey into the great unknown.
I started going on every increasing circles wither to Richmond and back or through Molesey and round to Hersham.
The circles got bigger, I included pathways such as going through the Hinchley Woods and back round via Oxshott, across fields into Cobham. The distances each week getting larger.
And then the day I crossed over the M25.
I’d gone through Cobham and past the Plough - an old haunt of my late teenage years – then there was a bridge on the rise. I had crossed the border, I was out of London and its burbs.
I had an immense sense of achievement and that continued when I turned round further east and headed back down Downside and came back in towards London.
If I didn’t fancy the country lanes, I could head towards Heathrow and the sprawling mass of North West London, or simply head into London itself.
As part of my training for Ride London, I will be upping my distances gradually, Getting my bum used to longer time in the saddle again, and the legs used to a variety of environments.
Some people may now think that for me 100 miles should be a synch. I really wish it would be. But just to get around in the time limit you must ride at an average of 12mph. This with thousands of other cyclists, not knowing what the weather will be like, with those hills, and indeed the descents.
I may collapse in a puddle of effort and sweat.
But whatever happens, I will pick myself up, walk up those hills if necessary, and finish the course.
Training Ride: 16
45.6 miles
17.4mph
949 ft
Total mileage: 554.4 miles
Comments