VELONAUT

HC’s gone on the 5:2 diet. Last night we ate lentils, griddled courgettes and mint leaves. With 40g of feta cheese. It’s a new thing probably based on an old thing, a diet of starvation. I only ate this in solidarity, as well as having eaten a massive breakfast and lunch. Fasting. It’s not for me. But it probably should be. I could do to get lighter.

On my 5.6 mile ride to Elephant this morning, I caned it down the Kennington Road. It’s a fast road, dead straight. I’d had to get into school somewhat earlier than usual, so I went out with the 8.45 crowd and found that it was a racier crowd of fighty cyclists. In Brixton, weaving through the A23’s killer trucks and buses, there were front wheels a-popping. The sporadic traffic lights and junctions all the way along make for that interval training that triathletes and TT riders are so enamoured of; and to some degree, so am I. I will, on occasion, treacle through a red light on a crossing, or a left turn. I’m not much of junction-jumper, but I can see why so many are. However, I have good reason not to: I can really accelerate off an amber. It means, oftentimes, that I’ll catch the law-breakers in front of me, only to be passed again when I stop again at the next lights. Hopscotch. What’s important to note, however, is the very act of stopping at lights is what makes you so effective at leaving them again - power generation. Stop-starting, riding as hard as you can between junctions - that is training. It’s a short way, five and a half miles, and I can do it in 20 minutes if I’m nippy (even less if the lights go my way) but I often get in tired and a bit warm. Commutes should be like that.

The Bank Holiday weekend saw some mileage, too. Sunday was a wonderful day, I put 57 miles in the case and hammered some hills. I did a similar, shorter loop on Monday; I rarely cycle two days in a row, but when I do, it is marvellous. You recover on the second ride, especially when you ease up a little on the pedals. I made 46 miles on Monday, and they were easy, traditional miles; I did cane it up Toys, however. It’s almost making me want to tackle an iPhone, and Strava, if it weren’t so against my cheapskate fears of technology. Besides, I know I’ve caned it when I pass an entire cycle club, strung out in various degrees of distress, and get to the top guy, a Stravanaut for sure, and pass him a little slower than I did the rest. I had the legs, and I knew the legs had the juice to keep going to the top, beyond, and back up the wall of the Downs on my way home. Form is what they call that.

Route 66, the 20 minutes from West Wickham to home, are where all Velonauts reconfigure for the final burn. I found I was sandwiched between a couple of fast groups, two in front who were absolutely burning, and two behind who so thoroughly resented being overtaken by a guy on his own, that they downshifted, went quiet, and hammered it for five minutes just to reel me back in. And then they hopscotched me and slowed up. Another guy did the same to me, and I to him, to the top of Anerley. Everyone’s coming into form, and it’s days like this when certainty means having a pop at whoever’s there. And I like it, the fightiness.

I’m no daily blogger. Perhaps if I made some Faustian deal with an advertiser then I could see my way through to that, but it’s hardly the most commercial of things, this collection of half-weird, self-serving ego-chunk. I’m more often than not decrying the new and celebrating the junk that resides in a bike box composed of 1980s/90s bits. I do not resist the new, I am not shocked by it, and I do not seek retro out for the sake of seeking retro. Well, maybe a little. But who’d ever need to advertise on a blog that doesn’t care so much for the materials that make the basis on which the experience can be had? Sure, I love my bike, my kit, my machines and all. But really, if I had a piece of junk, I’d make it as efficient as I knew how and then just go ride it anyway. If an apocalypse comes, and the only stuff available in the world is the stuff that’s already here, there’ll be no new things, just make-do and mend. That’s what I really love.

That said, I did buy a new seatpost the other day. And almost a pair of white shoes yesterday. But actually, I also took some old forks down to a framebuilder in Southwark the other day to be drilled. Once I’ve bought some Humbrol in a dark blue enamel, I’ll be able to put Lizzie on the road and we shall be three bling bikes. But for the creaks.

I went out for a ride with Omar two weeks ago; he wanted to cycle to Brighton and back but I did not. And, once we’d set off, he’d realised rather quickly that he did not, either. It’s a massive ride; I’d not feared the distance so much as the time it would take. At my own pace, if indeed I paced myself and didn’t burn out half way, I reckoned on seven hours, eight with a proper lunch. I didn’t want to spend an entire Sunday on the feat, not least because I’m busy with a lot of stuff. So I suggested we pootle eastwards from Waterloo and take a loop out to Biggin Hill, something in the region of 45 miles, a summer warmer. By Orpington, we’d stopped for coffee after 30 miles or so and Omar was thinking about taking a train back to London, having gone into the derelict shopping centre to buy an iPod speaker for his jersey pocket. His saddle and his perineum simply aren’t friends; they never were, but they’d tolerate one another for the sake of a LEJOG. Now, with less pressure (obviously there’s a rather painful literal pressure) he discovers he’s not all that happy on the bike. Pete said something similar on Skype the other day; discussing the sale of his pure-ace Soma, for reasons of it not being so much use to him, he told me that the LEJOG had been the means to an end, and that end was the end-to-end itself, not the pleasure of the ride in-between. Sure, he loved the experience of the journey, but there had been no spark of love for the ride, no desire to do this every weekend.

It’s 8am on a Sunday, and indeed, it’s that time again. I’m Sherlocking a bunch of creak-fix solutions on the red bike. It’s a pain, seems to be doing it per-pedal revolution on climbs, and I’ve swapped out the bottom bracket for a new one, checked the shell for issues (a cyclist using the word ‘crack’ is akin to an actor using the word ‘Macbeth’) tightened the crank arms, tested the pedals, degreased & greased the chain, checked the rear spokes and kicked it gently for good measure. It’s still going to be there. God only knows why.

Will it get me down? Yes, a little. Does it matter? Ah, there’s the question. Does any of it matter?

As croak-voiced oesophagal ashtray Ronnie Wood sang, I wish, that, I knew what I know now; when I was younger. This post is about the years 1997-1999, the years when I learned the back roads I have subsequently forgotten. The roads that extend north and south of Longridge Fell, the valley of the Ribble and its cousin, the Hodder, and the Forests of Whitewell and Bowland.

Home.

I took a bike home. Much to my Dad’s annoyance (he thinks it’s odd to carry a bike on a train, more so when it interferes with my traditional way of getting to and fro in Preston, which is to unceremoniously ask for lifts, which I dislike, or to walk, which I hadn’t time for) I took a bike. I took Hercules. Herc, whose chrome shimmered like a midnight pool, whose red shone translustrous, whose chain was taut, geared at a mahoosive 79 inches of hurt, and carried nothing superfluous about itself but for a micro LED light. Just in case I got lost. I upped the saddle about half an inch, I might yet go another half. I did the same on the other Red Bike, pushing it up a full inch and finding full flight on the rides out last week. But to Preston I took a fixed wheel.

I haven’t taken a fixed bike to Preston in four years, and it delivered. My odd feeling of non-form had seen me ride quick 40s last week in the evenings; standard two hour rides with as much climbing as I could squeeze in. I decided that I wouldn’t over-reach in Lancashire, what with a tough gear and uncertain legs. I needn’t have worried. I grilled it. My ride on Monday morning took me out, in blinding sunlight, to Hurst Green and Stonyhurst, around the Fell and across through Chipping to Beacon Fell. The following day, I rode up and over Birdy Brow, through Bashall Eaves and across to Chipping and Longridge. It was a 42 mile/ 34 mile set of rides, much lower mileages than usual. Both days, I had only a finite amount of time (although I could have easily taken an extra hour on both rides) and so I pushed it fairly hard, and took a couple of climbs I’d been sure I could handle, rather than heading over the Trough. But mostly, I stayed on safe terrain. Terrain I know from the early days of cycling.

Each and every time I cane it down the roads around Hurst Green and Bowland, I think of cycling with my Dad. As a fatso, at the age of seventeen, my Dad gifted me with a yellow and black Peugeot. I started by cycling to Grimsargh and back, some nine miles or so. I’d do this in a pair of shell suit bottoms, some nasty trainers and, initially, a lumberjack shirt. I think it’s for these reasons that whenever I see a cyclist in their everyday stuff out on the moors or the Downs, I nod and beam a smile of hello-ness; I am that cyclist, age of seventeen, scared of my own potential to be slender and quick, dressed like a plasterer on a bike designed in 1984 to be somewhat reminiscent of Robert Millar’s glory days. I was soon promoted from a Peugeot to an MBK which I loved more than anything; only now do I find it peculiar that my first road bikes were French machines. It was on the MBK that I ventured on longer rides to the Trough, Waddington and the valleys. Rides not as epic to me now as they once were. But the sensation of true adventure will never feel quite as keen as it did then, not even when I strand myself in the middle of the Massif Central and have no idea of what towns lay nearby. Back when I was eighteen or nineteen I just went off, usually with only a banana, and had a ride. No training. No self-destruction or particular need to self-harm through hill reps and drop-bar white-knuckles. I mean, I did those things. Only, I did them for the first time, just because I’d seen Jan Ullrich do them. Or Virenque. Pantani. God, real glory days. Any ride when I come home to Preston is a nostalgic ping. The fixed wheel made it interesting, but already it was a paean to a time in my life when I was unselfconsciously free of work things, people things, life things. Just things. Why would anyone wish they knew what they know now, then, when they were younger. It would have spoiled everything.

As I was drawing the moped a couple of weeks ago, I had the terrific, distinctly Prestonian verb ‘razzing’ in my head. When I was a kid, we’d go for a ‘raz round’. There isn’t a direct translation. It covers a multitude of lesser words, I guess, but none have that ideophonic resonance. It’s between going somewhere for a purpose and pointlessly going nowhere. Between somewhere and nowhere, the movement one makes, is razzing. It requires a kind of body language, a position adopted to be in a truly non-aero pose, whilst maintaining one’s poise and efficiency. I might equate it to the ‘yah’ sound that Viggo Mortenson might yell when kicking his horse into action. Indeed, one of my favourite razzing positions is that on the fixed wheel, when pushing the cadence up rapidly whilst maintaining a semi-sitting position. Not out of the saddle (not least because I haven’t currently got a bottom bracket I trust in there) but not entirely sat deep in the Brooks. I look, in my own mind, like Tonto. And sometimes, just a little, I yell “YAH! YAH!” like I’m chasing down bandits. Which, in Central London, you often are.

The sun has begun to stream out in force. I have a new job in London and seem to be cycling there and back with pleasant regularity, but I have not been getting out in chain-gang mode (obviously I am always a gang of one). The evenings are exhausted points, and I don’t quite have the urge to head out on Tuesdays or Wednesdays for an extra two hours. I actually just want soup and Game of Thrones at the moment, sadly. As a result, my Spring form is alright but nothing special. I can’t climb with terrifying power, not yet. On Sunday I went 52 miles in exactly 3 hours, which is promising stuff, but I was cooked when I came home. There were 1200 metres of climbing in there, which is nothing to besmirch. I took an old favourite route, almost due South from Crystal Palace. I caught the Dulwich gang after thirty five minutes (I’d missed their departure by five minutes, and I reckon that’s good catching-up skills) powered through Beddlestead Lane and down the Pilgrim’s Way to Brasted, then over Toys, around Bough Beech, up Bayley’s Hill and back down Ide Hill to a nice café. That was 35 miles of soreness in the tank.

The lack of a specific target is perhaps to blame. This time last year, contemplating the LEJOG, I had misgivings about my legs and my stamina, and worried about not coming into form. In the end, I was at the strongest I would be in 2012 as we ploughed up the country. I suspect if I were to do that ride again, I would be strong again. I think the training I do is important because I am moving, razzing around without specific targets or destinations, but also with a relative sense of purpose. Through the act of razzing, I can affix a purpose in the hazy distance and say yes, I shall be alright when I come to that.

I am probably taking the New Blue bike (Lizzie might be a name; for some reason it popped into my head on Sunday as a nice blue bike’s name) to France in the Summer, we’ll be around Carpentras, Ventoux’s there, why wouldn’t I go and have a ride (raz) up to the top? Four years ago, Ventoux was a huge target, but now it’s something I feel somewhat more relaxed about. I shouldn’t, because it’s always going to hurt. But I know it quite well, I know what to expect. Should a target be something you expect? No, I think not. There is my definition of razzing. I guess razzing up Ventoux is different from riding up, or gunning it up there. It’s souplesse + grit + base miles + joy. Oh, + nougat, + dates and + Coke. You can’t raz if you ain’t got coke.

Like other things I claim to have a fear of (flying & washing, mainly) I enjoy the doctor’s surgery visit a whole lot more than I imagine I will. It still possesses a modicum of anxiety, but not to the extent that I’ll avoid going. I used to be terrified of injections, but that was because I’d not had one in living memory at that point. After the age of fifteen, such jabs no longer mattered. I can have fillings without anaesthetic and not mind too much. These things are making us better, I figure. I won’t go to the doctor unless I have something that is beginning to trouble me. If I know it will result in being given antibiotics I’ll generally stay home and try and sleep it off - this isn’t some kind of hero-factor I have in my self-mythology, it’s because I want that shit to work when I genuinely need it. Besides, they don’t work anyway. It’s placebo, right? I’m better off eating chips and drinking hot squash.

What has become a problem is my shoulder. I had used NHS Direct to diagnose a trapped nerve or problematic rotator cuff; it’s been niggling for quite a while, and in addition to spending a higher-than-average amount of time working at my computer just lately, I have been feeling aches, niggles and soreness in my arms, wrists, shoulders and neck. My knee, too, from an over-crosslegging, tends to go weird. I am the victim of sitting down too much. Without a regular commute, it has been building up. I sit in the surgery, finish my Bartali biography and play snake until I’m called in. The doctor makes me rotate my shoulder and isolates my “arc of pain”. Diagnosis: rotator cuff. Cure: physio. Possible keyhole but let’s save that fear for another day. She also tells me swimming is good, as are rotator-friendly stretches. I employ my obsessive tendencies immediately and Google the hell out of such things. I find Livestrong (check out the guy’s FACE) provides a strong basis for all kinds of limbering up, and combine this with some yoga poses and some other website’s Top 6 Shoulder Exercises to come up with a SYSTEM. Three days later, and the shoulder is definitely less sore, and by quite some margin.

I am going on about this, but there was a moment last week when I thought this injury could be a result of cycling, or at least, exacerbated by it. Last Saturday I went on a 3-hour speed burn (with 18mph+ average) around the Gatwick back roads and to a friend’s house for an ace lunch. I found that my shoulder had inflamed, around the same day or so. To test my theory (rather than go see a doctor) I went out on Easter Monday for a more gentle 36 miles, rolling with a bit of climbing, but nothing severe. It was not made better or worse. The experiment continued today. Having finally joined a swimming pool nearby (after sixteen years of bi-weekly swimming, more or less) I took a gentle swim on Wednesday and a slightly faster-paced, slightly longer-distance swim on Friday. I stretched before and after, I did not climb out of my bike saddle on the way there or back. So far so good.

So, today was the throw-down. HC arranged lunch with friends in Bushy Park, and I decided a 40-mile loop around Box Hill would drop me in Hampton Court at around lunch-time. HC took my trainers and some shorts so I’d be able to half-scrub-up for the festivities. I set off. I stretched my arms a lot whilst riding, and made sure I was sitting for anything uphill. Not surprisingly, I worked hard around Ranmore Common, one of my favourite parts of the Surrey Hills but absolutely crawling with cyclists. It is much better on a weekday, for losers without real jobs. I came down, gunned it through Cobham and down the Portsmouth Road, an unholy, badly surfaced murder road. Anyone who has a spanky bike, lives in South East London and has a penchant for exploring will use this road most Sundays. Like so much of riding in Surrey on a Sunday, it is busy, and none of the cyclists have any inclination to acknowledge the presence of others. I grew up cycling in Lancashire, which is the home of the cyclist’s greeting. Not a nod so much as a town-cryer-esque “HO!”. I passed the same guy twice today; once on the way up Box from the easy side, and I stopped for a pee and some water. When I passed through Westhumble some ten minutes later, I passed him again. The first time, I had said “Morning!” to which he said nothing, wearing his iPod (egregious habit) and glaring ahead. The second time, I did everything I had the first time except say “Morning!” which is to say, I closed on him, slowed a little as I passed, looked directly at him, ready to smile just in case he cracked one ( he did not) and then ground the 52 ring off and up to Ranmore. Creased in lung-spurtful climbing grit, I turned to see if he was there. He was not. Had he spoken, I would have liked chat on the climb. Who doesn’t like a chat on a climb, just for a bit? I fail to understand the lack of social interaction sometimes. It’s not friends-for-life situations, we have something immense in common - we are unified in making metal and rubber bend to our will. We defy gravity, we travel under our own speed, masters of our own navigation and bodies. We feel tremendous, mighty electric signals travel throughout our core and we look down at the legs as they push the giant ring in glorious grand circles. Just for one moment we can say “Hey!” to one another. On Bayleys Hill a couple of years ago, I was gritting my teeth into the climb and some flyweight dude, about fifty years of age, just wonderful souplesse, passed me like I was standing still, saying “hi” as he passed. I just let out the most delighted whoop that my lungs would allow. I probably shouted “chapeau” or something. That’s a stinky hill for sure, and this guy made it look like he was cycling up a pavement slope. I had no words for that. On my best day I couldn’t ride like that. Some guys make it look like fish in the sea. For everyone else, it’s just work, most of the time, with occasional slips of pure magic. Only occasionally. Let’s just say “hi” and be done with it?

No.

I didn’t see him again. I went to Bushy Park and ate a slab of Genoa Cake. I was in a bad way. We walked around the park for a bit, my legs seized, I cycled home and fell apart in Wimbledon, dropped a C-bomb, a black banana and lurched over Streatham. It killed a decent average. I reckon I notched up 67 miles, 109km, and by some margin the biggest ride of the year. I should not have gone so far but it doesn’t matter, because I did. HC says that runners have exactly the amount of miles in their legs that they need to run the distance they run. I re-read that sentence and see that it is confusing. The distance you ride is exactly how far you could have ridden, on that occasion. Today was such a day. I have been nowhere since. Utter painful joy teeth. Done nothing but eat ever since. I have not perhaps conquered the shoulder, but I can certainly ride with it. That’s all I need.

All of the above is true.

I have not borrowed something, yet. Nor am I getting married. Yet. HC would need to be on top of some magic mountain, having run there. I would have to have reached it through the grease machine. When those two things happen, maybe then it would be properly properly true. For now, I am still married to the steel.

Hung on the redundant bike hooks in our hallway (installed originally to hold an actual bike; more often, it holds a finger puppet, spare keys to a neighbour’s flat, two old knackered tyres and occasional wheelsets) is the Columbus. There’s a story here. Of course there is.

Four weeks ago, I went to Brick Lane and bought some stainless steel forks. I brought them home, checked the fork crown and found it was JIS. Rather than dremel or ream it to fit ISO (this is a boring part of the story) I decided to take them back. They offered up a refund (begrudgingly, thinking I was a freak for refusing to dremel or ream the crown to fit the Campagnolo headset race I had) which would only be issued as store credit. I had presupposed that this might occur, and used the fork fund to immediately “buy” a Nitto front rack. I would normally link to this objet d’art, however, that would also show how much such things cost. It wasn’t £100, let’s say. It was hand-made, let’s say. Never mind that a single steel rack cost more than my darling red frame and forks on eBay a couple of years ago. It wouldn’t be worth arguing.

ANYWAY. Because those forks had been intended for the Black bike (a bike I never ever get along with) and I could no longer be bothered owning a bike that possessed ceremonial duties as a bicycle but nothing much else, it came to pass that I decided to get something else. Something old. One issue I’ve had with the Black bike is that I had it powder coated a few years ago, rode it aggressively for a summer or so, and then it passed into a mythical place; our back room. I look longingly at it, knowing it’s oversized and feels spongy when I ride it. And I always get backache if I ride more than about 40 miles on him. No, I think I’ll have a change. I pick up a blue, unnamed, 1979 used piece of old-fashioned steel. It’s a Belgian frame, Columbus, cast lugged affair. Looks old, still shines, has personality. It’s the bike I need, even if it isn’t the bike I necessarily want most of all. The problem is, bikes I really covet, I cannot ride. I just don’t like the experience.

I once read about a fight between two film-makers being forced to work on Star Trek movie; one wanted to crash the Enterprise and the other said it couldn’t and shouldn’t be done. The first guy had flown helicopters in Vietnam and argued that once one of those things crashed, you simply climbed out, brushed yourself down and found another. The second guy had flown planes in the Second World War and felt pure attachment to the machinery. It wasn’t just a piece of metal.

My bikes aren’t just machinery, they are precious. But I need to feel able to leave them against walls, ignore the tiny blemishes to the chrome, the dings of age in the top tube. If nothing structural is wrong with them then they are aces. The paint comes up a treat and the chrome looks beautiful after a go with the brasso. The other night, I found myself looking at NOS Campag seatposts on eBay. Shiny things, new, precious things. No. No. No. I went out to the storeroom and dug out an old Condor post. I used some wet-dry sandpaper and steel wool, gave it a kind-of matt polish and bunged it into the Blue seat-tube. Done. I need a new triple-mech since I’ve decided to run it three-ringed; it’s Rocinante’s old gruppo. Best thing I ever did on this build: I bought a Shimano Ultegra trip-der instead of Campag. Pure doucherama. It means I’ll love it more.

SO; the need list. I LOVE this about a new build.

1. Drill front forks - they aren’t recessed and I’ll need to visit Roberts in Croydon to get them to do a decent job.

2. Respace Red Wheel Bling. 130 down to 126. Easy, I think.

3. Deconstruct Black bike. An afternoon of joy right there. Getting the downtube shifters off is always hideous fun.

4. Enamel paint. Blue and silver mixed should approximate the hue, then I’ll be toothpicking the paint chips with the bastard paint combo. True patina.

5. Name. Unknown, although I am reading a book on Bartali and Gino seems the right moniker. Also, I like man names for bikes. I’m not about the girl names for a bike. It’s a homoerotic past-time, why shouldn’t they be called Hercules, Dave and Gino? Sounds like a good time to me.

Cars full of death.

Roads full of mud slush and I am Hampstening it around the ski-slopic Skid Hill and up onto Botley Hill, and I am about three metres out from the roadside. Each time I pass a gate in the endless hedgerow, I’m picked up and pushed out a little further by the onslaught of a sleet-driven wind. It’s ace. It’s pure winter-riding. Previous years of my life have seen the removal of the base layer toward the end of March, the reintroduction of the 3/4 pedal pushers and the loss of the overshoes. Not today. Winter has not given up the ghost. If anything, it has redoubled its efforts.

The winter is all about death, see. Blossom has come out in the backwaters of the Downs, today they hang low under the crushing weight of snow and frozen raindrops. Unloved blossom. I have yet to see a real daffodil, and only the lightness at 7am and 6pm proves that it is not, in fact, still December. Today was the day Christmas Day should’ve been - whitened rooftops, cold winds and an undying need to go out, just to tell your core parts that by going out you are going against the evolutionary makeup. I went out. Nobody else did, it seemed. I saw some tyre tracks, three sets, on the Nower, perhaps one of my most favourite names for a road in those parts (Force Green Lane still wins, I think). The tyre tracks were rare in the snow-sleet-mud essence that stunk up the back roads. I took the fixed wheel out again; I knew it’d be a short burst (36 miles as it goes) and that I’d be best to make it hurt in such a small circuit. I think I’m going to feel better when I get some warmth on my back and some dryness in the roads; for months (and it is approaching SIX whole months now) it has been dark, grimy and hardly suitable for pleasant Sunday riding. Do I mind this? No, of course not. Winters make the summer. I would be nothing in June, July and August if I didn’t make such fundamental escapades in the face of crapness.

I pushed Hercules up the 14% bits of Brasted. I know that I’ve made this climb before on the fixed gear, but the utter lack of traction and a desire to keep the chain, the BB and the rear wheel in a state of working momentum meant I caved in to adult sensibilities. I felt quite romantic pushing upwards, cleats struggling for traction as much as the Gators had. I clambered back on, hammered it around the backs to Biggin Hill and felt two wanknuts slip by without a hello, a nod, or any kind of acknowledgement. There are schools of thought here, but if you’re passing someone, I always think you should make some kind of interaction, even if it’s the gritted-teeth ‘alright’ nod. These guys came past, pulled in, drilled on. I think the fixed gear smacks of a kind of arrogant couldn’t-give-a-shit-ness that even my usual ret-conned steel bikes lack; it says “I’m here, on a shit day, on one tough-bastard gear. I haven’t freewheeled since God knows when, I am moving quickly enough, I am smiling, and your overtaking me proves nothing.” Not to mention the sight of your 11 speed cassette and compact gearing. Whenever I’ve been out on the gears and I’ve seen a Velonaut giving it hell for leather on the fixed gear, I’ve shuffled alongside and had a discussion. Because I absolutely love them. They are the hardmen of the winter (sorry ladies, but it is always men, in very much the same way that barefoot runners and freeclimbers tend to be, with some Getty Image-esque exceptions) and want only one thing - a cursory acknowledgement. It generally leads to a feeling of squeamish guilt that you have x number of gears at your disposal. These clowns make you feel inadequate. They are the most efficient, paradoxically inefficient things on the road. They are asking for trouble. And they rock like bastards. My favourite mode of conversations are these:

1. What gearing are you running? (Just the phrase gearing tied to the verb running gets me a little hot under the collar.)

2. Your knees must be shredded.. (Again, the verb shredded, which connotes Fenders, Telecasters, Iron Maiden and sauerkraut, all of which are AS BEAUTIFUL AS ME ON MY SINGLE GEAR OF CHRIST) ..to which the answer is always “No. They’re made of Vibranium.”

3. Is that single speed? (This, as well as the question above, were both put to me by a three-minute partner on the route home today. Of course, I could barely answer “No, it’s fixed” without scoffing at how amazing I was/ unobservant said inquirer was.)

4. How are the hills on that thing? (But for the sneaky walk up Brasted, I conquered 640m of Kent on Herc today. Only a few climbs really make you get off, and those are climbs I’d struggle to climb on anything geared over a 42 x 25.)

I don’t demand conversation. I do like people nodding hello when they overtake you. If you’re overtaking and can’t say hello, it doesn’t mean you’re being rude (you probably are), it means that you’re working so hard to ride at overtaking pace that you physically are incapable of saying anything. My secret: be nice. You ride alongside someone for a minute or two, chew the fat, and save up a little fuel to pull away, saying “have a good ride” as you do. Shit, that’s arrogant too. Shit. I am such a douchebag. Hipster-looking douchebag on your nobhead fixed-gear bike, what a TOSSER. That’s what they say when they’ve overtaken you, ridden a few hundred metres ahead and finally get their breath back. Cyclists. All of us, bunch of Sunday morning dickheads.

I don’t like to begin too much with a quote from Shakespeare, not least when I haven’t had to look it up but have it committed to memory. Unless one is either Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart or a nerfherder, (arguably, Stewart is a nerfherder), then one should not be able to reach for a quote from the Stratfordian unless it’s one of the top ten. Hamlet, perhaps a Macbeth or a Henry V. R + J, obviously. But this gem is from Much Ado About Nothing, not the most quotable of his plays; it goes ” ..become the argument of his own scorn..” and comes in the middle of a monologue about love and all that. Well, I once had to ‘do’ that monologue in GCSE Drama, partly because I did (and still do) think that Branagh was the supremest human being in the luvvie planet. The actual planet, in fact. But even though I’d said the line it didn’t mean I understood it.

Well.

If I understand it at all, then I should become the argument of my own scorn on days like this. I left my bike pump in a church hall yesterday afternoon and had to go collect it - someone had picked it up, and I went to their house in Clapham to collect it. Even though I felt awful on Saturday night (in bed by 10, no less) and not particularly brilliant this wet Sunday morning. Real wet, wet in the concrete and the bones and the creases and the seams. I took out Hercules, fixed, pedals and cleats, water tucked in the rear pocket of the waterproof. Absolutely un-carbon-racery. I picked up the pump, howled through Wandsworth and Putney and entered Richmond Park.

Reader, I only went to RP for the first time in April 2012. And until today, I had never completed a full circuit; I’ve only ever used the momentum of Cancellara corner to generate enough pace to get through to Kingston gate, much like the Enterprise does in Star Trek IV to go backward in time (which I might have seen around the same time as I learned lines for aforementioned monologue). Today, I hit the park running, directly into a rain-lashed headwind. I stormed anticlockwise around the first lap, slightly quicker for the second and then made a turn at the entrance roundabout and made a third lap clockwise. The hills were a bit stinky, my being on a 78 inch gear meaning I had to gurn up, stretch the KMC chain to breaking point and sweat through my gloves, but I did alright. In fact, I did rather brilliantly. I managed to turn over about 18.5 as an average, and I wasn’t going all-out. I was sick, and I put the best of what I had into the laps. When I came out and headed home, I was cooked by Putney, defeated by Tooting and crying as I clambered over the hill to home.

Laps, though. As HC pointed out, I don’t like to retrace my steps at the best of times. Loops suit me perfectly, even the occasional lasso, but constantly viewing the same scenes, the same faces, the same potholes..it’s not what I love. And now, to become the argument of my own scorn, I suspect I’ll start going back, start timing those laps, and God help me, possibly even buy some tri-bars.

Not that I was ever out of the habit of getting up at 7.45 on Sundays, eating, chain-lubing and Velonauting, it seems that I have not christened 2013 with quite the regularity or intent of winters past. However, I am mostly sure that this is not true; I am not pushing myself to high levels of pain, nor am I resting up and taking it easy, I am merely motoring along, taking on a smidgen more than I can take, and coming home on the borderline between upright and exhausted. Today, I cleaned the chainrings with brasso and made sure the whole drivetrain had a spangle before putting it to bed, and then curling up in a ball for two hours until late afternoon.

It’s Mothering Sunday, I forgot to send a card to my mum; I end up sending a text from the Downs to say HMD and I’ll speak to you later. I guess the priority this morning was getting up to the Downs. Isn’t it always? I took the Danger WILL ROBINSON way out of town, always empty of cyclists, always a weirdly urban joy. I climbed Woldingham in a not-too-high gear (no plaquing as yet, but it’ll come) and dropped down to the ‘22. I caned it along for a couple of miles, cut across the Haxted road, accidentally peed on my shoes because of the headwind, and took the Four Elms road to Toys. Up until this point I had seen only one other bike, a mint green and black Colnago being punished by a big man on the Crowhurst road. As I approached Four Elms, I saw the tell-tale signs; the hi-vis vests, the orange arrows and the numbers on handlebars. Race; no. A sportive. Namely, the VO2.

I used to feel pretty anti-sportive, but that’s because this blog, and my attitude in general, is one of anti-social behaviour. However, it isn’t fair to say that I am anti-sportive; I think they exist for very good reason, mainly to give cyclists regular targets. Somehow, probably through an emotionally gruelling set of work-ethic-inductions as a kid, I have high willpower, particularly when it comes to not-being-fat. The genetic strand of both sets of parents’ families is one of mild- to vast-chubster. I am genetically predisposed - nay - destined to be fat. That I maintain any kind of regularity in my waist size is down to an utter fear of becoming what I was at the age of sixteen - MAHOOSIVE. This means that going out on the bike is a testament to staying healthy, staying at the height of what I consider to be fitness. And that is anything over 17mph over 50 miles. 18s in summer, and the occasional 19s when it gets to high August. The more climbing I put in, the better I feel. If I can walk around a car boot sale in the afternoon, all the better.

I guess I see sportives as a representation of having goals. I don’t really have them, not in that respect. I don’t feel like I should aim for something like 120km around the Ashdown, because for a start, I’d have to take a train to Sevenoaks for the start, otherwise I’d be cycling 200k all in. Which, if I was a true badass, I probably would do. If it was August. So I’d rather just go in the opposite direction to the sportives and see what’s going on. Thus, climbing Toys (and I went over nicely, with a grimace-cum-smile-growl) from the 15% bastard-angle, I saw a lot of these punks coming the other way. I love the string-out of a sportive - the linear sinew men at the front, puncheurs a little way back, the husbands-and-wives a little closer to the lanterne rouge end. Truth is, I don’t know where I’d sit. These things always end up being a race (hell, I cycle on my own and it still ends up being a race against my own obsessive tendencies) and they can often lead to accidents - Toys is a particular blackspot, and if you don’t use the brakes, you’ll be required to Tron it around some of those bends.

So I headed home, aimed for the steep punish of Westerham. As I approached, I saw the bad signs - Police had closed the road. approached the nearest officer; she told me what I already could see from the wrecked carbon bike lying nearby - cyclist down. She didn’t elaborate, but I suspect either some errant car had attempted to overtake the bike, already travelling at about 50mph, and misjudged oncoming traffic. Or perhaps a car had misjudged both and pulled out of Pilgrims’ Way, catapulting the cyclist into oblivion. I was amazed to find he’d survived this, a helicopter having rushed him into London to have his head repaired. It sounds critical, but that’s better than the Reaper, right?
Some kid in Bristol last week didn’t get up from a car accident, leading to all the usual questions, finger-pointing and lack of answers. It’s safe enough, safe as it can be, given that it’s a cocktail of individuals and speed. But it does shake you a little to see a closed road and the remnants of something which was, minutes earlier, soaring into the landscape, wholesome unity of mechanical componentry and human being. I hope that he recovers and isn’t too terrified to come back again.

Tivoli, Dasset, Crown Point, Chapel, Elder and Gipsy.

Not codewords for some obscure CIA meeting. Not desert checkpoints, nor air pockets above Edwards. Not even Shipping Areas. These are roads around our flat. It is the route of a mile or less, with a bit of climb, a bit of drop and a bit of sprint. The point, ostensibly, is to tighten the sprocket with man-force so that I can tighten the lockring when I get back. As well as to see how the saddle and seat post feel above the chainset. As well as to ensure that the bottom bracket is tight, the chainline is decent and the power transmits. I’ve ridden every single element of this bicycle before; it is Hercules and she remains my golden cherub, my immense thing. A new 25c Gatorskin on a new wheel, that is all that remains untested. But no matter - it is still Yeagering.

So it turns out to be fine. Okay, a mile is no great test patch. I’ll run her down to Balham later on perhaps, since HC has given me a shopping list for cauliflower fritters. Whatevs. The Yeagering is like the first few miles - on a wheelbuilding site, I once read that the first test is a mile to crunch in the wheel. The second test is ten miles or so, and then a quick check in the jig to make sure the wheel’s in true. The third is a hundred miles (not all at once, I hope) upon which the wheel should be set. So I should, in a week or so, be full-Yeager. This will include some dastardly Park Lane / Hyde Park Cycle Path testing, a true scene of powerful sprinting. Some South Cirque tomorrow, perhaps the glory of Exhibition Road in the morning drizzle (and I shall of course be carrying WD40 to clean the machine once I arrive at Paddington).

I cycled on Sunday, just a 50, and it was tough going. Just a little viral, and a niggle in the shoulder that I undoubtedly should go and see a quack about. I’m still putting in miles, I’ve decided to pick up a new frame and renovate it for the summer. Blue. Columbus. Why not? But for now, life is busy, work is a constant, and the Yeagering is all that matters. Fingers crossed there’ll be no inexplicable squeaks. God, I hate them (obviously, I love them too).

Times are good.

The rear axle on my 1970s hub seems to be taking the punishment I inflict upon it. Sometimes it bends. Occasionally it breaks. Sometimes I actually want it to break so I can get out the cone spanners and change it over.

On the jig sits the Dura Ace / Open Pro track wheel. It’s almost there, I started it a week ago and simply have to take it out for some Yeagering.

I burned up some errands on Friday that took me up to Bloomsbury, thence to Dalston for some lunch, and home via Brick Lane Bikes, where I went to buy some new forks (which have a JIS crown race and are therefore redundant when it comes to connecting with my Record ISO headset, so they’ll have to go back again, which hurts, since they are BEEEEAUTIFUL); when I reached the flat, having clocked up some 20 turbo miles (commuting miles are always the most rigorous I find), I felt awesome.

For the past two cold-ass Wednesday mornings I have left the house precisely four minutes earlier so that I could extend my commute to Paddington via Chelsea and Albertopolis and have the Exhibition Road (and its incredible slipperiness) to my absolute self. Reader, it is worth waking up at 04:15 for this purpose alone.

But the good stuff has also been happening, by which I of course mean the pure mileage. And through mileage comes form. And various other Orwellian rhetorical analogies. I have been on three particularly ace rides of late; last Friday, I gunned it through Sutton and out to Box Hill, back east along the ‘25 and then did something a little odd - I looked for a new way back. A NEW WAY BACK. Today’s illustration gives a little indication of how my logical mind works. I divide the Southern Wilds into pie-shaped chunks. If I head out to the South West it is to explore the Surrey Hills, but often this means an arse-numbing trawl through the ‘burbs in order to reach the good places. OR I head directly south, taking the megalithic A23 around Croydon, switching for the quiet roads over Woldingham or Sanderstead and going toward Gatwick until I become tired or bored and belt it for coffee in Westerham. OR I head out via Bromley, Biggin and Sevenoaks ways, exploring the Weald and the South East in some more detail.

The diagram shows the major arterial sections that take you to the cusp of glory - the North Downs way. From there, you can purely escape into the countryside. It takes something like 45 minutes to get anywhere genuinely nice from my flat, and another half hour beyond that to be in the Big Country. This goes some way to explaining how a simple morning’s ride can become truly epic, reaching 50, 60, sometimes 70 miles; the countryside south of London is wonderful, rich and most importantly, HILLY.

But, having covered most of the main roads (and the lesser roads) countless times, to an extent that I know each curve and bump, instinctively gearing the bike before a blind turn, knowing in Winter where the best views of the Shard might be and in summer where all the hidden water taps are behind pubs, one seeks out new ways back.

Hence the lower section of the diagram. South of Croydon, without deviating to one side of the pie or the other, there are new roads. Roads I’d previously dismissed as probably-suburby, non-bucolic, stiff climbs of relentless concrete crap or Just Plain Dull. They are not. They might be, I just can’t tell because I have found New Ways. But I am enjoying them, and for the past three or four rides, I have been incorporating new roads, roads that logically make sense because they link up other roads that I do know. It’s all fairly inconsequential. How can riding a bike for fun be anything OTHER than a trivial pursuit? But I never come home and feel unhappy, or disappointed. I always feel that I made sense of maps in my own head, made sense of geography, of mechanics, and myriad problems in my head at any one time. Things need solving, ergo, I quietly (and sometimes not-so-quietly) ponder them en route. Trivial? This is the most important thing in the world.

Wisdom of Solomon she does possess, my girlfriend.

When we do fight, which is rare (since she graciously rises soaringly high above any petty Earthbound irks that I might bring to bear), she reminds me of all my foibles. Last week, I pinned, in my head, a map of all the sources of my grouches, my neuroses and my inability to think straight under pressure. I can do pressure on deadlines. That’s about it. Everything else just sees me sometimes cower, whimper, but more often than not, rage. I liked that bit in the Avengers with Bruce Banner. “That’s the problem…” he says, when asked to get angry: “…I’m always angry.”

Okay, so it’s not quite that bad. From occasions during cycling when it is irresistible to flick the Vs or use that most magical of passports to trouble, “ye DICKHEAD”, I have frequently learned that shouting at inanimate objects is pointless, at closed cafes is fruitless, at errant drivers is anything from useless to borderline incitement. This morning, I flew down to Brixton for a swim. I’ve been swimming to preserve a semblance of fitness, since velonauteering has been a pursuit lost to weather and WORK, the DICKHEAD. As a Securitass van pulled in, cutting me up (I thought maliciously) I was a-steam. I shot down Tulse Hill after him, wondering if my D-lock would protect me from the danger-men inside. As I reached the lights, though, I thought of HC’s above-supernatural calm. I knocked on his window.

Shocked, he opened it.

I said “DUDE (I went for the Californian laconic surf bum approach, since I’d lost my nerve) what the heck (Fargo) was that?” I explained to this baffled man that he’d really cut me up, I’d swerved onto the pavement to avoid the back of a parked Honda Civic, and that, badass though I must seem (in my feminine pedal pushers), I was in fact a vulnerable cyclist.

He said “I’m a cyclist too, I’m so sorry man”. And I think he meant it. Adrenaline churned away into a distant fizzle. I felt…happy. Calm? Jesus.

My swim was metronomically fast.

Last week a similar rage bubbled to the simmering surface. A motorcycle had cronked into the back of a people-wagon in Herne Hill. Seeing this with my Vision of Johanna from a 20:20 sort of distance, I had read the situation and prepared my signal, road position and face-of-tut-tut with plenty of time to spare. Unfortunately, a huge chunk of motorcycle conspired to hit the rear tyre and cause a puncture. First puncture since January 2012. SONOFABITCH, I screamed inwardly. RAGE. AGAINST. THE. MOTORBASTARD.

No.

Yes.

NO.

I was en route to meet my favourite co-Velonauts Pete & Omar in the Strand. I sent a text to Pete saying I was about to walk home and change the puncture. 30 minutes walk. When I had a perfectly adequate amount of inner tube and pumpage to do something about this. So WHY was I walking home? Because I was having a tantrum. I WAS! I talked to myself in my most soothing voice. I said encouraging things. I went to a wall, parked the bike, removed the Sturmey rear wheel and changed it gracefully, used an old sock I carry to clean the hub and the rim, checked for piercings, pumped it up and carried on. Nothing was wrong. Everything was good again.

When I criss-crossed France in 2010 and had already put about 1000 miles into the Panaracers, I realised, on the outskirts of Toulouse, that I had erroneously aligned the rear brake pads with the tyre wall. It had eaten through the tyre, and it finally gave up some two weeks into my massive journey. I was so annoyed. I used a page of my sketchbook to repair the tyre and swapped it with the front. It got me to the other side of Millau before I changed it on the top of a hill, on a farm, overlooking the most beautiful of sunsets dropping behind the bridge. I was at my most happiest, and about as handsome as I’ve ever been; tanned, sleeves rolled, covered in shit and grease and holding a tyre I’d been impelled to repair with paper. The tantrum comes first. What comes after, that’s just bliss.

Okay, so it’s February now.

But this was such a nice title for a post that I couldn’t stand waiting another year to use it. Besides, it will be relevant, I promise. I have had a few stinky weeks of the usual January cronk - a mixture of semi-colds, crud roads, snow, pissy rain and an aversion to waking up and going forth. I’d been churning out mileage, with only one ride of the month feeling anything like a happy one. Today wasn’t all that different. It’s not like a sea-change has suddenly taken place, that my legs are no longer jello, that my ability to track stand (even on the derailleur, with a slight incline to aid) has been marred by serious leg-shakes on the way home. I’m still entirely cronked.

What’s different is that I plugged out a 90k ride today. That felt good. The way I actually felt when I came home we shouldn’t discuss. I wasn’t sick. I did eat everything. I had stomach cramp soon after. I didn’t want to do anything else for the remainder of the day. I’d fully intended to go to the bike shop and pick up an Open Pro rim so I could lace a brand spanky new Dura Ace track hub and get round to re-re-converting Hercules back into a fixed-wheel-manifest-destiny-asphalt-killer. More on that another day. I didn’t get the rim and I didn’t lace shit. I curled up in warm clothes in a cold bed and stayed there for an hour, letting a recharge happen. Man, it was 57 miles and it felt deadly. I can knock this kind of mileage out with no problem from April through September, but now, in the bleak, it feels tough bananas. I dug in, sat up when I couldn’t be arsed doing any work, went on the drops when some bearded, aged Audaxian chased me from West Wickham, paid for it in a hellish creep up to Anerley Hill and used up the remaining sap of willpower by not going to Hart’s Food & Wine and buying my cronk-wish-list; Yazoo, coke, coke, coke, a Yorkie and some peanut M&Ms. The fat kid in me wants wants wants all of these things.

In other news, I drank three halves of Vedett with my friend Marino last night, and I felt temporarily shit-faced. So, I renege on my anti-drink campaign and have a duff ride. Of 56 miles. I am not sure where my moral compass points anymore. I should try squeezing into those tight New Year’s jeans again, see if it has made any difference whatsoever. I think not. Where the CHRIST is the Spring?

Celia P is a friend of HC. Last time I saw her, she was suffering intense wisdom tooth pains at a Christmas curry event in Stoke Newington. I’d gone across on the bike from Paddington and was careful not to eat too much. I knew it would make the badass ride home South, into all kinds of cold Friday night sleet a worse idea if I was overstuffed. Celia P knew the joint, and the manager was overjoyed to see her, but also devastated that she could not eat anything but soup. She instead ordered each of their speciality curries for us to devour, and seemed to take almost as much enjoyment from watching us eat as we did in eating. Not quite as much. She asked if I had been anywhere near Brasted just lately.

“Where?” I ask?

“Brasted,” she says again. Only she’s pronouncing it wrong. (See, I pronounce it like anyone from Lancashire would; with a hard ‘a’ and hardly any emphasis on the ‘sted’ - brA-stid. Celia P is erroneously pronouncing it with the same sound as ‘wasted’, even though it is the village in which she was brought up and sometimes frequents of a Sunday (like me). ‘Brasted’ sounds posh. Posher than when HC says ‘bus’, or ‘plaster’. Or anything. Celia P might be slightly posher than even HC.)

“Isn’t it brA-stid?” I ask. No, she says. BRASTED. Like wasted. I feel as if I have wasted valuable spit and brain power uttering it to myself as I have often passed through. Bloody Brasted. Say it right and you sound like a Yorkshireman who’s just missed hitting a six and knocked the bails off. “BASTID!” Celia P, on this cold December night, has provided me with some of the finest and most colourful food I have ever tasted, and she has ruined a part of a myth.

Some weeks later, I am on Toys. I have been keeping a low profile just lately; so much snow fell last weekend that to have headed out would have represented a huge giant mistake of doom. I’m miles down on the base miles. My friend Alan H showcased his turbo trainer on Tuesday; I wanged out two and a half minutes on it and then gladly walked away. I’d rather swim, in the absence of real rides. The downside being that, while swimming averages are up, the pain factor of anything over a 45 mile ride is getting like stink. I am, however, happily spinning over Toys, across Brasted and then back up the Pilgrims for Westerham Hill. I had a nice ride, and the speeds were okay. The summer will be alright and Cinderella might yet get to the Pyrenees or Vosges or some fantastic destination. When I came in, HC said she’d received a text an hour earlier from Celia P. She wanted to know if I’d been out in Kent, she suspected I’d just flown past. She said I’d been wearing a red Italian jersey and a shit-eating coffee grin. It was, clearly, me. It was a Brasted journey after all.

HC had gone out a little bit before me in preparation of desserts and things. I’d made a decision to use the last bit of the last afternoon of 2012 to draw some moons and dice for a crazy-ass commission. It’s starting to look like an Enid Blyton cover, and not like the cool kinda shit I set out to be all about. I’m all about the cool shit.

I’d got ready quite late, threw on a pair of jeans. Except I couldn’t throw them on. No, I had to drag them, screaming, plucking out hair, across my thighs. I looked down incredulously; surely you used to be looser than this? They went around my waist right nice, but my arse and thighs put up something more of a struggle. I guess I haven’t worn them in a couple of years, and in that time, my arse and thighs might have grown significantly on account of all the horrendous hill-pushing they do? Surely that’s the reason?

It made making New Year’s Resolutions infinitely easier. I drank a half-glass of champagne, and I was both optimistic about my chances of breaking some land speed records and pessimistic about Sunday’s form. The rest of the night I drank juice. I had a small portion of rice (which I’ve never held in any kind of esteem as a foodstuff), a massive portion of vegetable stew and about thirty six Lebkuchen. Which already trounced one of the resolutions - less biscuit.

I woke up with a hangover (how, I do not know..) and went out to buy some milk. It was 8.30. A guy went past on a BRIGHT ORANGE Trek. I pointed at him as he cycled into the distance and muttered “You have made my decision for me”, just in case I buckled and decided to stay in. But the weather was incredible - so absolutely crystal clear, so blue and so perfect. It was textbook riding conditions. There was still a mean old stink of a headwind which I battled to the Downs. As I hit the top of Clark’s Lane, I saw, coming toward me, the BRIGHT ORANGE TREK MAN. I smiled at him and myself. It is a small world. I zooshed down to Westerham, knocked off Ide Hill and came screaming down Toys on the soaking ground and had coffee. Two guys on their way back to Orpington chatted to me between the two gulps it took to drink my espresso. I said my form was detestable. They agreed, from their own point of view. We all shrugged, smiled, and said it will be better tomorrow. It’s always fine. I came home a little destroyed by the mileage (yet another 49 miles), and after cleaning the bike, with Three Men And A Little Lady playing in the background (misTAKE) I climbed into bed to read one of the two cycling books I received from St Nick. I was alseep in three minutes. For three hours. It’s 21.41 now and I am AWAKE AS HELL.

It’s been a while. Allow me to recap.

In fact, let’s begin with the most recent abomination, which was Christmas. The weather has been endlessly awful, which hasn’t concerned me in the least because I was almost universally indoors. I paid a three-day visit to Lancashire to see Team Jackson, and I spent the festive week in Edinburger with HC’s family. To neither of these places did I take a bike. I considered it, I ruminated with one rheumy eye on the Met Office Predicting Machine, but the Double-Drip forecast saw me instead lock all three bikes to one another in our lockable spare room and the only footwear I took along on the train were the Chuck Taylors, the tightest piece of clothing the jersey briefs, the only gloves were my American Apparel Hipster Mitts. I looked like a shuffling beat troubadour, but I did definitely not resemble a Velonaut. 

It proved to be a good decision. I went for a couple of swims (one of which was great, the other was a swirling chlorinated level of hell) and several bracing walks. I’d had a ton of work to do in the week leading up to Christmas, and had tried to bang in a cheeky run to offset the sheer amount of muesli I was eating as I worked. This running malarkey is a terrible idea - my muscles and tendons were no longer on meeting terms in my right calf, leading to some excruciating leg cramps and general soreness. That alone took several days of eating chocolate rich teas (HC’s parents’ biscuit cupboard was unwittingly their Christmas present to me this year) and rehabilitative walks to the harbour to solve, and solved it is. Just about.

I’d gone for one farewell spin before Christmas. I’d had a couple of pain-passage rides in the back end of December, when time and weather had permitted. That, in league with some increased social enterprising, and the commuting that goes with it, had seen my mileages increase somewhat - this meant that my final ride of the pre-Noel had been a 50-mile speed fest, relatively speaking. It saw some cheeky new climbs, some new roads I’d never thought to explore, and the highest average speed in ages. I was feeling pretty good about this.

Today, it’s the post-Christmas ride. I had cycled to the pool to bang out some lengths yesterday, my resolution to stick to a twice-weekly swim plan and try to lose some weight in lieu of a tough Spring and Summer being the main reason. That reintroduced me to the bike, if only the three-speeder and its rusty chain - I don’t even know how that happened; it’s been indoors for almost a fortnight and I am as obsessive about chain maintenance as I am about most things, which is to say, DEEPLY. Nobody thought to buy me a wire brush for Christmas, did they?

So, I had a ride, and expected little, and delivered less. It was high winds and gruff drizzle, which did that most hated thing of sapping my energy completely, and without my knowledge. Only as I took an ill-advised diversion toward Eynsford and the back of the Crays did I realise I was up shit creek. I fell apart in the layby of the A20, munching the dates and walnuts I’d clearly confused with anything resembling a wholesome lunch, and urging my body to find calories in the meagre input. I breathed hotly and couldn’t find comfort in the saddle or in my shoulders. It felt like moons had passed when I finally saw, in the crepuscular afternoon, the two towers. I stopped, dropped a C-bomb and a dirtbag Snickers on the outskirts of Bromley, and pushed home. HC could tell something wasn’t quite right as I stumbled into the flat and she let me finish the coke, eat some houmous and map my distance before engaging me with any kind of conversation. She noted my rheumy eyes and twitchy thighs and still made me walk down to the shops with her later on to buy cake ingredients for New Year’s Eve.

It’s some hours after that, now. HC is making the said cakes, and just informed me she had made a mistake with the mixing. This is the final entry of 2012. And as soon as I’ve hit ‘create post’, I shall be standing up, walking to the kitchen, and eating the spare bits of digestive crumb and melted chocolate mixed (or not, as it turns out) with half-melted butterballs. That sounds better than any cake I’ve ever had. Happy New Year!

Magnificent Severn Mk II

Not since June have I crossed the mighty river. The Severn might be the best in Britain, such is its enormity; a wide, fast flowing Albion Amazon, all two hundred miles of it forming a vast semi-circle that bisects West Mercia, the Forest of Dean and abruptly pours into the Bristol Channel at Chepstow. Here it is vast.

Last week I managed, not by any particular design, to do a great amount of cycling. I had been working in Hereford, and had the bike and some gloves, but as far as technical clothing went (by which I mean a jersey with three pockets and some decent socks & shoes) I had naught. I’d intended to take a saddlebag instead of a backpack and cycle from the Shire to Bristol for the weekend’s social excitement - a second birthday party which was guaranteed to be a riot. However, I had changed my intentions, deciding I’d take a train for those 55 or so miles, and took the Hercules instead of Dave The Red Road Bike, took a backpack instead of a Carradice, and the All Stars instead of the Time Machines. In short, I was a commuting cyclist out in the sticks and not the road machine I’d usually intend to be on such an adventure.

But I changed my mind. I saw that the weather would be murkishly, beautifully British; a wintry kind of sky light, heavy grey curtains revelatory in occasional shocks of bright yellow. So typically bucolically wonderful that I could not resist. I ate an extra-calorific set of pancakes the night before and woke feeling like it was the only option. I had a backpack that probably weighed far too much, a Sturmey range of 33% above and below the 46 x 18 I run as direct drive, and I set off down the A49. By Monmouth, some 20 miles, I was pretty warm in all places except, frankly, my crotch and my toes. Wearing 3/4 pedal pushers might be all well and good on the chilly run through Hyde Park on a Wednesday morning, but in the bitter dark lanes of Wales, it’s less of a good idea.

I powered past Monmouth and onto what I truly consider to be the best road in the country; the A466 to Chepstow. It follows another river, the wild, snaking Wye. I love how towns and villages cling to the chalk that it has prehistorically burrowed through on its journey to join the Severn, and how it challenges you to shift as it undulates up and around its ancient Tolkienesque topography. It is not some spectacular climb, it rarely affords a view of anything other than tree-lined hills and occasionally a glimpse of the Severn Bridge, but it is extraordinary. I guess it’s one of those pilgrim routes, given the way it follows a river and is lined by churches and, most famously, Tintern Abbey. I stopped for a terrible coffee, allowing my feet to reheat and my thighs to reawaken, life returning to numbed arteries and causing real tears to flow of utter itch-pain. It was only here that I saw an assortment of disposable-income frames: Colnago and Pinarello; inside were the Cat 4 veterans you’d expect to own such machines. They were eating scones, drinking cappuccinos and talking quite extensively about Victoria Pendleton’s bum. I listened in without ever engaging with them. Quite a lot of older male cyclists tend to be borderline sex pests. It’s something I have observed rather than presumed. However, if their genitals were anywhere near as cold as my own, I don’t expect Victoria Pendleton would have anything to fear if she ran into them on a cold Friday morning.

I reached Bristol within an hour of Tintern and stopped at a pure greasy caff to eat a tremendously runny egg sandwich. I returned to life in all kinds of ways and saw that everything was as it should be. Crossing the Severn is one of the joys of cycling - it is a vast, superhuman bridge; it sways dramatically as its waters eddy and fold beneath, just inside the eye’s range. When you land at Aust, you can power toward Almondsbury across the marshy old village plains, and enter Bristol like a Queen of Sheba, albeit one blue and exhausted. Backpacks and 3 speeds aren’t the finest touring ideas, but they were barely inconvenient. I was in a whole new city, and I felt pride, warmer than any old December day could take from me.

Said Niels Bohr.

Cold. No. It should be but it isn’t. Damn myself for wearing heat-tech beneath the sheep. I am boiling by the time I climb up Woldingham. I looked for dry roads, since the world had been covered with a wall of rain and wind. At the beginning of the week, I remained dry through luck and well-timed journeying. It began to heave it down as I pulled into Paddington at 5.30am last Wednesday, and I grinned ruefully as I saw the first specks of water sat atop the chrome handlebars. I win. Again.

It was not so when I cycled home from London on Thursday night. The wind blew a disgraceful wap of speed and pain. Into it I gurned, cried, yelled and screamed. I was so angry, so loaded with disgust and frustration, that upon arriving home HC stayed in the kitchen, making me a fish finger tortilla, and letting me return to a gentle self. I took out all the weather-rage on the fish-finger wrap, eaten in three bites. Power food for a future venture.

No big ride opportunities are presenting themselves in the week, so commutes are doing their best to provide salvation. I am regressing to a deadened sense of winter rides. Wet, or damp, perpetual headwind and a forlorn sense of the next sixty or seventy days remaining like this does conspire to make the Velonaut look for joys in the smallest of details; this week, for example, it rested on the view that I knew awaited me at Ide Hill, the Weald beneath a hazy November sunshine and being so utterly English that I could not help but marvel. Even the colour of chalk in the cliffs of the Downs seizes the mind and heart on a bleak day.

Sunday offered a good morning’s ride. I tipped fifty miles and didn’t hurt myself in the pursuit. Oddly, it was fairly quiet, but I didn’t take the back roads out - I knew they would be untouched by sun and wind and would still be filth-ridden stick holes. I took the big 23 out, I stayed on fairly main roads, and went over Toys the ‘easy’ way; from Brasted, so as not to cause unnecessary distress. It was a punctual, simple and effective Sunday morning ride. I felt nether terrible not exceptional. I accepted it as what it was, a base-miles kind-of day. I am simply investing in my own future, whatever that might be.

A surfeit of vintage cars went about their Kentish business

I spent a little time on the ride today thinking about the kind of car I’d prefer to hit me, if one had to. There were tons of vintage racers around today, with wheels almost as thin as the bicycle’s. They tore up the lanes, groaned up the hills, and their occupants dressed in wool and goggles. In fact, they might as well have been me. I always think I have more in common with the vintage car racers than I do with the carboneri. But then, I am an antisocial douchebag warrior.

Much of my ride was taken up with a distant concern I’d bonk before I even got to the North Downs. In the end, I got home with energy to spare. I made a friend, too, right when I needed one: Bedlam. Which is actually in West Wickham. Which comes with, as my new friend stated, a sting in the tail. He caught my wheel, and we shared the frantic twenty minute pull toward Crystal Palace together, with incessant chat and an ever-increasing speed. In the end, we caned it up Anerley Hill before breathlessly parting ways, possibly never to meet again. He seemed a bit like a vintage car racer too. He wore a smart top from Ritte, and shamelessly plugged the shop. It looks like a twenty-times-better version of Old Street’s finest. Anyway, I think I will go in, look around and probably not buy anything, much as I do. HC’s mum is already asking if Wiggle vouchers will make me happy on Christmas Day. More than seeing three ships come sailing in, I say. I’ve decided to boycott Starbucks and Amazon on account of their extreme tax-dodging. So, that’s lager, bread, added sugar (EXCEPT ON SUNDAYS WHEN I AM HALF DEAD) Starbucks and Amazon all canned in the past month. I think this is a streamlined new way of living my life. I feel liberated already.

But for a(nother) Nitto rack (front, this time) I am not truly coveting anything at the moment. Oh, some Giro shoes have tickled my fancy, but I figure I’ll get them in the New Year - there’ll be sales galore. I might also get some new steel forks from Bob Jackson. Again, not until the Spring, and expressly to make the Black Bike into a randonneur machine, in order that I can daydream about the PBP in 2015. Audax? You have got to be kidding..I almost collapsed after a 60-mile beamer today. Headaches, knee jip and an inability to stand upright. At least I am not unable to walk, as Tyler Hamilton claims in his new book.

Fact is, today was picture perfect bike riding kind-of weather. I hammered a big course, I climbed a good 1100m of Kent and the Weald, and I got home after a stiff Spitfire Cafe brunch - Tunnocks, capuccino and a digestive biscuit. It’s the way I like to do Sundays. It’s eminently preferable to being done over by Sundays in rain, mud, sleet and hellish cyclo-cross conditions. Stay like this a while, won’t you? At least there’s friction on the climbs, stinky as they will ever be.