Travel

Here’s a photo of me thoroughly enjoying a bike ride with 700 other people. This is a rare snap at the beginning of the day – rare because there is someone behind me. He, and all his buddies, soon overtook me. We have only covered about 500 metres and I’ve already hit the wall (or, as we say in the trade, I have bonked, something that I thought was going to have more enjoyable connotations). Only another 70 miles to go!

This was probably the low point (early days, mind you) of my pitiful cycling career. Apart from finishing dead last, and suffering from hypothermia, it also proved to me that I was nowhere near as fit as I needed to be to cycle across my village, let alone the entire country. I had a clear choice: I could either continue unwaveringly with my rigorous regime of fatty foods and strong ales, in the hope that the benefits would eventually work their way through, or I could follow the much riskier course of putting in some extra training whilst switching to a so-called ‘healthier’ diet. Believe me, I did a lot of soul-searching as I considered the options with the help of two tubes of World Cup Pringles and a bottle of Amarone.

The results of my long dark night of the soul – rounded off with a couple of well-earned snifters of Armagnac after such an exhausting burst of cerebral activity – were immediate. First, I bought bigger, baggier cycling clothes so that the most obvious flabby bits no longer featured so prominently. Second, I entered another sportive: a 60-mile slog around Kent taking in such glorious scenery as Dungeness and Camber. And so it was that last Sunday, I flew away from the start in a blaze of burning rubber and Lycra static. My wise breakfast choice of an egg mayonnaise sandwich powered me through the first 15 miles, after which a flapjack and swigs of Powerade propelled me past several octogenarians and a stationary milk float (which, admittedly, later caught me up). Bursting through the bonk, I crossed the line in 3h50m, a new PB (although, in fairness, there hadn’t been an old PB). I was garlanded with certificates and medals, as well as a much-appreciated celebratory flapjack.

Which might have been it, except for the fact that I had promised myself to go out again the following day and cycle for at least three hours. Conditions were painfully different. Not only was it horribly windy, but I also discovered that muscles that had worked perfectly acceptably the day before had mysteriously withered on the bones and would not respond to the usual stimuli of Snickers bars and furious grunting. Three hours can be a very long time when you’re cycling into a headwind at the sort of speed normally associated with a mobility scooter. But...I made it. I got back home, dismounted and lay on the lawn in a twitching heap. The dog glazed my face in an effort to revive me, but he knew a lost cause when he tasted one.

The next day I felt fine – as long as I didn’t try and walk up or down the stairs, stand up or sit down quickly or turn my head more than 2.7 degrees. I have used a value-sized tube of nappy rash ointment and still the sit muscles complain whenever I so much as look at a photo of a saddle – but nothing can detract from the fact that I did two strenuous days of cycling without a call-out to the emergency services. And pain, after all, is good, right? Let me get back to you on that one, as soon as the codeine kicks in.

365 miles in six days: what’s the problem? After all, being a dedicated gym bunny and spending most of my time in Lycra as a lifestyle choice, how difficult can it be? Especially as I shall be cycling across Britain, so there’ll be no hills, right?

Back in the real world, where a walk down to the paper shop leaves me gulping for air and wondering whether VO2 Max is a new shampoo endorsed by Penelope Cruz - because I'm worth it, for sure - I feel that a little more application may be required. Where do I start? Can you get a personal trainer who can help you to develop your 'sit' muscles? When I did Biology at school, people didn't have sit muscles. Quads and glutes? Aren't they part of an orchestra?

So here is my starting point. When I did my first ride for forty years, a little pootle around Bath last summer that had most of the emergency services on red alert and a helicopter tracking my every cadence (note technical term), I thought that was it. I made it to the finishing line, we had ales to rehydrate, I tried unsuccessfully to sell the bike, and then I was off home. Au revoir to the peloton. I tossed the chamois cream in the bin and dreamt of what colour Quattroporte I would buy, once I had traded in the 1998 Ford Escort. And that really was meant to be it.

Except it wasn't. One year on, I am still complaining, I still hate hills, I will not shave my legs and will definitely never wear the same gear as Lance Armstrong - but I'm still on the bike, and still training in the gym. Recently I managed to cycle 70 miles in a day, as part of what is jokingly called a sportive. Apart from a little episode in which breakfast made a brief re-appearance, the onset of hypothermia, the loss of most of the important gears on the bike, the absence of fellow riders (I never appeared to be part of the peloton after the first ‘slight incline’) and an unfortunate incident with my gloves, it was highly successful. And yes, before you ask, I did finish last. By some distance. With a certificate to prove it. Even buying a new bike has not fundamentally altered the basic problem: I am not a cyclist. Proper cyclists are whippets who weigh roughly the same as one of my thighs.

But, undaunted, I am pretending for the next few months that I am a part of that exclusive club. Why? Because I've agreed to cycle across Britain - and back - in aid of a local charity. Worse still, I'm doing it alone. No buddies or broom wagons to help me along. I have to take all my stuff with me, including nappy cream and flapjacks. I think I was somewhat over-refreshed when I came up with the idea.
This, then, is what the Late Mid-Life Crisis looks like, close up. And, of course, it is all in a good cause, so I must carry on without complaint. As if...