Just ride…
What can I say? I’ve taken my eye off the ball. I’ve had a few weeks off and thought I could catch up. And I find myself swimming in a sea of pro cyclists riding for unfamiliar teams wearing unfamiliar kit.
“Oh, there’s been some mistake,” I thought to myself. The Garmin corporation are under the misapprehension that I’m a ten-year-old boy when actually, hilariously, I’m a forty-two year old man.
Commuters, roadies, mountain bikers, fixie fanatics, helmet wearers, non-helmet wearers, MAMIL’s, skinny kids, veterans, fans of The Rules, haters of The Rules; all cyclists, all governed by different laws of behaviour.
The image of five or six frozen cyclists at the side of the road, bikes propped against a wall and furiously cuddling each other to keep warm, does have a certain poignancy to it.
I rolled down the hill and home, and sat at the kitchen table seeing stars. The hollow stare of a (hungry) Vietnam vet. I inhaled a cheese sandwich without chewing. Slurped a cup of tea without pause. Slowly, the creeping kilojoules soaked into my system and I returned to something resembling life.
