Shooting One's Mouth Off: The Veteran Cyclist's Occupational Hazard

Me and my stomach trundling round the Beacon RCC 107km Cotswold
Outing Audax in 2011

I've always talked a good bike ride. In my younger days, tucked comfortably behind my pint among a peloton of like-minded associates, I would hint, only half-jokingly, of my potential as world road champion and Tour de France prospect, and aged 17, filled with euphoria following a couple of top six road race placings, briefly believed my own publicity. After my National Service, I reluctantly abandoned my Tour ambitions, but even then, enthusiasm and over confidence for the coming season led me to make some unrealistic pronouncements, and an injudicious assertion, in the presence of the then President's lady, that I would that season destroy the club 100 mile time trial record, cost me a fortune in Green Goddess cocktails twelve months later.

      The eventual petering-out of my unremarkable racing career resulted in a shift of emphasis from forecasts of future glory to nostalgic accounts of past 'achievements'. Now decades away from reality, bog basic winter Reliability Trials like the Weston and Back and the LLangollen and Back, along with the 'characters' that were my clubmates have become the subject of myth and legend, embellished as they have been with unlikely anecdotes involving fixed-wheel training rides with brick-filled saddlebags and tales of derring-do during Bacchanalian youth hostel weekends. Some of these tales have a basis in fact, but at this distance in time I'm not sure where fact ends and fiction begins.

      Wittering on about the old days, and how bloody good you were, is the prerogative of geriatric cyclists, and although it's invariably accompanied by an attitude of disdain and derision concerning the abilities of the current crop of younger riders, it generally does no one any harm. However, this week, inspired by daughter training for a half-marathon running race, I had a momentary aberration and posted on Facebook my intention of riding the Beacon RCC 107km Cotswold Outing Audax in aid of the Prostate Cancer Charity.

      I'm not exactly regretting it, but...

      I've been round this particular Audax numerous times, and five years ago, aged 72, completed the 160 km (94 mile)Cotswold Journey which actually included hills, thankfully absent from the Cotswold Outing. So doing the Cotswold Outing again seemed like a damn good idea until I realised that I'm now 77, haven't done many miles since my prostate diagnosis in 2011, and no single ride of more than 35 miles in the last two years.

     While I was reflecting on the discrepancy between ambition and ability, and the potential consequences of having shot my mouth off, the till on my Just Giving page was ringing enthusiastically, with £240 donated within hours.  So, like it or not, I'm riding the Cotswold Outing Audax. 

      Fortunately, I'm not such a prat as I sometimes make out. (I'm not!) and have come up with a Training Plan, designed to get me round the course in relatively good order.

     It is foolproof, and based on 63 years of cycling experience, and if nothing else, will get me out on the bike regularly over the next 15 weeks. 

     I know exactly what I'm doing.

     What can possibly go wrong?

f you'd like to donate you;ll find my Just Giving page at:http://t.co/PUhFfH1BfN

      

It's Bloody January, again.

This is what you look like when you know you are about to take your 77
year old self out  on the bike, in to the cold, wet, and an annoying south-westerly,
 for no reason other than you'll have a bad conscience if you don't. Why doesn't
someone tell me I don't have to do it? 

As today there was no appreciable rain, nor gales, nor even the suggestion of an icy patch, I felt honour bound to open my 2014 cycling campaign, the 62nd consecutive year of my Battle of Attrition with the bicycle.
     I am aware that this a battle that I can no longer win, and even as I dragged the Trevor Jarvis from the shed, where it has been lurking with malevolent intent since early December, I was still nurturing an unreasonable hope that the tyres had rotted away and the rest of it had been consumed by rust.
     The worst that had occurred was a soft tyre, which, spitefully, responded to the application of the track pump, and I was soon on my way and immediately aware that my legs had no real inclination to participate in the venture. However, this is a standard reaction for first time out, even for the fitter individuals, so I changed down a gear and pretended to enjoy it.
     It took me about a mile to realise that the route that my brain had planned was inappropriate, inclining far more towards the vertical than my recalcitrant legs considered fair, so I skulked off down a side road and did three laps of a flattish circuit instead There was a nasty south-westerly breeze which tried to knacker me up down one side of the circuit and the tail-wind bits, which would normally have me in paroxysms of delight, I failed to appreciate, being generally in the throes of a near-death experience. However, I'd planned to be out for an hour, live or die, and I ground out an hour and ten minutes, just to show who's boss.
     Noticed that there actually  is some rust, bubbling up on the Trevor Jarvis' top tube. Be interested to see which rusts through first, the frame or me.