A War of Attrition

This is the closest I can get to a photo of me having direct dealings
with Attrition, taken Oct 3, 1954 in the Worcs. CA Hill Climb up
Beacon Hill, Lickey. Time 2min 43.8 sec. Only a cyclist will know
just how much agony you can pack in to less than three minutes effort. By
the look on my face I'm at the stage when red-hot needles are being
 jabbed in to my thighs I'm gasping for air, can taste blood in my
throat and I just want it all to stop. Great when it's over!

My sixty-plus years association with the bicycle has always had more than a touch of love/hate about it. Even the act of taking the bike from the shed has always carried a certain amount of nervous apprehension, wondering what the day had in store, and if a race, or hard training ride was involved, I often achieved a high state of anxiety, as my body anticipated its merciless subjection to a great deal of pain and suffering that it would much rather do without.

Once in to the ride, the early anxiety was replaced by the grim reality of the moment: the need to hold the wheel of the rider in front, to react to the attacks of those who would seek to rip your legs off by increasing the pace to inflict unbearable levels of pain, while you pedalled through the agony, whimpering inwardly, desperately straining to keep your front wheel no more than six inches from the wheel in front, because you knew that if that ‘elastic’ broke and the gap widened to a foot, a yard, a bike length, that your race was over and you were dead, buried, and in your own mind at least, deeply humiliated.

At least it was nice when it was over, and if you were in at the finish with the chance of a high placing, there was a certain satisfaction to it all, the fact that you had not only competed successfully with others, but that you had won the battle with yourself, pushed your body far past its comfort zone. I suppose I enjoyed it. Sort of.

Fifty odd years on from those days, I still feel that apprehension before I hoist my 77-year-old arse on to the saddle. Though I mainly ride alone now, it doesn’t mean I can bumble about willy-nilly. There are pedal revs to maintain, average speeds to aim for and hills to climb. Some hills, once relished as challenges, no longer feature in my ride plans, but unfortunately other climbs are now appearing in places where climbs never before existed. Apologies for hills, some not more than 100 metres long  that I would once have taken in the big chainring, but which now, week by week, with a display of shameless malevolence, seem to develop ever-steeper gradients.

I once enjoyed hills, the steeper the better. When I was young, and 9 stone wringing wet, I enjoyed powering my way to the top, mostly leaving my bigger companions in my wake. There was an exhilaration to be had in dancing on the pedals, pushing yourself through the pain to top the rise, a great sense of achievement. These days, fifty years down the line, and, for various reasons, weighing in at 13stone, even a long drag or minor climb becomes my personal War of Attrition.

No pedal dancing now, sit back on the saddle, grab the brake hoods, select a gear that you can turn reasonably comfortably, and on no account look at the top of the hill. Instead, fix your eyes on something a little way ahead, a drain cover, a telegraph pole, and ride to it. Just before you reach it, select another point a little further on, and move towards that. If the gradient steepens, change down a gear and Think of England, but concentrate on pushing the pedals round, and try to ignore the red hot needles penetrating your thighs and the apparent death-rattle that is your breathing. Swear as loudly and as often as necessary. Repeat gear changes until no further sprockets are available and then whimper pathetically, pray and redouble your efforts while willing the bike upwards. On no account look for the top of the hill, just keep pedalling, gasping and swearing. Eventually the gradient will ease, you've reached the top and you may permit yourself a laugh of triumph or a sob of pain, dependent on your mood.

I have to admit that I keep away from major hills now, no point in being stupid, and in the reasonably benign terrain I use, there's nothing I can't get up, albeit sometimes in a state geriatric disrepair. But I do know, realistically, that one day, next year, the year after, on one hill or another,I'm going to have to climb off and give it best. That will be traumatic, and will set off some soul-searching as to where I go from there.

But right now, I still enjoy it. Sort of.

An Old Grudge Remembered

I shall be operating the Welford-on-Avon Control at Beacon RCC’s Cotswold Audaxes on Sunday week. I’d intended riding the 110 km. event but a lack of miles in my elderly legs persuaded me to run the check, an activity allowing access to unlimited cake and coffee and enabling me to hand out unwanted cheer and advice to the legless and luckless as they pass through Welford.

      I’ve successfully completed this event many times, although not always without personal trauma. At the start, a few years ago, I momentarily thought I had been struck partially blind, before realising that the problem was the surprising absence of the right-hand lens of my reading glasses, which I needed to follow the details on the route card, clipped on my handlebars.

      There followed a voluble, if forgivable, tantrum. I could just about read the route provided I peered through the remaining lens and kept the other eye shut, but it was obvious that riding one-eyed, for 70 miles, was impractical, hazardous and potentially terminal, so I needed to ride with someone capable of reading the sheet. However, my friends, unaware of my plight, were long gone, and after a few miles I found myself alone at a junction, borderline berserk and vainly trying to decipher the route sheet hieroglyphics. But just as I decided to call it quits and go back, Johnny showed up.

      Johnny is older than me, a long-ago pro racer of considerable reputation. (he was reserve for the Great Britain Tour de France team in 1955) He was alone, having suffered a Senior Moment at the start, turning right instead of left from the HQ and ending up well down the wrong road before he realised his error. (The previous year he’d locked his car keys in his car at the headquarters, and had to break the window to get in, but that’s embarrassing for him, so I won’t mention it)

     Anyway, his eyesight was adequate, so we teamed up, and made good time to the first check at Honeybourne and on up the nasty little climb past Hidcote. I faltered a bit towards the top, but Johnny kept going, and as I watched him go I was mentally transported back almost fifty years to a road race, which incorporated two very hard laps of our club’s Little Mountain Time Trial course. 

      On the first long climb, up Stanford Bank, the bunch split in two, and I found myself in the wrong half, along with Johnny and twenty-odd others. After we’d topped the climb, a chase got going and we were moving well, though the leading group were out of sight. Thirteen miles on, at Knightwick, our bunch was still intact, but the long, steep, climb up Ankerdine followed by the hard grind to Gt, Witley, created havoc, and by the time we started up Stanford Bank for the second time, Johnny and me had dropped everyone else, and we could see the leading group about half a minute ahead of us on the climb, I congratulated myself on being back in the race with a chance, unaware that I was about to witness the darker side of human nature.

      I’d just upped my pace slightly, to steadily close the leaders down, when Johnny came past, out of the saddle and sprinting. Before I reacted he’d bridged the gap and joined the leaders, leaving me wallowing indignantly down the road. The whole group was out of sight again before I reached the top, and I didn’t see another soul until the finish at Hartlebury, 30 miles and a lifetime of suffering later. 

      Johnny did wait for me in the Audax, though, well, at least until that nasty drag up the last six miles when my legs expired quite spectacularly, but then, what’s the point of finishing an event not feeling knackered? If I’m paying nine quid for a ride, I feel it incumbent upon the organiser to provide me with my moneys-worth of pain. As I’ve got older, long rides have become a war of attrition, the objective being not to go belly up before the finish, but to feel quietly smug because you haven’t. Therein lies the enjoyment, possibly.

      At the Audax finish, I reminded Johnny of his un-gentlemanly conduct on Stanford Bank all those years ago. He claimed not to remember it, but I do, and it’s there, right at the top of my long list of cycling grudges. 

      I’ll save the others for later.

One For the Road

My old friend is in need of TLC and pewter polish. No
expense will be spared.

I have, by good fortune, rediscovered an old friend.   Ferreting in a cupboard, among  the detritus of abandoned cruet sets and gravy boats, I came across my old pewter tankard, the loyal companion of my early manhood, and silent witness to the sometimes deplorable progress of my youthful rites of passage.

    I first met my friend, strangely, in Baghdad, during my National Service in 1956, and felt an instant attraction. Inside, on the glass bottom, was etched what I thought was an ancient Mesopotamian hieroglyphic, but which turned out to be a dartboard. Thereafter, my tankard accompanied me nightly to the NAAFI, variously accommodating Carlsbergs, Tuborgs and William Younger's Double Century, and adding, I felt, a certain je ne sais qoi to my image and establishing my credentials as a would-be exhibitionist.

     On return to 'civvie street',  my tankard joined in wholeheartedly with my cycling activities, Attached outside my saddlebag, it would bounce along quite happily on club-runs to the lunchtime pub stop, the lid clattering excitedly over uneven surfaces, and be ready for use again when we arrived for the Sunday evening pub session. And, of course, it was an invaluable accessory in the cycling-club party scene, a popular feature of the 'social season' in the early 1960's, and an activity which received my enthusiastic support.

This is my tankard in action in its halcyon days. Am I making a brilliant
intellectual point to someone? Or am I rat-arsed?

     On party nights I would leave home attired in my best Italian suit, winkle-pickers, and 'Frank Sinatra' trilby, clutching my tankard and with a Party Seven beer can tucked under my arm.

     Party Sevens were the forerunner of today's dinky little lager cans, cans that don't hold more than a gnats' wotsitful. As the name implies, a Party Seven contained seven pints of beer, and as each party-goer was honour bound to provide one, we never ran short. However, the 'Seven' did have certain drawbacks, the first being that it was almost impossible to open. There was nothing as fancy as a ring-pull, and it was necessary to make two holes in the top to get at the beer. This top, I swear, was constructed completely from war-surplus armour plating, and the only way in was using hammer and punch, necessitating powerful smiting and a liberal use of deleted expletives, offering considerable danger to kitchen work tops and tiled floors. The reward for success was invariably a reluctant trickle of fizzy, metallic-tasting, liquid which somehow managed to go flat before it hit the bottom of the tankard. Only the most dedicated party-goer could drink the stuff, and glass demi-johns of rough cider were a favoured alternative. The girls, of course, utterly refused to drink the beer. God knows what they drank, I never took them anything.

      I can't remember when I split up with my tankard. When I got married I suppose, lots of things change when you get married, not always for the best, though perhaps I shouldn't say that. All I know is, it wasn't me that stuffed it in the cupboard with the old cruets.

A Trip to the Seaside

My Weston-and-Back Medal

Spent a pleasant Saturday morning in a riverside cafe at Evesham, running the control for the Beacon RCC's  annual Sunrise and Snowdrop  Audax endurance cycle rides, about 110 km.

The morning started with freezing fog, but later developed in to a lovely, early spring day, the best conditions we've had for this event for some years, and I sat there, wolfing a bacon sarnie, along with unlimited free coffee, feeling very old and very envious of all these fit guys,(and girls) who could cope with 110 km at this time of the year.

There was, of course, a time when I could, and did, and way back in the 1950's, not long after the cycling world had rejected the Penny-farthing in favour of two wheels the same size, it was generally accepted that the only way to prepare for the racing season was first to 'knock off the rough edges' caused by too much winter booze, by grinding out long, hard, miles in the cold, snow and rain, preferably on a single fixed gear, and possibly with a house-brick in your saddlebag to make it hurt more. (This never really caught on) Consequently, in February 1954, The Beacon  RCC Birmingham to Weston-Super-Mare and back 200 mile Reliability Trial first saw the light of day, or rather, the dark of night, because it started at Saturday midnight from the Gents Urinal at Rubery, an iconic, castellated, iron structure, (later demolished in the name of progress and a flyover) and resplendent in Birmingham Corporation green paint. From here the riders sped through the night, down the A38, (not much traffic then) to Gloucester, Bristol and thence to the pier at Weston Super Mare, arriving about 7.00am  to be checked in, before turning round and hightailing it back to Brum.

Of course, being February, the weather was usually unpleasant, and I can remember getting very wet in 1954, emerging from a soaking sea-mist to be greeted by a tattered poster at the pier entrance informing me that 'Happy Days Are Here Again'.  It had been a fairly uneventful ride down, apart from the wet and cold,and the incident in which the top of my Ever Ready front lamp catapulted itself in to the air somewhere in Gloucester, which resulted in me groping around on the A38 in the pitch-black looking for the bits. Oh, and there was also the guy who passed out in the soup queue, at about 4.00am, in the Black and White Cafe at Patchway. We were all cold and knackered, and as he wasn't in our club, we just stepped over him and moved one place up the queue. I heard later, that his dad threatened to sue the club, but I don't think he did. I got back to the finish just after 2.00pm, 14 hours 6 minutes after I'd set off, and with an hour to spare on my time limit.

 I was doing my National Service the following year, but I was on leave the weekend of the Weston and Back, and rode down to Worcester to 'encourage' my particular mates on the last twenty miles to the finish. It had been a bitterly cold night, and when my friends came through, around mid-day, they looked close to death. The contents of their water bottles had frozen solid, and I shall take to my grave the memory of my mate, Trevor, who seemed to be radiating a ghostly blue translucence, as he stood blinking at me with all the cognitive passion of a giant, frozen prawn. I'm not sure to this day if he ever thawed out properly.

I never rode this event again, figuring it was best to ride down to Weston on the Saturday, get a bed and breakfast, sink a few beers on the Saturday night and turn up at the pier to sign the cards on the Sunday. I was always very astute with my training methods.

At the height of its popularity, the Weston and Back attracted as many as three hundred entrants, but eventually, as training methods changed, and cycling dwindled in popularity, it ceased to be, and now lives on only in the memories of the dwindling band of cheerful eccentrics who laughed and grumbled their way through the winters night.

Indestructibility

                                                                                                               Last year, in mid-October, I led a

Me, (left) crossing the line to win the Concorde RCC 2nd Cat RR, July, 1958

45 mile club run, a fairly leisurely  ride, for the benefit of older, idler, members of the club. I had feedback, later, that one or two people, much younger than me, had been struggling a bit at times, which pleased me no end, because one of the great delights of cycling, for me, is to do all you can to make your riding companions grovel behind you.

I'd been cycling with the Beacon Roads CC for almost sixty years, and although I was sort of aware of the possibility that I might not be going on club runs in sixty years time, I couldn't actually see what was going to stop me. Granted, I wasn't going as fast as fifty years ago, but regular reviews of my gear ratios allowed me to climb pretty well any hill that wasn't actually vertical, and I regarded myself, aged 75, as virtually indestructible. It was a bit of a shock, then, that less than six weeks after this ride, and without any symptoms or any indication that anything was wrong, I'd been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Me, following my stomach, Beacon RCC 107km Cotswold Audax, June 2011

A year down the road, I can now admit that I spent the next two months indulging in some serious navel gazing. Waiting for a prognosis after being found in possession of a potentially terminal illness places great strains on even the most indestructibly inclined outlook, and one has to come to terms with the inevitability of one's mortality. Strangely, that didn't turn out half as scary as I'd originally thought, keep calm and carry on must be programmed in to you at 75+ ! Anyway, I had a biopsy, scans and radiotherapy to look forward to and all those who have read my previous blogs will by now know that these treatments were barrow-loads of laughs and turned out to be a mine of material for the dedicated p*ss taker.Until you've experienced the thrill of being in desperate need of a pee while on a radiotherapy  couch, you don't know what living is.

Regaining fitness after months off cycling has turned out to be a bit of a chore. I have sweat cobs, whimpered, blasphemed,  returned home with average speeds that I will never, ever,  reveal to anyone, and sat at home expecting the Angel of Death to turn up at the front door at any moment. But bit by bit things have changed and a few weeks ago I managed three whole hours on the bike, only a bit slower than I was last year. Next year I shall be as indestructible as I ever was, well, as near as dammit.

I am of course, very lucky that my cancer was picked up at the well-man clinic at my doctors. Although it's very aggressive, my treatment is giving it a good kicking, or at least fighting a draw, and I don't have any intention of allowing it to send me belly-up. Other guys, though, aren't so fortunate and it's the most common cancer among men in the UK. 40,000 cases are diagnosed every year and 250,000 men are living with it. Being geriatric and permanently bewildered, I've managed to miss the fact that it's Movember, and I should be growing a mustache and raising money for the prostate charity. I got too late to register and decided to do this blog by way of compensation.

It's thought that every guy, over 80, probably has prostate cancer in some degree or other, though more men die with it than from it.  Prostate Cancer UK is the charity that works hard to combat the disease and deserves support.  If you'r interested, the link is below.

                                                               prostatecanceruk.org/

Taking the Waters Again

There are some things that are over and above the call of duty. I have always been acutely aware of this, and usually, when Duty is liable to be Calling, Over and Above, and having no desire to impinge on the heroic ambitions of others, I make it my business to be well out of earshot. Sometimes, though, circumstances dictate that lurking in anonymous mediocrity is not an option, and however distressing and inconvenient it may be, it All Depends On You.

It turned out distressing and inconvenient the other Sunday, when marshalling in my cycling club’s ‘Little Mountain’ time trial. It’s always a great day out, good racing and a chance to catch up with old friends. This year though, when I left home it was raining with such ferocity that the gutters were flowing like miniature brooks. My wife, comfortably sheltered under the duvet, suggested that I stay at home, and was extremely scathing when I insisted that it was my sacred duty to go, and that if I wasn’t wielding my flag on my designated corner when the riders came through, there was a good chance that the less cerebral among them would end up in Bristol or beyond,  instead of completing two hilly circuits of Worcestershire countryside. “It all depends on me,” I told her, in my best self important style

And so it was that a little later I stood like a prize prairie-hat for over two hours in cold rain and wind, becoming soaked to the skin,  while a procession of congenital idiots pedalled past me in a masochistic search for water-logged glory. I was soaked before the first rider arrived, my trousers clinging to my thighs, my feet squelching in my shoes, and as the riders came through, becoming unpleasantly aware that I was losing the feeling in my legs and beginning to shiver. Towards the end I was forced to retire behind the hedge for an urgent comfort break and had so little feeling in my fingers that I could scarcely operate my fly and gave up altogether on re-zipping, settling for pulling my coat down to hide my embarrassment.

When the last rider had gone through, I had to sit in the car for nearly a quarter of an hour with the engine running and the heater full blast before I felt confident about driving. Sitting in the car, also, I realised that  the rain had gone through my trousers and soaked my underwear. I have never been so cold in my life, and despite the heater being on I shivered all the way back home, where I spent more than half an hour under the hot shower to bring myself  back from the brink of death.

I shivered on and off, for the rest of the day, but was prevented from lapsing in to a hypothermic coma by my wife’s unremitting tirade of highly creative variations on the ‘stupid old man’ theme that all us lads are so familiar with. I went to bed that night, still shivering and reflecting that, in future, being out of earshot of the Call of Duty was always, always, the right call for me.

Post Script. The postman came with a lovely surprise while I was typing this. A speeding ticket which I’d obviously picked up on my way home that day, under the influence of hypothermia. It never rains….

Nothing MuchChanges

Thursday saw my first meet of the year with the Pedalling Dead of the cycling club. It was nice to see their ancient, gnarled and weather beaten faces light up with pleasure when I walked in, and I thought the blokes looked pleased to see me as well.

I have been riding with some of these 'boys and girls' for sixty years now, though to look at some of them you could be forgiven for thinking it was much longer. From carefree club runs and cut-throat races in our teens and twenties, we have pedalled on through our middle years and can now be found, every Thursday, at a cafe stop, sweaty and knackered, but still half a lap up on the undertaker. Over coffee there is always much banter relating to 'the old days', but now peppered with gloomy comparisons of hospital appointments and biopsies.

Later, riding home alone, I chanced upon a bizarre cycling hobo, his small body completely swamped by a high visibility yellow jacket, to which was attached a cavernous, monk like, yellow cowl. Surprisingly, he pedalled like a 'proper' cyclist and there was something oddly familiar about him, but as I got nearer, I was embarrassed and dismayed to see that he was wearing ordinary trousers with trouser clips, confronting me with a serious moral and ethical dilemma as to whether I should acknowledge his existence.

Not obvious to the outsider, cycling has a virtually impenetrable hierarchical structure which makes the British class system appear egalitarian. The question of who speaks to who, if at all, is extremely complicated. For example, a road cyclist will rarely greet a mountain biker, although as mountain bikers blank everyone, even each other, it's a rather pointless snub. Some club members ignore 'poseurs' cavorting in garish continental professional team strip, the 'poseurs' curl there lips at anyone on a bike worth less than £3k, and a radical fringe element blanks anyone wearing the wrong shoes. Further incomprehensible prejudices appertain within sub divisions of the sport and regional variations may apply.

You will imagine my genteel distress therefore, on unwittingly finding myself in the presence of trouser clips. However, my curiosity about the apparitions identity overcame my innate distaste and I decided on sociability, so I eased my way past and offered a patronising grunt by way of greeting.

Within seconds, the hobo had caught me back and a voice from deep within the cowl enquired, "Is that Nick?" and lurking in its dark recesses I discovered Norman, an old club mate who in the 1950's was one of the fastest twenty-five mile time trial riders in the country. (Norman is eighty-six now, and like a lot of old bike riders, tends to eccentricity, which perhaps explains the cowl and the trouser clips.)

There followed a short period of dysfunctional conversation. We are both a bit deaf, wearing helmets doesn't help, and Normans ridiculous headgear seemed impervious to normal levels of vocal communication.

I eventually gleaned that he was "having a ride out to Malvern," about twenty miles down the road, "or maybe Ledbury," about fifteen miles further on and involving the long drag over the Malvern Hills, quite testing for someone fifty years younger. I never got to find out how Norman proposed to tackle the long return trip to Bromsgrove, because at that precise moment we swung left to assault a nasty little drag leading up to a 'T' junction. I slowed a bit, but Norman didn't and the old b*****d shot me off his wheel like a cork from a bottle, just like he used to do fifty years before. He waved to me as he turned left at the 'T' leaving me seething with indignation and humiliation.

Sixty years on, and nothing much changes.