The loneliness of the long-distance cyclist

 

There was a film many years ago called 'The loneliness of the  long-distance runner', based on a story by Alan Sillitoe, apparently (thanks, Wikipedia).

I thought of the title while completing my last long ride on the bicycle before I do the Myeloma UK sponsored ride from London to Paris next week

Sponsor link if you're interested 🙂

When we do that ride it will be tremendously sociable, as we ride in a noncompetitive peloton of 100 riders, plus we all have dinner together in the evening. But while I'm practicing, it is very different. Yesterday, for example, I spent six or seven hours going over hill and dale (yes, we have them here!) in very beautiful parts of Suffolk, covering 70+ miles.

It was a glorious sunny day with very little wind (always a plus), and the photo at the top was taken on a lovely quiet lane between Stowmarket and Diss (yes, O American readers, we do have a town called Diss!). And when I stopped for the picture I was surrounded by young green barley and fields of rape-flower, and the larks were singing overhead. 

And while riding on your own, your mind can relax into all kinds of daydreaming (or sweary annoyance when Google maps tried to send you up another overgrown footpath!). One thing you do is become much more one with your bike. Your pothole-spotting is very quick and unthinking. The steering is quite subconscious, and you may start to experiment with different types of riding. One hill you'll gear down and sit, another one you'll stand in the pedals and try out powering up. Or when you see a steady down-and-up you have a go at getting the cadence high and gearing down through the uphill, retaining the cadence. It is all quite Zen, in fact, and I'm tempted to continue even after the big ride. 

You also are so very aware of the land that you are moving through, and this is psychologically very important. Not only are gradients and hills very real and physical, but you feel the wind, smell the flowers and hear the birds. It all seems much more real than the land from a car.

Now one thing I may not have mentioned, and this is one reason I may sound phlegmatic about a big ride, is that I have done this before on a big scale. I cycled from Lands End to John O'Groats with Cro in 2008, on a collective whim, and we did 950 miles in 14 days on old bikes carrying 60 pounds each. The same joys were obvious as the ones I felt yesterday  from hearing hawks wheeling over Wenlock Edge to cycling over a closed-to-cars Severn Bridge in a damp sunset evening. Or having people bring us cups of cocoa when fixing a puncture in a downpour in Carlisle. The country, the people and everything we saw had such joy in it, despite the cramps. And this was very near the finishing post:

So this solo cyclist is not going to stop any time soon, and he is also always up for a trip with anybody else. You know my email! I can thoroughly recommend the joys of two wheels on the open road.