There’s always another ride.

The highlight of my last season ended up being the event I couldn’t compete in. VeloSouth was to be a hundred mile closed roads sportive through the South Downs National Park. About halfway through 2018 I was in the middle of what I considered to be the first year I gave cycling everything. Having never ridden five thousand kilometres in a year till that point, in 2018 I rode Eleven Thousand Kilometres.  VeloSouth in September I decided would be the culmination of the year. My first closed roads Sportive ridden in a condition I had earn’t through focused training.

It was rained off.

Or rather it was cancelled in anticipation of a storm that didn’t quite materialise. The weather was beautiful the day before and the day after. Which I was grateful for as I cycled from Willesden Junction to the South Downs National Park and back to my home in North London to make up for missing out. The ride ended up being a 204.6 km loop with 2646 meters of sharp ‘n’ steep Surrey and South Downs climbing thrown in for good measure. This I’m informed by much better cyclists than me ain’t half bad. What really made me treasure it as an achievement however was that 6 months before I would have died. Maybe I would’ve got round but I would not have enjoyed it. Taking cycling seriously allowed me to go and ride off into the sunset on a ride epic enough that by the end the disappointment of VeloSouth being cancelled was a long lost memory. In fact, Southern England leaps out at you in early Autumn, I understood why the organisers took the risk of placing their sportive so late in the calendar. The leaves have yet to touch the ground leaving the descents fast and exciting, but orange has begun to conquer them meaning you scream down tunnels of amber and green. Then onto the South Downs where the views go for miles, crisp and clear.

I was lucky enough to be riding the perfect bike for this, my Trek Emonda SLR 8 Disc. The unimpeachable climbing bike I’d saved for over three years to get my hands on. Previously I used to lug around an aluminium adventure bike sold to me on the basis of practicality, I’d lie about taking it on gravel rides while watching my friends zip around on their carbon frames. Now however I had my gloriously impractical super bike to dance up every hill then plummet down as if on rails. I do now think there’s a lot to be said for starting out on a bike that is good but not the best. It allowed me to grow with the bikes I’ve had. Once you’ve gotten good enough to appreciate a bike like the Emonda you notice everything that’s good about it far more than if you’d started out with it.

Cycling culture can involve way too much discussion between those that live it about the stiffness/lightness/whatever of a given bit of kit measured in percentages. It can be daunting for people starting out and impossible to really understand. However, once you’ve taken the jump from something that isn’t light or stiff or compliant to a bike that is all those things, put it in the right environment and brought the legs to live up to it your understanding of what a bike can give you and what you can do with it explodes. The week after the big race that wasn’t ended up being one of the best of my cycling life, a long solo adventure, a fast club loop with a few of my club’s nutcase crit racers and finally a there and back again epic to Cambridge at breakneck speed: 16 started and four finished. I ended up riding 520 kilometres in one week, solo, in chain gangs, in mini pelotons and nicely ordered groups. I learnt that if you build to an event with cycling properly, even if it gets cancelled you’ve still built something and you can take a massive amount of joy from it.

Next year I’ve signed up for loads epic rides, closed roads and not. They can’t cancel them all! But I‘ll be riding even if they do.