Falling in Love

Sometimes I can virtually hear my bike thinking, “Why am I being ridden by such a donkey?” I have a Cannondale Topstone 5. It’s a carbon-frame gravel bike with rear suspension and top notch gears and brakes. It’s a poor man’s mid-life crisis soft-top sport’s car, and I love it.

Her name is Ribena. She’s named after her dark purple paint job., I tried to give her a new, more dashing name for our Japanese adventure, but Ribena is the only name that’s stuck. We cycled up the ‘Corniche’ over the weekend and where I stoped and took the above photo.

Many years ago a friend of mine gave me his old mountain bike. I used to get up at 5.30am and ride it up and down the shores of lake Geneva, and on one memorable occasion, even as far a Vevey, an eye-watering 20kms away.

After a lot of research and wondering if I would ever really use it, I splashed out and spent more than EUR 1,000 on a new road bike, a Rose SL 105, which had disc brakes and carbon forks and was by far the fanciest bike I had ever owned. The first time I went out on her – she was christened Bike – it was drizzling and I was wearing a pair of jeans and a mountain bike helmet and I cycled up the Corniche, the pinnacle of which is a dead-straight 3% climb which feels like a balcony overlooking the vineyards, the lake, and the distant Alps.

The Corniche seemed like a mountain in those days, and I realised that if I wanted to get to the top I needed to speak to myself positively. changing, ‘Oh my god, this hurts’ to ‘Come one, you can do it!’ As a professional athlete once said, don’t hide from the pain, remind yourself that it means you’re getting better.

I took a photo halfway up on my first attempt (still the photo on my Strava profile and almost identical to the one above) and fell in love with cycling.

I found I loved the challenge of finding a hill I couldn’t climb and coming back later and getting up it. I remember my first time up the Col de Mollendruz – my first Col! – the first time I cycled 175 kms around Lake Geneva, the first time I made it up the 19% climb of the Chemin de Polgny, on my fourth attempt, gasping and wheezing in front of a group of bemused cyclists.

I loved, and continue to love, the mesmeric rhythm of pedalling, the vast stretches of silence, of always being able to answer the question, “I wonder where that road goes?” I love looking out of a train window and admiring a view, then grabbing my phone and working out whether I could cycle it.

These are memories I come back to when I’ve got the pain on and I’m looking for motivation.

I have done it. I can do it again.

So, anyway, Ribena and I cycled up the Corniche, then we cycled higher up into the rolling hills (one of which I had to walk up) before circling back to the lake again. It was the first ride I had done after a bout of ‘flu and it felt OK. Anything is better than sitting on an indoor bike, watching the clock go round.

As I write these words I realise that in exactly two months I’ll be on a train to Zurich airport. I am two months and three days away from clipping in at Wakkanai and cycling up to Cape Soya. It doesn’t quite seem real.

The ride by the figures: