I bought my first road bike whilst I was in the rowing club. Quite a few of the squad members owned one, and often went riding out at the weekend. I decided it was time I joined in so got a recommendation on what to buy. I opted for a Giant OCR, for no other reason than it was fairly reasonably priced and was considered by the rowing lads as a good first bike. I was reliably informed that I needed proper bike shoes with cleats to clip in to, so I bought those too. The bike arrived by mail order and I assembled it myself. I didn’t read the instructions of course, like many guys I never do. It wasn’t until I was on the way to the rowing club on my new steed that I realised I couldn’t change gears. I also realised that cycling with cleats was a new experience. I proudly turned up at the club for training to show off my new purchase, and promptly fell off, much to everyone’s amusement.
On the same day I also got my first experience of a ‘bonk’. This occurs when your body has used up all of its reserves of energy, so you are basically running on empty. It was hardly surprising really. I’d cycled to the club, done a full rowing session, cycled with the lads after the session and then cycled home. It’s a strange sensation when you ‘bonk’, you feel completely drained. I’d run out of fluid, had no snacks and no money to buy anything. I was about five miles from home, cycling in to a headwind and just couldn’t ride any more. I fell of my bike again and sat by the side of the road wondering exactly how I was going to make it the last few miles. I eventually made it back of course and raided the entire contents of the fridge.
It’s fair to say then that I was a novice cyclist. I only really got interested after I’d finished rowing and started seriously considering triathlon. I had no idea about technique, riding position or any of that technical stuff. I just got on my bike and rode. A friend of mine was also starting to get in to triathlon and had entered a charity bike ride from Wolverhampton to Aberdovey. This seemed ideal given that my parents have a holiday home there, as previously mentioned. This was a 100 mile ride and was by far the longest distance I’d ever thought about riding. Up until that point I reckon I’d clocked thirty miles as my longest outing.
Given this I thought I’d better get my bike serviced to make sure it would last the distance. I took it to a bike shop in one of the local villages in Barton-Under-Needwood. It was clear as soon as I entered that I was out of place. The bikes on show were Pinarellos and the shop owner was an ex-tour rider. He looked me up and down when I walked in, clearly disapproving of me and my bike. I left the bike with him and returned later in the day. He then spent half an hour telling me that my position was all wrong and that I should consider myself lucky I wasn’t injured. To be honest I wasn’t really interested in the lecture, I just wanted to know my bike was fit enough to handle the ride. Clearly annoyed he insisted on adjusting my seat height to better suit me and then let me go.
It may well have been a better height, but the radical adjustment was too much for my legs and I strained my knee ligaments almost immediately the first ride out. Great. Not only subjected to a load of abuse, I was now injured. It took months and multiple trips to the physio to sort out. Lesson learnt; don’t listen to arrogant ex pros and make incremental adjustments with a proper bike fit in future.
The day of the charity bike ride eventually came round and I’d managed a few longish rides in preparation. It was great to do, but the weather on the day was atrocious. It started drizzling when we left Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Stadium and got steadily worse as we cycled toward Wales. We didn’t treat it as a race but even so, it was a long day and pretty tiring for a non-cyclist. We stopped every twenty miles or so to get snacks and drinks but the mileage was definitely something I wasn’t used to. I had many moments later on where my legs just felt like lead. The dreaded bonk was never very far away.
At around sixty miles the weather was at its worst, strong headwinds and pouring rain. After a few hours of riding, this was pretty depressing but we ploughed on nonetheless. The weather finally got better with about fifteen miles to go and the ride into Aberdovey was actually quite nice. My first experience of long distance cycling was exactly that, an experience.