Back On The Bike - Day One

Totally not feeling Flandrien at all

So here we go, day one in the saddle in an attempt to be riding okay enough to race next year when I hit 60!
It's been three years'ish. The last year of road racing was 2015, but I finished after the 2015/2016 cyclo cross season......give or take two or three club rides. So that's three years with only the occasional tandem ride with the missus, or a café run in shorts and t-shirt along the Brighton sea front thrown in.
Now I'd like to just race evening Crits again, so I'm putting it out there so there's no hiding, like saying which pocket your going to pot the ball into.

As well as wanting to get back, I actually need to. As you get older you get the occasional reminder that you really should take care of yourself, and I've had a few.
Today for instance I've been to give bloods. Three years ago I was 69kg now I'm 82kg and because I've put that weight on so fast after giving up cycling, I've put my health in danger. If you've been slim all your life, then put it on quickly, especially around the waist.....it's not too good. Now my BMI is officially in the naughty zone, and I need to be tested for diabetes because of that. That's a far cry from winning a road race in 2013!

No Gizmo's. I'll know when I can ride

So there we go. I've dragged out the hack and fitted a compact as I'm so weak. The Garmin has been thrown into the back of the cupboard. No one wants to know the daily stats of a fatberg.
For my start back into riding I've chosen the Claydons, Winslow and bloody Pitchcott Hill as my testing ground. Anyone that's raced LVRC will know the area due to the road races that often cover it.
First up is Pitchcott Hill, it's a killer when you're racing up it, but with a compact chainset and a slow twiddle it's easily done. I was grateful for the small tooth count, but it does feel lacking in something, even this unfit. You just sit there. Thing is I was styling it out like I was still fit but the feedback wasn't satisfying. Basically I hate compacts, well for UK use anyway.

Object Of hate

After that it's flat, but it's very windy today. And even more reason to dislike the compact I have on.
I have a 50 up front and a 23 out back, but I can't bring myself to crossover even though you can with these things, I'm still old school. I'm already tempted to re fit the standard as a 39 or 42 is great when the winds a blowing. Guess that's why the call them 'Belgian Compacts'
And another thing new to me for 'just riding' is the use of sports drinks, tablets gels etc when I'd always been a 'Pan Y Agua' man. I do need the help though now.
Anyway the ride went okay, how soon I'll improve after three years off I don't know. I think all muscle memory would have well gone by now.
How soon I return to club riding I don't know either.
Not sure if you could call it muscle memory or not, but at one point I actually reached for the downtube shifter, or where once a downtube shifter would have been. Made me chuckle, I mean that's what you call muscle memory, only it's literally from the last century!
So happy really?. Absolutely no intention of pushing it, I'll take my time. And come Spring 2020 I'll hopefully pin  a number on again. I do know one thing though. If I do make it to that start line in a years time......I will get my arse royally kicked and then handed to me on a plate.

From The Other Side Of The Counter

Weird! Bought my first race bike in 1974 and raced that and a number of others until 2016. The bikes changed on a regular basis over those years, but one thing that didn't was where I bought them from, my local bike shop. Or not so local one when the first closed it's doors.
I was fourteen when I walked into that shop with my paper round money and started a life of cycling. And now just about to turn fifty nine I'm back in the shop, another shop, only on the other side of the counter.
I had three local bike shops to choose from back then. Don Farrel, he had a shop full of lovely bikes, glass cases full of exotic Campagnolo, the latest leather shoes and rows of colourful trade team tops. Then there was Shorter. A great builder and a lovely shop to just look at. Plus he was in favour with some of the big names of that decade...….the big boys shop. Finally there was Birds Of Colindale. Small, a bit messy but it had this fascinating workshop. The other shops didn't seem to have one of these mysterious little rooms, and though you couldn't pass the counter you could often glimpse a chrome spoke or a Super Record hub in this little room. But the big thing for us two scrawny kids was that this man, pockets in the hands of he's brown shop coat actually spoke to us. We felt abelonging ha ha.
Terry asked us what we wanted to do with them bikes, 'race' we said. 'Right then, you need to get the next model up'. 'Then You'll need to join a club'.  'And you'll need to see this man....Gino' I left my cash and saved for two more months. Then one Saturday morning two months later I walked into Birds to collect my Dawes, I handed over my notes and change and just stood there smiling, just gripping the top tube like the pros on the postcards.
'Like it? well I've got something else for you' Terry disappeared into the workshop and re emerged with a set of race wheels.....Fiamme rims on Campagnolo Tipo hubs with Wolber tubular tyres, the old training wheels of the then current Pro Nigel Dean. I was hooked, loyal and raced for the first time that spring.

I don't race and I hardly ride nowadays. My main link to the world of cycling now is working in the local bike shop. Dorvics who have been there trading in bikes for over eighty years.
And wow, how cycling has changed. How the people have changed.
But the one thing I love to try and do is make every new or beginner cyclist feel that feeling I got when I bought my first bike. And like Terry back then, pass all I know onto the folk that walk through the door. But it's a tough shout now, and a teeny weeny bit sad in my eyes. Of course the passion for cycling is still there, though you see it more in the middle age lady who really loves her retro town bike and uses it every day. Rather than the sports cyclist to whom bargains discounts and looks matter the most.
So it's a pleasure when you can engage with someone, and get them on the right bike in the right size and send them out into a life of happy cycling. I want them to feel how I felt back then, and how I felt for all those years after. I want them to simply wheel their bike out and ride and be content, not to say I'm out early to get it out of the way.
Just like Terry helped me forty five years ago.
I feel I've gone full circle now, and I'm seriously as happy as a pig in shit.

As it turned out, Terry in his little shop was a bit of a player. Apparently he was taught he's building skills by the likes of Claud Butler and the other big names in British post war frame building. And later went on to manage a shop rider in the UCI team Birds Of Colindale. Funny how the little shops always turn out to real gems