Pain and Humiliation

At least once a week, I drive to a nondescript house in suburban South London, take off my clothes and pay an attractive young woman to inflict pain and humiliation on me.

In case you think this is some Max Mosely-style middle-aged sordidness, I should point out that these are visits to my osteopath -- a whippet-thin, sub-3.30 marathon runner with astonishingly strong hands and an ability to find the part which hurts the most and concentrate all her efforts on it, which suggests the CIA may have missed a trick by not recruiting her for Guantanamo duty.

I'm being treated for what I claim is a ski-ing injury to my shoulder, and what she says is the inevitable result of 20 years of poor posture, insufficient stretching and general laziness.  Did I mention the humiliation?

I've written before about how  pro-cyclists exist on the fine line dividing superfit athletes and physical wrecks.  Even rank amateurs like me suffer for our sport -- overdeveloped calves and thighs, poor core strength and useless upper bodies.

There's an old bloke I sometimes see out on the road -- well into his seventies -- who has an impressive on-bike position over the drop bars of his modern carbon machine.  Unfortunately, he maintains almost exactly the same position -- hunched forward, flat back and crouched legs-- when he gets off and walks into the cafe.  Clearly his spine gave up on standing straight a few years ago.  I have seen my future.

My own personal Ole Kaare Foli has so far not banned me from riding my bike. But she has insisted that I take regular breaks while riding to perform swivelling shoulder movements and dangle my right-arm loosely at my side like a chimp.

So if you see someone riding a red Casati round Richmond Park looking like Tarzan's Cheetah, give me a break. I need all the support I can get.

Winter Draws On

Proper winter weather in London this morning -- gritting lorries out, ice on car windscreens and barely warming up on the six miles to work. Our Summer visitors -- the hordes of fair-weather cyclists, seem finally to have taken the hint. The number of bikes on the road today was about a quarter what it was two or three months ago.

I know we're supposed to be pleased when bike use rises, but I can't help thinking that it's not always a positive thing. It may make other road users more aware of bikes; or it may just annoy them even more. And some of our Summer bretheren do themselves -- and us -- no favours.

I'm not sure who I dislike more: the ones who just sail through red lights as if they're exempt from traffic laws; or those who stop at the lights, but force their way past you to the front of the queue then delay everyone by wobbling off at barely walking pace.

My favourites are those well-bred young women -- my commuting route takes me through Sloane Square and Knightsbridge -- who carve through the traffic on shopping bikes, wearing flip-flops and floral dresses. They combine impressive straight-line speed with a recklessness more suited to the last 100 metres of a Tour stage sprint finish. It's like watching Djamolidine Abdoujaparov, but dressed from the Boden catalogue.

If we could get some of them into GB kit and swap their Pashley's for a decent track bike, they'd give Vicky Pendleton a run for her money.

Anyway, the onset of cold weather has sent them back to the Picadilly Line and their 4X4's, leaving the roads to the grumpy hardcore.

If you're still out there, chapeau, take care and make the most of it -- it's the Winter Solstice in a week or so, and it's all downhill from then on.

The story so far

It was a pair of eyes that started it. That began my obsession. They were streaked with red, blank with pain and despair, not the eyes of a sportsman. The face they stared from was coated with dirt, blood and spittle; the brows were caked and ghostly.

I’d seen such eyes in photographs before: in the faces of frontline soldiers after days of battle and nights without sleep; rescue workers after hours scrabbling through rubble; miners back on the surface after ten hours struggling at the peculiar hell of a coal face. Never on a man who rode a pushbike for a living.

The eyes were focused far away. Somewhere back down the road – kilometres of bone-snapping, teeth-rattling dirt and cobbles; the farm roads of Northern France, which grind down, then batter and break, men and their fragile machines.

The owner of the face, and those eyes, was no ordinary bike rider, in no ordinary race. He was Sean Kelly, the hard man’s hard man, an Irish farm boy who converted his unique talent into Continental superstardom. His unique talent was suffering – longer and harder than anyone else. And he was riding Paris-Roubaix, otherwise known as L’Enfer Du Nord, the Hell of the North, Queen of the Classics – the world’s toughest bike race. What one leading race organiser accurately called “the last trace of madness in modern cycling.”

I saw that photograph more than 20 years ago, and I’ve been hooked ever since.