Where's my motivation?

If you venture out into the countryside early on Sunday morning, you will no doubt encounter large numbers of cyclists. You may even be held up in your dash to the in-laws for lunch by a range of body shapes, mostly men, mostly of a certain age, almost all of them dressed in tight fitting and brightly coloured lycra. Their shiny carbon-fibre steeds will have cost well over £1000 and weigh next to nothing. They flock to places like Box Hill and a number of other well known landmarks to pit themselves against nature and take on their own best times and average speeds, before hurrying home to their neglected wives and children, back to being dutiful fathers and husbands.

As well as the unflattering clothing and shiny bikes, the most common feature of these heroes of the road is less obviously discernible at first. If you pass them in your car you may not even notice their faces, etched with a zealous determination that can only be described as ‘religious’. There is something in the cocktail of suffering; dragging oneself out of bed early on a Sunday morning, particularly when the weather means most sane people just wrap the duvet more tightly around them as the cyclist tiptoes from the house in his clacking hard-bottomed shoes; the clean, fresh air of the countryside blowing away the filth of exhaust-fume choked city life; the exquisite agony of self-inflicted suffering. Explain otherwise why cyclists go out of their way to find hills to climb, taking on the twin challenges of gravity and wind-resistance, the least helpful force of nature, to increase the difficulty of the ride.

It is no co-incidence that these modern zealots seek salvation through suffering, it fulfills a deep-seated instinctive need for pain and suffering to redeem us from our wrong-doings and to raise us to righteousness; think Jesus being nailed to a cross to die in agony to save us from our sins; think monks in the middle-ages wearing hair shirts to chafe their skin to punish themselves for impure thoughts; think supplicants walking hundreds of miles across northern Spain to Santiago di Compostella.

England is a relative newcomer to the religion of cycling; few of us know much about Tom Simpson who cycled himself to death on the brutal, unforgiving slopes of Mont Ventoux. For some, first memories of cycling are of Chris Boardman and his Olympic heroics and his records in “the hour’. (Which, incidentally is one of the toughest events on the planet. A lone cyclist travels as far as he can in an hour and if you really want to understand the levels of pain a human being can inflict upon himself, you should read some of the accounts of riders who have done this. If you get even a mild thrill from slamming your fingers repeatedly in a drawer, you might be able to glimpse the levels of pain these self-harmers can bring down upon themselves.) For most of us, and for the hordes of Sunday morning lycra-boys, it is Sirs Chris and Brad or maybe Lance the drug-cheat that have inspired and awed us into the cult of self-imposed suffering.

Italy, France and Spain, perhaps because of those countries stronger ties to the Catholic faith, with its fascination with confession, abstinence and absolution through penance, have long been the spiritual homes of cycling. (With apologies to Belgium) Maybe it’s just that the hills there are bigger, the views better, but I think it’s more than that. You only have to watch the Tour de France on Bastille Day. Each year a deranged Frenchman takes off ahead of the peloton, making the ride even harder than it already is as he ploughs a lone channel through still air rather than be wafted along in the slipstream of 150 others. As the day nears its inevitable conclusion, his face contorts in pain and every sinew strains as he endeavours to stay ahead as the peloton gradually reels him. The crushing inevitability must break his heart as he is swallowed up and spat out just yards from the finish. Why would you inflict such public mental and physical agony on yourself unless you thought the cleansing flames would do anything less than forge your soul anew and guarantee eternal happiness and salvation?

There is a chapel in the Italian Alps above Lake Como. The chapel of the Madonna del Ghisallo. It is decorated with bikes and jerseys donated over the years by the great and the good of cycling; Hinault, Indurain, Binda, Pantani, Cippolini, Bartali. By the alter is a prayer which reads:

O mother of the Lord Jesus

Keep us pure and fervent in our souls

Brave and strong in our bodies

Keep us from danger in training as well as racing

We ask you to make the bike an instrument of brotherhood and friendship

Which will serve to lift us closer to God.

Outside the same chapel, there is a large bronze statue. Two cyclists, one his arm raised in triumph, the other fallen to the ground, writhing in despair. It bears the inscription;

“God created the bicycle as an instrument of effort and exultation on the arduous road of life”

So is this my motivation? Am I just another zealot looking for a cause? Or am I just impetuous and a bit competitive and have I just got in out of my depth. We’ll see.

In the meantime, the good news is that the avalanches and flooding in the Pyrenees are now under control and most of the mountain passes are open, my bike is clean and has new rubber, all I have to do now is go and do it. I’ll try to do another post on Friday at the end of day 1.

Don’t forget to make a donation to Great Ormond St and thanks if you already have. I am always amazed and humbled by people’s generosity.