Why Cycling?

In all honesty it was for rehabilitation of an ACL/cartilage injury I acquired in rugby and my boyfriend (James) pestered me to start cycling for ages! When we got together, I swore I would never ride a bike… it wasn’t fun! Little did I know I’d become hooked!

It’s a funny story really, I went to uni with James but I didn’t know him until after the first semester. The cyclists were few and far between, but they stuck together like glued on eyelashes and a lot of other students thought it was hilarious... a group of lads attached at each other’s hips, shaved legs and calf length socks with shorts, even when not in lycra! You could see them coming a mile off.

Once James and I became acquainted (that’s a story for another time!) it soon turned into a relationship and I was envious I couldn’t train so much or quite so hard due to a rugby related knee injury and then a broken shoulder (in my first match back)! I spent 6 days a week in the gym building muscle, preparing for my second return in 2 seasons, watching what I ate to make sure I was almost over feeding (I struggle to gain muscle/fat without shovelling in calories) and struggling to down vomit worthy protein drinks. Along with drinking a glorious amount of booze.. us rugby lot are ‘ardnuts - nah not really.. biggest lightweight around, but equally cheapest night out for drinking so I can’t complain!

Anyway, to the point, James and his pals were due to go on a ride with Team Onform from our Uni, one of the lecturers was involved with the team and at the beginning of each Uni year they did a café ride. James and the lads convinced me to go along, it would be easy, nothing too fast and being the sucker I am for training I agreed!

Admittedly I’d forgotten I hadn’t ridden a bike in 10+ years and I'd never used cleats, but that’s ok because the boys put me on a bike many sizes too big, gave me borrowed kit (literally everything I was wearing belonged to someone else) and clipped me in with cleats, which made me feel like I was screwed into a torture chamber. None the less we were on our way! I don’t remember what I expected to be totally honest, I had no perception of what riding a bike in a big group was like or the speed at which we would go and because of that I just got on with it. I wasn’t worried that we were riding in pairs in a group of 15+ (pre-covid don’t panic!), I didn’t even know what speed we were going and all I got told was ‘sit close to the wheel, don’t touch the brakes and look at the bum in front’ so I did as I was told and had no problem doing it because I knew I’d get cake – I am very much like a puppy, feed me treats and I will do as I’m told. I had also forgotten to ask how far we were riding, turns out slightly over 30km’s which for someone who couldn’t remember how to ride a bike, was actually a fair distance. Oh! And I did forget to unclip one foot at the café and fell over, breaking my little finger.. I am a delicate soul.

So, that’s where it all started.. I showed ‘talent’ on the bike in strength (held the wheel well and I didn’t get dropped.. not sure how to be honest!), I guess I was just super fit from rugby and that transferred to relatively strong on the bike (when I actually started training, I can confirm rugby fitness is NOTHING like what you need on a bike) and I then got pressured into doing a sprint on the turbo and with owning big watts comes responsibility, in the form of using what I was given!

I went on to borrow a bike off of James' parents and rode it maybe once a week for a year, sometimes not at all! I just wasn’t that into it, probably because I got on the bike when I was angry/frustrated/stressed and would ride as hard as I could around ‘little loop’ - a 35minute loop near Uni. It wasn’t until a year and a half later, in the first lockdown that I actually put some effort into riding and started training and I realised I did have some sort of talent on the bike. It may not be world class champion talent, but it allows me to ride with the lads (fwends) that race and not get dropped, sometimes make James work in a sprint, enjoy dropping the homies for a brief 5 seconds, it also brought home a couple of wins in some short crits and it allows me to enjoy the bike without feeling like I’m being tortured (unless you make me ride over 90km, although in saying that I can now do 130km comfortably – if I eat well).

Rides bikes, eat cake, be happy :)