Stravavarius

Just six or seven weeks ago we were seeing our grandchildren frequently and I was regularly supping with my friends and going to church.  On the Saturday we went out on Helen’s splendid all day ride to Fulham Palace, an interlude from building ourselves up for Tim’s trip to Los Picos, which in turn would prepare us for our ride up Alpe d’Huez, after which we hoped the Dieppe Raid would be a doddle.  The next day I went with friends to Manchester's Curry Mile before mixing with 75,000 strangers to watch the Manchester Derby; I was worried that I had booked cycling holidays that meant I would miss two cup finals as my team unexpectedly took a turn for the better.  They played a game on the Thursday behind locked doors but that was in another country and besides .....

Now I am busier than any of our younger family can credit catching up with jobs put aside and life is a day to day business.  My hope is that the supermarket packer who deals with our delivery will one day learn the difference between eating and cooking apples; the daily news is unreal until the statistics involve someone you know, as they did last week, and then the proximity of mortality makes you realise it’s not all just a strange dream.  Cycling almost daily keeps me sane (ish) and fit.  Sometimes it feels like a chore when I start, especially if I leave Maggie behind at home, but it takes only ten minutes before all I hear is the hiss of the tyres on the road and today’s song in my head, setting a rhythm I can try to keep up.  This morning I climbed Pine Walk to Non Piu Andrai from the Marriage of Figaro.  I sailed down Holly Lane with the wind in my ever-lengthening hair and the magnificent opening of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in my head and the opening riff to Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water got me up Grove Lane.

If you ignore the tragedy, there is much to like.  So little traffic that after a quick check you can smoothly swerve away from pedestrians or potholes.  The weather has been kind and there is a new camaraderie amongst cyclists, who almost to a person return a brief nod or a hand signal, sometimes with enthusiasm; hang on, chaps, we are English!  Cycling solo means you can go at your own pace; I was never one for chatting on the road anyway.  But I did not realise how much I would miss lunch in the pub and cake in the cafe, and the chat that went with that.

The least known war memorial in London, on Verdun Avenue, was never busy in the old world

With little else to think of on the road, Strava has changed its role in my life.  Long ago, in March, I used it merely to record the distance I had covered but now I am in danger of enslavement.  Because it can provide a measure of my increasing fitness, it encourages me to ride the same routes.  It has got me setting a distance target for each month and I was so close to making April’s target that I very nearly went out a second time at ten minutes to midnight, just to ride around the block and cross the line.

I have failed to master it properly but it is my only companion when Maggie does not ride with me.  I measure my effort in distance but its graph shows hours spent in the saddle.  Thus April’s curve disappointingly showed me doing worse than in March even though I had ridden a greater mileage; this was because it took me five hours less to complete the greater distance.  Another conundrum; as I pedal down empty hills as fast as my nerve will allow, I improve my average speed.  Obviously, I have to climb an uphill to “earn” a downhill cruise, but is it faster for a cyclist, unlike a runner, to ride a hilly route rather than a flat one?  Unable to iron out the North Downs, I can make no true comparison, but I wonder, if solo riding continues (and it may well have to do for us over seventies) if I can “cheat” by planning routes which go up the dip slope and down the scarp.

Time to spray the chain and check the tyres, Banstead and Farthing Down and Caterham-on-the Hill await my daily visit.  I’ll pass Ray and Chris’ house and as always wave at them in their three month isolation as I go by.  I know by heart every worsening pothole, every little sharp incline, every closed public loo and every deserted coffee stop and pub.  Still, I may be lucky and pass another Sou’Wester; so far, Mark (twice, each time on a bike) and Steve (he was on foot).  Then there was the chap who waved so enthusiastically that he may well have been a Wayfarer.  Sorry, whoever you were, but I was being driven relentlessly up Farthing Down by Jimi Hendrix in pursuit of a better Strava time.