At an event over the winter, someone asked me the question, “What’s the best ride you’ve ever done?” I started to tell them about one of those race days when the harder you ride, the harder you can ride. You set out going faster than you thought possible, and just keep going. And....
“Sorry to interrupt,” he said, “but I meant best as in most pleasurable – a really nice day out. And don’t tell me any more about time trialling.”
There is such a day that stands out. It was a season when I was racing quite seriously, but it was just a recovery ride on an easy day. It wasn’t anywhere special, just a casual, computer-free amble around the local lanes. But it’s the ride I always look back to as simple cycling perfection.
Michael Hutchinson is a writer, journalist and former professional cyclist. His Dr Hutch columns appears in every issue of Cycling Weekly magazine.
It was June. I’d guess it was 21-22°C. There was a gentle breeze, warm spring sunshine. If there was any traffic I don’t remember it. And the whole ride was just a delight – the sensations of it were just like having the best ever race-day legs, but without any pressure to use them. The road unrolled beneath my wheels effortlessly and I felt like I could do anything. It was like I’d peaked for it.
I regret the whole experience, obviously. Anyone would. When you set a monumental personal best, you spend the rest of your life failing to measure up to it. Like a personal best, I keep trying to work out what was different about that day, and how I recapture it.
It wasn’t the route. I’ve ridden the roads many times since, and occasionally retraced the exact route. It’s fine. But it’s no different from most of the other places I ride – there are potholes, the occasional pretty village, and the standard-issue homicidal taxi drivers from Royston.
Nor, I think, was it the weather. In the intervening decade and a bit we’ve had one or two nice days. Some saw good rides, but as many saw bad. And it’s not traffic – the first lockdown in 2020 had the roads at their quietest, and that was nice, but not magical.
On the other hand, the lack of a computer might have been part of it. I’m constitutionally incapable of abandoning the computer altogether, but every so often I forget to charge it. Then I suddenly start having a nice time, and spend the next week telling people how great data- free cycling is. (Of course, I charge it as soon as I get home. I might get some good form by accident, and if that happened I’d want to know about it.) But I’ve let a lot of batteries go flat, and nirvana does not automatically follow.
Probably what’s missing most of all is that I was in very good shape. I loved being so strong that I could ride easy and still make an average speed of 33kph. However much I liked my ride, I’m not doing 500km a week all winter to prepare for a two-hour recovery spin in June. There are people close to me who’ve accepted a lot of cycling lunacy from me over the years who would finally feel no choice but to intervene.
The only way to make sense of the whole thing is to decide that it can’t have happened, at least not quite as I remember. It can’t have been that good. It must have been an above average ride that I’ve spent 15 years mythologising. Maybe I’d come out of a really hard block of training and was just demob happy.
I am determined to make myself believe this. If I can eliminate this rogue data point, every other ride I go on will be just a little bit better. Then I can pick a new, much more modest “best ride” to look fondly back to.
At least until I have to eliminate that one too.
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