It was past Loch Katrine, just on the rise out of
Stronachlacher when we came across two cyclists who were stranded at the side
of the road with a puncture. I was out with a couple of club mates on a ride
and we stopped to see if the guys were OK. Its super bad etiquette to pass a
fellow cyclist on the side of the road. It turned out that one of them had a
puncture but no repair kit. We helped him get the tyre off the rim and tried to
find the puncture, in order to patch it. No luck. Dave threw him a new inner
tube, the guy was reticent to take it, but Dave would hear none of it. The guy
wanted to take Daves phone number and address with the promise that he’d drop
him in the money or replace the tube.
‘Don’t worry about it, mate’ Dave said, with a wave of his
hand ‘Just pass it down the line’.
And with that we were off.
Todays stage was flat and relatively short at ‘only’ a
hundred miles. However, we got our first taste of the Mistral today. It mostly
seemed to be in our face and it made the stage harder than we had anticipated.
When our expectations of an easy stage were dashed, it makes the stage even
harder. It's evidence, if ever evidence were needed, that there are no easy
stages. Just some stages that are harder than others.
Cycling is a metaphor for life in so many ways, and today I
was taught another lesson.
The greatest achievement is not always in winning the race
or being the fastest or strongest. Cycling is all about suffering and there can
be heroism in that suffering, regardless of where you finish in the race.
The group of riders has definitely split into a number of
sections. There are the racing snakes who are determined to rip up the course
and get home as fast as possible, bagging as many Strava King of Mountains as
possible. There are those who are determined to get home as fast as they can,
but not destroy themselves in the process and there are the plodders (and I, in
no way, mean that pejoratively); those who are just trying to get round, who
have probably not done as much training as they would have liked or have
perhaps underestimated exactly what they have taken on. For the plodders every
day is a struggle, and the temptation to throw in the towel is ever present.
Everyone will go through a dark day on this trip. However, the plodders dark
days are darker and more frequent (sometimes they come round daily).
I rode with one of the plodders today. Ally is a great guy
but he is suffering. Every day has been a struggle and I said to him last night
that I would ride with him today and try and help him round. I have been in his
position before, and its no fun.
So, I pulled Ally along for a hundred odd miles. It perhaps
took me an hour or so longer to get home that it would otherwise, but that is
nothing in the grand scheme of things. But I was rewarded with a front row seat
of a show of great guts and determination, which was quite humbling. He kept
turning those pedals when I know he was hurting and in a dark place, he could
have climbed into the broom wagon at any time, but he kept on keeping on. He
might not realise it, but there is glory and heroism in that kind of suffering and I admire that far more than any king of the mountain.
Truly, je te tire mon chapeau.
He tried to thank me afterwards, but there is honestly no
need.
Just pass it down the line.
Tomorrow sees us reach the foothills of the Pyrenees. We haven’t
had a difficult stage yet, and tomorrows wouldn’t be classed as one of the
really tough stages. However stage 8 and 9 see us in the Pyrenees proper. That’s
when the fun, and by fun I mean suffering, will really start.
From Montpellier,
N
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