Tales of the winter rider

It’s still dark outside. It might be wet or windy. It is definitely cold. Your bed is warm. For any normal person, there is no decision to be made, just a flicker of consciousness before turning over, pulling up the covers and sinking back into luxurious slumber.

But you are no normal person. You are a cyclist. Whereas for normal people a Sunday morning in winter is a good reason to make like a mammal that hibernates, you are stealing from your cosy nest. Stealthily, so as not to disturb the normal people you live with.

Cyclists are covert operatives, undercover athletes. Our plans are semi-secret; our rendezvous with other riders in the pale dawn are in obscure locations, unfrequented byways. We keep such odd hours that we are near-nocturnal. Riding out through the suburbs before daybreak, we are as likely to encounter a fox in the road as a car. The fox regards you with bold curiosity, recognising you perhaps as some kind of renegade relative, a slightly deranged distant cousin.

The cold creeps up on you. At first, it hits you only in the face, like an application of witch-hazel, tautening your skin with its sudden astringency. The rest of you, body and limbs and extremities, are so bundled up and wrapped in layers of form-fitting fabric, that it becomes almost impossible to summon up the sensation of cycling in summer: what it feels like to ride in shorts and short-sleeved jersey demands a conceptual leap beyond what the mind is capable of on a dark winter’s day.

There is no real moment of dawn, just a gradual adjustment of brightness and contrast. In summer, there is a distinct shift from night to light, from monochrome to colour; but in winter, in the country, everything is dun, a restrained palette that runs the gamut from khaki to brown: as though nature itself is in camouflage, hunkered down in its bunker waiting for this cold war to thaw.

But for you, rider, one compensation of the seasonal dearth is that your views are unobscured. In high summer, these high-hedged lanes are almost claustrophobic. But now, you can see every contour of the hill you’re climbing. When you reach the top, there is no foliage on the trees to hide the sight of the next ridge across the valley. Only a clammy morning mist softens the vista.

Taken from  http://www.rapha.cc/index.php?page=599