Ride Nine — The One Before the Day Started

Most of this month’s rides have been the last thing I did with the day. This one was the first.

Ride nine of the Cycle the Month Challenge for Prostate Cancer UK was 18.71km in 1 hour and 4 minutes, with 28m of climbing. Out along the water in Portsmouth at eight in the morning, before a day with colleagues and clients.

Out Before the Day Started

I was only out that early because of where I had slept. I had come down the night before and stayed in the roof top tent, which meant I woke up already where I needed to be, with a couple of hours and a bike and nothing else booked into them.

That is the whole trick of it. There was no drive down that morning, no hotel car park, no getting ready to travel — just unzipping the tent and going. The day started on my terms rather than the diary’s: no emails yet, nothing to react to, nothing already running late.

The route was as simple as it gets: down the western side of Portsea Island to the city and straight back the way I came. Same start, same finish, no navigating. On a morning like that, riding the same stretch twice is no hardship — the light had shifted by the time I turned round, and the way back looked like a different piece of coast.

28m of climbing over nearly nineteen kilometres tells you how flat it was. Level the whole way, the tide well out, mudflats and seaweed stretching off towards a far shore sitting low under a completely clear sky.

I arrived at the day’s first meeting having already done something. That is a better start than any amount of preparation on the train.

The Longest Stop of the Month

Then I did something I have not done once this month. I stopped properly.

A flat white and a bacon roll at a picnic table by the water, bike leaned up beside me, helmet on the table, sun coming in low and bright across the grass. A swan wandered past close enough that I stopped chewing to watch it go.

Every other ride this month has been a distance to cover in the time available. This one had a proper break in the middle of it, and I sat there far longer than the ride needed me to.

It is worth saying that the numbers suffer for it. An hour and four minutes for 18.71km is not a quick ride, and a good chunk of that hour was spent at a wooden table doing nothing at all.

Best decision I made all day.

And Then a Coffee at the End of It

The day finished with a coffee with the friend I wrote about on the fundraising page.

When I signed up for this challenge I had no personal reason for choosing it. I picked it because prostate cancer affects an enormous number of men and we still barely talk about it. Since then I have become close friends with someone who has been through it themselves, and who has trusted me with some of what that was actually like — the uncertainty, the difficult moments, the fear that comes with the word cancer attached to your own name.

They came through it. That is the part worth saying first.

So sitting opposite them at the end of a day I had started on the bike, riding for exactly this, was not something I had planned and not something I will forget in a hurry. It puts a person behind the reason, which is a very different thing from a cause.

A morning ride, a day of good work, and that coffee at the end of it. There are worse Wednesdays.

Still Kilometres to Find

There is not much of the month left, and this was a short ride by the standards of the last few.

It counts the same. 18.71km before a working day, on a morning I could just as easily have spent driving down the A3, and I would take another one exactly like it tomorrow.

Every kilometre this month, morning or evening, is raising money for Prostate Cancer UK — funding research, raising awareness and supporting men and families dealing with a disease that affects far too many people. The last few days of the month are the ones that decide the total.

Nine rides down. And the best-timed one yet.