JOHN WHITNEY THE READER
John Whitney uses lockdown to read classic cycling novel TheRider. What does this 42-year-old book still reveal about what makes cyclists tick?
IFthe worldwide lockdown we’re currently living through has offered anything positive, it’s that it’s given us time to catch up on the things on our ‘to do’ list that have languished there for many years. Catch up on the mustwatch boxset that has always passed you by (hello, TheSopranos), or, for the more ambitious, to learn a new language.
One of the first things I wanted to scrub off my list while being confined to my flat was to finally read the classic cycling novel TheRider, by Dutch author Tim Krabbé.
First published in Krabbé’s native language in 1978, and in English for the first time in 2002, TheRider is the fictional account, based heavily on the author’s own experiences as an amateur racer, of our eponymous hero’s ride in the biggest, toughest race of his season, the mountainous (and again fictional) 137km Tour de Mont Aigoual in southern France. The book is far more than a cult classic – to some it’s the seminal text of road racing. Rapha founder Simon Mottram even credits the book as one the inspirations for his company.
And yet, I have to admit to my shame that it’s sat on my book shelf across numerous cities and apartments I’ve lived in for the best part of a decade. More recently, it travelled to the other side of the world with me on a month-long camper van holiday in New Zealand. This, I thought, was finally the time to read what is, at just 148-pages, a modest undertaking. It never left my rucksack.
I can count the number of fictional books I’ve read on one hand: I’m a news hound and subsist on a restricted diet of current affairs. That said, Lance Armstrong’s first book, It’sNotAboutthe Bike..., is one of the first cycling books I ever read. Once it became clear I wasn’t going to get out of my flat much over the coming months, TheRider would be a welcome escape from the realities of a global pandemic.
One weekend later and I finally cracked it. Of course, it’s brilliant. I devoured it in a couple of sittings, its (largely) first-person narrative pitching perfectly a mixture of dry wit and pathos amid the brutal, fickle world of road racing. In the darkness of life in spring of 2020, it flung me into the thick of a world I know and love so well, when the absence of live racing on my TV was being keenly felt.
What struck me above all, despite 42 years having passed since publication, was how timeless it is. Ignore the real-life references that pepper the prose, such as “the up-and-coming Hinault” and 43-19 being “the gear of champions” and it’s remarkable how little cycling has changed. A newcomer to the sport could learn as much from this near half-century old relic as any modern-day source.
With the help of cycling coach and former England and GB road racer Ben Wilson (personalbestcycling.co.uk), we look at how TheRider still articulates what makes cyclists, at all levels of competition, tick, from why we ride, to the thoughts that hold us back and the lies we tell to console ourselves when we don’t hit our goals.
A LIFE WITHOUT CYCLING IS A LIFE WITHOUT MEANING
TheRider sets out its stall from the start:
“Meyruis, Lozere, June 26, 1977. Hot and overcast. I take my gear out of the car and put my bike together. Tourists and locals are watching from sidewalk cafes. Non-racers. The emptiness of those lives shocks me.”
Who hasn’t been there? Training for a major goal consumes our every waking thought to the point of tunnel vision. To see others going about their daily lives, oblivious to the wonders of the bicycle, you wonder why they even bother getting up in the morning. If only they were in on the secret, we say to ourselves, they’d get it.
BIKE RIDERS ARE A MASS OF CONTRADICTIONS
TheRider encapsulates the hopes and fears, over-confidence and fragile ego and short memories of bike riders. A rider tries to break out of a group early on in the race, gets scoffed at for a brazen, ostentatious move, then moments later the very same rider doing the scoffing repeats the mistake. We pick apart the actions of others, then disregard our own sage advice minutes later in the heat of the moment.
“There is lots of emotion in bike racing,” says Ben Wilson. “It’s easy to let your heart overrule your head and repeat the same mistakes. You’re fuelled by that remote chance the early break may succeed, so you spend more time trying to make it – a vicious cycle.”
THERE’S A REASON CYCLISTS HAVE SHORT MEMORIES
“How the hell do I keep talking myself into racing,” asks the Rider, as he tries to settle into a rhythm on a climb amid a searing pace being set. Who hasn’t asked this question during a race or big gran fondo in the mountains, only to be back on the start line the following year. Why do we talk ourselves into doing something we know hurts so much? Perhaps we just think next time might be different.
“‘You’re only as good as your next race’ – this might not always turn out to be true but it certainly helps get over a defeat,” considers Wilson. “All bike riders are training to lose races and we get really good at it! Races and events are things that really hurt at the time and can make you hate being on the bike but over time, you forget the pain and only remember the good times.”
NOBODY IS EVER SATISFIED WITH HOW THEY’VE TRAINED
“‘Good legs?’ The guy besides me asks. ‘We’ll see. And you?’
He shrugs and starts telling me how little time he has to train. All riders say that, always. As if they’re afraid to be judged by that part of their ability they can actually take credit for.”
Few passages in TheRider ring truer than this. Who doesn’t downplay their chances before a big ride? Talking up your chances is uncharacteristic of the cyclist. Just look at the palaver Simon Yates caused among his rivals heading into the 2019 Giro d’Italia, when talking about how his rivals should feel about riding against him: “I would be scared, I’d be shitting myself.” Yates collapsed early in the race and finished eighth…
This is an extreme, unusual example but merely saying out loud that you’re happy with your training leaves you open to others’ assumption that your performance on a particular day was the absolute best
Look at the palaver Simon Yates caused among his rivals heading into the 2019 Giro d’Italia, when talking about how his rivals should feel about riding against him: “I would be scared, I’d be shitting myself”
“The rider is ready. Every fibre of his body is tensed. The interests at stake here are enormous. He knows the opposition is strong and varied, but he is not afraid... then the traffic light turns green”
you could do. Nobody ever wants to admit that, to themselves or anyone else. Whether it’s true or not, not being happy with your training gives you something of an excuse when you cross the finish line and perhaps motivation during your pursuit to the next goal, in the belief that you could go better next time out.
“No bike rider is honest about their training, ever,” reckons Wilson. “If you’ve done heaps, you tell people you’ve done nothing. If you’ve done nothing, you tell people you are flying.
“Having an excuse ready at the start makes any defeat acceptable and a good performance is a display of how well you have overcome adversity. Simon Yates’ quote is a great example of trying to bluff as well as be funny – it’s a shame it didn’t work out for him.”
EVERY RIDE IS A RACE
“The rider is ready. Every fibre of his body is tensed. The interests at stake here are enormous. He knows the opposition is strong and varied, but he is not afraid. In his mind, all is absolute silence, tension, certainty.
“Then the traffic light turns green.”
In one of the many detours of TheRider, where Krabbé cuts away from the Tour de Mont Aigoual to his life as a cyclist, here he imagines his Amsterdam commute as a full-throttle race. His main rival is a Volkswagen, which he beats to the tramline for a 100,000 guilder premium, before moving on to double his prize by catching a woman on a bike with a child on the back.
“No way he can ever beat this woman. But this rider has surprised the sporting world before, and this time he gives it every milli-billimeter he’s got.”
On the bike, our whole world is our sporting arena, whether it’s racing friends to the next town sign, chasing a Strava segment that matters only to you or weaving between the cars on your morning ride to work.
“Everything is a race – especially if you have good form,” says Wilson. “The winter racers who put the half-wheel on [edge ahead of the bunch or small group] from November to March, the guy who attacks as soon as the chequered flag is dropped. Riders who are convinced they ‘were winning until 200m to go’ – everyone wants to put a positive spin on their riding and will take any victory, no matter how small or imaginary.”
SOMETIMES YOU JUST WANT TO BE PUT OUT OF YOUR MISERY
Desperately clinging onto the wheels towards the summit of the final climb of the race, the Rider prays for outside intervention to end his suffering.
“If only I’d come down with a puncture. How often, fighting away in a long-beaten peloton that nonetheless lay down a hellish tempo I could barely follow, have I longed for a flat tyre? A puncture, permission from beyond to stop the dying.”
Like the way cyclists play down the extent of their own training, wanting to climb off in a race or event, but being unable to make the choice of our own volition, is a familiar feeling to anyone pushing themselves to the outer edges of their limits. We so badly want the pain to end, but without outside interference making the choice for us, living with the decision to climb off is a worse punishment by far.
“Many is the number of times you are strong enough to just about hold on but not weak enough to have been dropped
already,” says Wilson. “You’ll be hoping that anything happens to put you out of your misery – a puncture, crash, level crossing. Then you get back on and suddenly feel okay, until the next climb or crosswind. It happens in training and it happens in races. Finding yourself in a group with a strong rider while having no legs is one of the worst experiences you’ll ever have.”
WHEN YOU’RE RIDING HARD, DEEP THOUGHT IS ELUSIVE
“On a bike your consciousness is small. The harder you work, the smaller it gets…. a pounding riff from a song, a bit of long division that starts over and over, a magnified anger at someone, is enough to fill your thoughts.”
So reckons the Rider in another of his segues. Cycling, at lower speeds, can certainly be a time for thought and contemplation but hard effort does seem to limit our powers for it. Any thoughts that do spring to mind are generally repetitive, churlish and unreasonable – thoughts that are somehow not quite who we are.
THE STORIES WE TELL TO MAKE OURSELVES FEEL BETTER
Whether we consciously become aware that we’re going to lose a race, or are passed by a rider on our way up the final climb of the Etape du Tour, we can come round to the reality of the situation by inventions in our mind. Eighty three kilometres into the Tour de Mont Aigoual, the Rider is easily passed by the mysterious rider from Cycles
Goff and can’t help but imagine this rider’s future career.
“Even though he’ s been riding solo for the last hour, he’ s sitting easy. Class. You know what, let’ s make him 18 years of age and the future winner of oodles of stages in the Tour de France. This was his amateur career, about which he never went into detaillateron.”
And so the fact that they’ve just come streaking past you suddenly feels just that bit easier to take.
“There’s always a reason that someone has beaten you,” says Wilson, “and it’s generally never to do with your own physical condition or preparation. Your opponent has probably not done a turn on the front all day and is a full-time bike rider, you’ve had a busy week, didn’t sleep well, felt bad after breakfast, tyres felt soft, needed a different gear, the list is endless.”
AT A CERTAIN LEVEL, IT TAKES UNIMAGINABLE VOLUMES OF WORK TO EKE OUT SMALL GAINS
We won’t spoil the end of the book for the uninitiated, but suffice to say, after the finish line, when the Rider looks on at the race for 11th place, you detect it’s with no little melancholy. “Five years of racing have taken me from that sprint to this curb ,” he says. Cycling is tough sport. You can think of gains in your level as a sharp improvement, but as diminishing returns thereafter. You get to a certain point where, however you might try, just maintaining your level is the best you can hope for.
“One of the frustrations people often feel is that after the initial steep improvement curve, it flattens out and all of a sudden the gains just aren’t as big as they used to be,” says Wilson. “Doubling your training time doesn’t double the gains – and this is so hard for people to handle sometimes. I liken it to boiling an egg, you get a decent boiled egg after three minutes. Boiling it for 30 doesn’t make it 10 times better.”