Le Tour de Huddersfield

The town lies below me in the valley, a star-shape of grey slate and stone framed by the green hills. I’m anonymous in the peleton, hidden away by my team. The break-away at the front is just for show, and the task of the moment is a safe, high-speed descent to the ring road and into town. The wind, loud in my ears, almost drowns out the noise of the crowd.

I glimpse flags and faces through the pack of riders. Hunched over the bars and hiding in the slipstream of the bikes ahead of me, I rest my legs for the climb that I know will come all too soon. It’s a climbing day. It’s not the Pyrenees, no, but the laws of physics and human biology dictate that I will spend much more time going up than going down.

All too soon, I’m on my way back out of the town. The climb starts gently enough, a smooth incline waking up the muscles for the torture that lies ahead. The gap between one bike and another grows, centimetre by centimetre as the strain begins to tell. The nonchalant smiles of the easy descent have been replaced with grim expressions of concentration.  A nod from a cyclist in the same shirt as mine gives me the signal. He starts to pull me through the pack. It’s time to attack. I increase my effort, refusing to look at the hill rearing up like a dragon ahead of me.

In a matter of minutes I am at the head of the peleton with my team-mate and we set off after the doomed break-away, a ragged quartet already in our field of vision. I enter a tunnel, a tunnel of focus and faces, head down, rhythmic, welcoming the pain in my legs and the screams of my muscles. I’m not faster or fitter, but I can take the pain better than some. The break-away riders fall away dispirited in my wake, mere chip papers fluttering in the gutter.

The noise of the blood rushing through my veins reaches a crescendo like the end of a symphony, but there is a final flourish of the timpani as the hill turns a corner and gets steeper still. My calf muscles threaten a strike, but I see a red banner which means the end is close, and laugh my way home along the last undulating kilometre. My team-mate waves me on, with a ‘job done’ look of satisfaction on his face.

When I cross the finish line I almost fall off my bike at the sudden loss of forward momentum. I’m instantly surrounded by a crowd of reporters and TV cameras, my precious air breathed by people who need it less than me.

Somehow I find the strength to open the garage and put my bike away.

“How was your ride?” says my wife. “Who came to lunch today?”

“Please,” I say, legs trembling. “I need a moment. Everywhere you go in Huddersfield it’s nothing but bloody hills.”