I've never been competitive but have seen cycling from many angles.
I had a bike as a kid but learned to ride late and never did much on it other than rolling around the village with mates.
I bought an Orange Clockwork in my late teens as MTBs were the default choice, however never rode it much; probably because I was too weak and unskilled to make much use of it off-road, while on-road it was unsurprisingly lacklustre on its default knobbly tyres.
The fire was lit under my arse when I moved to Oxford for uni and bought a tatty old 501 10sp road bike from a fellow student; which opened up the joys of cycling in the novelty of a relatively tolerant environment and the utility it could afford.
The next year I bought a new Giant OCR aluminium road bike and put (relatively speaking) a lot of miles on it whilst still in the city for both utility and leisure.
Once uni ended and I moved back home I lost the love as utility use was limited and I don't much like cycling on the roads in this part of the world.
I did get a hybrid to keep at my now-ex's in Oxford, then when I moved in with her the Giant went to Oxford and the hybrid got sold to a mate (I got sick of fixing punctures, which to be fair weren't the bike's fault).
Soon after the OCR's frame cracked and it was replaced with a Boardman Team Carbon; which was great for leisure but by this point I was doing the shops on foot as it had no luggage capacity and I didn't want to leave it locked up outside. I opened a Strava account, chased PBs and became concerned with heat rates and average speeds...
2020 arrived and with it the lust for a steel gravel bike; the hunger for the format driven by a desire for utility in the unfolding apocalypse, the appeal of getting away from dickhead drivers and into nature - aided and abetted by the slew of pro-gravel marketing at the time.
The frame material choice arose from increasing disillusionment with the integrity of the industry and whispered evidence on the net of catastrophic failures of CFRP bike (particularly steerer tubes / forks); bringing to the forefront of my thoughts, and reinforcing all I'd been previously taught about the behaviour of composites.
My wish arrived in the form of my
Genesis Croix de Fer; being lucky enough to score one at a great price just before everything dried up and the world descended into lockdown. Existential dread and obviously failing relationship notwithstanding the summer of 2020 was incredible - alone in the city with day after day spent exploring the deserted roads outside in the glorious, near-perpetual sun.
3k miles in the Genesis' saddle over that summer completely sold me on the format and so ended my time as a "road" cyclist; the Boardman (despite being a great bike in its own right) seeing very few rides subsequently and being sold some time later.
The Genesis marked a return to steel; having come full-circle from the bikes I'd known in the beginning via a route of unquestioning, marketing-driven subservience to the "frame-material de-jour"... and with it the start of using my brain to understand and select what I actually valued in a bike - not what some marketing muppet wanted to sell me.
Covid also saw the acquisition of a couple of freebies; most notably my
Raleigh Routier which taught me the value having something almost un-nickable that I'm comfortable leaving locked up anywhere, as well as the easy-rolling joy of fixing up something that, without my intervention would surely have ended up in the scrap.
Post-covid-utopia I moved back in with my mother, which was a hard pill to swallow for us both. I tried to remain active but struggled to find the motivation to go out for the sake of it; hitting a local low of 700 miles per year.
In an effort to give myself some reason to get out I bought my
Fuji Touring - a tatty, neglected, bodged steel tourer intended as a utility hack to travel to the next town for shopping since anxiety precluded the use of the Genesis. Much time and effort was put into this bike; in the name of making it both serviceable and fit for the task in hand.
I owe the Fuji for its part in helping extract my head from my arse and keep cycling when all felt lost. It taught me about bar-end shifters and was my first proper, functional utility bike once a pair of Ortlieb back rollers had been hung off it. For the time being it remains my utility hack having covered a little shy of 8k miles in my ownership - which has really ramped up since I moved back to Oxford a year or so ago.
Summer 2023 saw the purchase of my
Brompton; which helped me hold a job at the end of what had become an increasingly abhorrent and utterly soul-destroying commute. A job that got me out of a village I hate and back to a city I love, that was often my only source of meaningful social interaction and helped me save towards escape; ultimately allowing me to get a mortgage.
The bike turned my commute from an exercise in suppressing my utter misery and incandescent rage to an often-wonderful mosey along the tow paths; allowing me to connect with the city and its inhabitants in a way I never could have in the car and giving me another opportunity to escape the misery of home whilst spending more time in the saddle.
As much as it remains a petulant, frustrating, contrarian little b*stard, it's probably no great exaggeration to suggest that this bike may well have saved my life.
November 2023 saw the purchase of my
Ragley; a steel hardtail snaffled at an unmissable price from the great
Chain Reaction corpse-picking after the group went into administration. To date I've only covered about 250 miles on this bike; but it remains responsible for opening up more routes untenable on any of my other bikes, and remains at the family home as an occasional escape when I find myself back here.
Over a lifetime of cycling I've gone from a late-starter with a passing interest to riding for light-utility / casual leisure, then to more speed-focussed road, experience-driven gravel, more intentional utility, all-year commuting and a bit of tame off-road.
I've gone from a position of very limited knowledge to one a pretty comprehensive understanding; from blindly swallowing what the industry told me to treating it with the scepticism it so richly deserves. I've progressed from a relatively uncritical adherance to mainstream products to an increasing love of the left-field and esoteric bikes that actually bring me joy.
I've covered about 20k recorded miles, probably another 5-10k on top of that from before I had the ability to log my journeys.
I currently do around 6k miles annually in the saddle; around double what I do in the car and the means by which I cover the vast majority of journeys I make.
I've become a fierce advocate for the universal benefits of cycling to the individual, society and the natural world. While I have other interests and convictions none come anywhere close to representing the universal force for good I see in the humble bicycle; to which I owe so much.
but Im sure my friends would tag me as "very keen cyclist", after all over the past 13 years Ive cycled more miles than Ive driven, the majority of my commutes are by bike all year round, I go for leisure rides that I plan my weekend/freetime activities around, I ride sportives, got more cycling kit than I know what to do with. never raced because Im quite slow, and rubbish at hills.
