When did you realize you were getting serious about this cycling lark?

[Rickshaw Phil]

I wouldn't call myself a serious cyclist but it has occurred to me that over the last few months I have stopped riding most of my usual 10 mile routes because they aren't long enough.

 

[GordonB]

6th May 1978. I can pin it down that precisely because that was my first LtoB ride, on a borrowed, slightly knackered Hetchins. You'd probably never see a Hetchins in such poor condition these days (paint flaking off, Campag groupset covered in filth), but a work colleague had bought it off a drunk in a pub for a fiver about two years previously. My colleague had no real idea of what he owned until I tried to buy it off him, then he talked to Chas Roberts (we both lived within 100m of Chas' shop in Penge at the time), who identified it as an Experto Crede with chromed lugs, told him it was it was a piece of history and he decided to hang onto it. B*gger, I could have had that!

After the ride I realsed I was very serious about continuing to ride and bought a second hand Holdsworth frame from Chas, built it up and rode it regularly until last year when I sold it to fund my ever growing collection. That bike carried me all over the south of England, through about six more LtoBs and on several holidays to France, Netherlands and Denmark. I'm probably even more seriously into cycling than I was, any decent weather coinciding with free time will find me out there pounding the lanes of Suffolk trying to beat the last ride average speed.