lundi 18 juillet: alpe d’huez

I text my old cycling buddy—as he likes to refer to me—that Alpe d’Huez is in the bag. It’s in a million bags and now it’s in mine.

The day is perfect—little breeze, stark blue sky, temperature in the low 20s. Mick and I go for a massage, then he goes shopping at the supermarché and I circumnavigate town looking for the road to the alp. Amazing: it’s not well signposted.

Once over Les Ferrieres—what we would call a creek—the road takes off at eleven per cent and soon you’re at the first of the 21 hairpin bends that enumerate the way to the top. The gradient for the first three or four kilometres is deadly: some people don’t make the first bend before dismounting. At each hairpin huffing and wheezing riders line the parapet.

The gradient relaxes a little between some switchbacks but mostly it’s a solid eight, nine or ten percent. A stream of riders pump their way up the mountain and a stream fly past on the descent. Cars are patient and courteous: they’re outnumbered ten to one. Two wheels rule the world here.

Each aspirant must find his own motivation to continue. For some, like our own Robocop, it’s the best possible time he can achieve. For Doc and Mrs Tourette’s it’s just to get there any way they can, which means a couple of strategically placed rests along the way.

The fast boys do their thing, the slow inch their way up, ticking off the hairpins or counting off the altitude on the roadside indicators. Others find a physical rhythm or a mental mantra to push them through the pain. My aim is simply never to stop: no rests for food, drink or photographs. Just churn the legs.

Somewhere about a third of the way up a bloke all in blue and about my size comes alongside and moves steadily past. We exchange equally unconvincing bonjours, so I add “Hello from Australia.” Over his shoulder he says he’s English. I decide to try to keep him within ten metres.

Half way up I start to feel better, stronger, and punch it up a gear on the hairpins. Soon I ease past him and my motivation now is to stay ahead.  He hangs on my wheel now. I stay strong, keep my churn regular and eventually he sags off and is gone.

I pursue a slender Dutch girl, brown legs and swinging ponytail. I rise from the saddle to put slower riders firmly behind me. I am pleased to pass more riders than pass me. And then there’s a point where you know you’re going to make it.

The actual town of Alpe d’Huez is a sea of cyclery and lycrary. I am a mere atom in a nuclear maelstrom.

Each of us is triumphant but each keeps it inside. I came to France to ride the Alpe and the Galibier just as four years ago I came to ride the Tourmalet and the Peyresourde, the grand Pyrénéen climbs of the Tour de France.

Our group hangs a right at Huez village and traverses the face of the mountain, looking down on an aerial photography landscape in 3D with mountain roads snaking up the dark defiles of razor-sharp valleys. Bourg d’Oisens, like Toy-town, sits in the middle of the larger Romanche valley.

first mountain

On my first full day in France I walk more than 20 kilometres. Two English-language bookshops I stride across town to visit are shuttered—they have got the French bug.

So I pace back to the Musée de Moyenne Age whose twenty galleries of medieval unenlightenment, swords, wood and stone carvings, and dowdy tapestries have me screaming for mercy. The Dark Ages indeed. I hope The Lady and the Unicorn will take my breath away, but she doesn’t even make me pant.  

I ponce around Gares de Lyon and Montparnasse because I like railway stations—the possibilities seem endless. I ride the Metro from Maubert Mutualité to Jussieu (Line 10), from Jussieu to Place d’Italie (Line 7), then Place d’Italie to Bel Air (Line 6). From here I stroll the five kilometres of the Promenade Plantée.

The bookshop that is open, Shakespeare and Company, overwhelms. Such a small shop-front but it is books from floor to ceiling, crammed into horizontal or vertical space, and on oblique angles up the narrow staircase to the reading room.  

My feet kill. I shower and retire early. At 11:27 the bedside phone extracts me from the deepest slumber. The concierge tells me in fine English that he cannot order me a taxi to transport me and the bike pod four kilometres to Gare de Lyon in the morning.

I wake at 5:30 and sort, pack, communicate with Oz, and make final preparations. I break my fast at 7:15. Madame the proprietor rings for a taxi at 7:45. She is not hopeful. She tries a second company. A taxi will come from St Germain. But no taxi comes. It is 8:10 and the train to Clermont-Ferrand departs at 9:01.

Walking is impossible. Bus 63 is impossible—no bike pod any time. Too big. I could catch two RER trains. No, at peak hour this is tres difficile. I have no choice: I must push the pod at breakneck speed on its two tiny wheels through four kilometres of peak-hour Paris.

The pod bumps over gutters and rough bitumen. Each arm and hand aches by ever-diminishing turns as I cajole its dodgy bulk along the Rue des Ecoles, Rue Jussieu, Rue Cuvier, and along the Quai Saint Bernard where the house-boats sleep on the sluggish Seine.

At Place Valhubert outside the Jardin des Plantes I miraculously manouevre the beast across what would pass as the finishing straight at Le Mans only to find myself pushing the pod along a real bike track. The real cyclists shriek angry bonjours at me.

I escape by hauling the pod up the steps to the Ponte Charles de Gaulle and cross the Seine to the underground side-entrance to the Gare de Lyon. I have eleven minutes to find my train. I need them. The train is on Voie (platform) 9, but despite Wednesday’s reconnaissance I can’t find it.

I weave the pod a sea of bodies and platforms A to P. A sign indicates Voies 5 à 23 through an archway. Left or right?  Has to be right. Finally I roll the pod past car 1, car 2, car 3.

I strain and grunt the pod up the vertical stairs into the luggage bay of car 4, and at 8:57 I slump deliciously and delightedly in a pool of hot and smelly man-juices next to demure mademoiselle in seat 71. Poor thing.

things get a whole lot worse

I cough myself inside out. It’s not a persistent cough, nor a gravelly cough, nor a woof, certainly not a hack. It’s a surprise cough that comes out of nowhere. Suddenly something (nothing really) is lodged in your throat and you convulsively turn your throat inside to rid it of the intruder.
Each bout leaves me gasping helplessly, eyes bugging, nose blocked like the emergency exit of an Indian cinema on fire. If I move about things aren’t too bad. So I’m OK when I wheel the Red Rocket onto the 9:02 out of Croydon. On the train my throat threatens constantly to erupt.
How will I MC tomorrow’s forum?
Finally the doors of the 10:15 to Bendigo peel back. Passengers select and occupy seats while I tether the steed in the bike bay. Then the announcement none of us wants to hear. The train will be replaced by buses because a rail is broken near Diggers Rest. Bikes can’t travel on buses.

We stumble and bumble our collective way to the bus bays several blocks away, but no buses, just the passengers from the 9:15, waiting. I about-face and head for home only to discover the vagaries of the new timetable: to wit, mid-morning trains to Lilydale don’t run through the loop.
Three trains later I’m on the Lilydale train using two mobile phones to right the ship. Gifts for speakers; the logo to the admin person making the badges; rearrange the parcel I’m taking to my daughter; contact each speaker for final briefings.
Dan pokes his head over the back fence and recommends an expectorant. My daughter says honey and lemon. Everyone has a suggestion. Everyone has good intentions and advice to offer, but none of it gets you upstairs at the Savoy.
Later my good woman pops in. She’s cruising the eastern suburbs supervising her team of psychologists. She brings goodwill, lavender, cough drops, cherry cake, and makes scalding caramel milk. She’s an angel.
Finally I lie down, but the sickness is upon me good and proper. I cough and spasm under the mohair rug and no sleep comes.
The V-Line website says that trains will run again in the afternoon and evening. I hope to be on the 8:15. I’ll sleep on the floor at my office.
It’s ten to four. Tomorrow afternoon at exactly ten to four I will walk to Bendigo Station and ride the 4:02 back home. The forum will be over. My head will throb, my throat will be raw, but I will have nothing to organise, no deadline, nothing to do but sleep, if I can, and plan Saturday’s ride into the Dandenongs.

germ warfare

Sometimes there’s no hope for it. Whatever’s going on out there is a conspiracy against you that nothing can ameliorate. Right now I’m sick, but I can’t get better. I need to rest, but rest is impossible.
On Friday afternoon in Mildura I have the proverbial splitting headache. I lie on the floor of a borrowed office, then wander the streets in desperation.
Saturday I run a five-hour training session, drive four and a half hours to Bendigo, and hop the last train back to Melbourne and Croydon, walking in the door just before midnight. A big, big day.
Early Sunday afternoon I’m a happy little couch potato, dabbling in the big Saturday broadsheet, alternating with the Blues slapping Brisbane on the box. A sudden irresistible urge to cough catches me. Two hours later after more coughing I’m suspicious.
Late Sunday afternoon my good woman and I confabulate about a movie and sleepover. It’s a long weekend. I warn her that I think things are not quite right with me. Will she risk contamination? To her eternal credit, she does.
I fight this damn thing for three days: scummy throat, bleary eyes, aching back. On Monday I ride, but feel crap less than a kilometre down the road. I baulk at the foot of the Dandenongs and ride a weird 35-kilometre, late-afternoon, up-hill-and-down-dale circuit through Kilsyth, Montrose, Mooroolbark, Chirnside Park, Wonga Park and Warranwood.
I plan to ride Tuesday and don’t feel too bad, but work grabs me and won’t let go. Wednesday I have Donna on my mind. I need to grind up an inexorable ascent. Three Wednesdays from this one I’ll be in Paris en route to the Massif Central, the French Alps and the Pyrénées. I figure the ride up Donna will either kill this bug or kill me.
I can’t sleep. I get up at 3:29 and busy myself around the house. I pack for my commute to Bendigo. I’m running and hosting a forum on Friday. Thirty people are coming from all over the state. So much to do.
I cough and cough and sneeze and blow, and marvel at life’s ability to remind me how insignificant my woes are even in the pantheon of minor events.
And things are about to get a whole lot worse.

eight degrees of eight per cent

To say I promised myself the ride up Donna Buang is one way to look at it.

Nick at the bike shop says it’s harder than Buller. I disagree, then check the interweb: Buller averages six per cent, Donna is 6.4. Score one Nick. And he’s right. The climbs are of almost equal length at between 16 and 17 kms.

After days of fog, this day begins just the same. I roll out of the pub car park at Launching Place bang on midday. It’s eight degrees. A thermal base layer, my Ground Effect two-timer, and full-fingered gloves moderate the chill. Right on twelve thirty the sun finally burns off the fog.

For ten years at the start of each winter I had the free flu vaccine offered by my employer. The jab kept me cold- and flu-free. The past two years I’ve missed and had three respiratory malaises, the current disease featuring a dry cough with the power to turn me inside out.

At Warburton I unzip and remove the two-timer’s sleeves and swap the gloves for mitts. As soon as you swing into the road to the mountain, the gradient leaps to eight per cent and stays there till it arcs up to 12 just before the turntable at Cement Creek.

While the bottom seven kilometres is steeper, the long drag around the face of the mountain is tougher, ten tedious kilometres of long stretches of slick road. Grubby patches of snow fringe the bitumen above 1000 metres.

The sign at the summit says the mountain is 1250m tall. My computer has it at 1268m, but why quibble? The climb from Warburton is over a vertical kilometre and I add 40 or 50 metres by ascending the tower.

By meteorological happenstance the tower platform is windless, and warmer than any other place on this ride. I take two photos and email them to my good woman, and reply to a request for a quote to run some more training in Sydney.

A motorist, the only person also up here, comments that I have nothing more to do as it’s all downhill from here. I can’t be bothered disabusing him. I put the sleeves back on the two-timer, pull the hoodie over my bonce, and don the full fingers and gilet. The sun shines but the temperature is seven degrees.

The downhill chill factor is substantial. The road surface switches from slick wet to muddy wet to dry every fifty to a hundred metres. The bike wants to gallop off under me but I’m curbing my usual enthusiasm for the descent and keeping the rims warm. I want to go to France in one piece.

France is ever so close. My plane will lurch into the air at 2:05 pm on the fifth day of July.           

the dandenongs, the hard way

Today I ride up Mt Dandenong—the hard way. I usually don’t feel the cold, but to add to the thrill, it’s bitterly chillsome.
There are a few ascents of Mount Dandenong from the Melbourne side of the range: Mountain Highway from The Basin, under the misnomer of the One-in-twenty that averages less than five per cent; the Tourist Road from Montrose, mostly four to six per cent; and the Tourist Road from Upper Ferntree Gully, a brute with long drags nudging double figures.
The tough way is known only by locals: Inverness Road. It runs off York Road and joins the Tourist Road just below Kalorama. Its gradients are all in double figures. The final pitch from the corner of the aptly named Wilkilla Road is a long straight of 13 per cent with a no-spare-gears ramp of 18 per cent in full view.
Throw in Ridge Road above Kalorama and the detour to the Sky High Restaurant and you have yourself a couple of extra clicks with grades in double figures.
I you want to add a bit of thigh-burn, scoot down Perrins Creek Road and swing right into Sassafras Creek Road at the bottom. It winds through the rain forest, gradually increasing gradient, morphs into The Avenue as it runs back up to Sassafras, and arcs up to a cool 15 per cent at the top.
This was my ride this morning.

fireweed

For countless hours I pore over Michelin maps of central France to find the best base for my week’s stay before the official Cycleworks tour begins. For untold hours I surf the interweb examining French gîtes and chambres d’hôtes.

Clermont-Ferrand is the northern gateway to the Massif Central, the ruggedly mountainous and least touristy département of la belle France. Architecture here is medieval and some travel guides suggest life here borders on the primitive.

Villages dot the hills and valleys as they do everywhere in Europe. I am looking for a small town on the railway network with a boulangerie, a place or two to eat at night, and plenty of green-bordered roads snaking out of it on the Michelin; green borders indicate scenic routes.

I choose Langeac. Initial searches for accommodation are fruitless so I turn my attention to a bigger town 25 kms north—Brioude. I email the owner of Gîte Azerat requesting shelter. I get no reply and resume combing the web.

Whatever the search criteria, the same places present themselves again and again; only occasionally does an unseen place bob up. So it is with L’epilobe, or Fireweed.

Fireweed sounds like a noxious plant that might attract the attention of either quarantine officers, the narcotics branch, or park rangers sporting backpacks of lethal chemicals. In fact epilobium angustifolium has an attractive pinky purple flower: it’s a willowherb, the floral emblem of Yukon and the county flower of London, no less.

Madame Pillaud is the proprietor of L’epilobe. Her tariff is reasonable. She and I manage the contrat réservation in French: I can’t speak or write the language, but I read it well enough to understand what is required of me.

I surmise that Mme Pillaud is an older woman who speaks no English. The contrat réservation is composed using an ancient edition of Works, Madame has no credit facility or online money transfer, and deals only in cheques. It costs me an arm and a leg to remit a 90€ cheque by registered mail.

I hesitate to inform her that I don’t eat meat: vegetarianism is illegal in France, and probably viewed as satanic in the medieval massif. I disclose instead that I am coming to Langeac to see le Tour de France, to ride my bicycle, to write, and to read—nothing that would frighten the horses, surely?

gearing down

Riding up Buller something other than my legs starts to grate, to grind, to click, to clack. Not good sounds from my bottom bracket. I don’t need my triple, my 30-tooth, but I couldn’t use it anyway. It skates big time. Something has to be done before France—replace the drive-train, run the new one in, get used to the feel, the practice of it. Something has to be done now.

I do a little web search. Both the legendary Sheldon Brown and Bike Noob have something to say on alternatives to triples. Sheldon likes my dying Shimano Dura Ace triple but says it has serious shortcomings. The bolt holes are unique and difficult, which I discovered when making a middle ring changeover two months ago.

Bike Noob introduces the SRAM Apex—50 x 34 at the front and 11 to 32 at the back. Packs as much grunt as a triple and has more useable gears, like all 20, compared to the triple’s 27 possibilities but only 16 useful gears. Mick can do the job for $770 plus labour.

I drop the bike in Saturday arvo after the Baw Baw Challenge ride. Mick’s busy fitting a customer; hands me the box of components to inspect: brakes, callipers and shifters, rear set of sprockets, and ... I save the magic chainrings till last. And read the unmagic figures 53-39.

Mick says they often get it wrong. He’ll call them first thing Monday and hope he can get the part for the job for me by Tuesday afternoon when I come down to Croydon. 

baw baw challenge

Mick sends an email to the French travellers. He has a complimentary ticket for the Baw Baw Challenge, a 120km run out of Warragul on Saturday 9 April. I’m straddling the bike at the starting area, but only because the ride doesn't ascend Mt Baw Baw. The title refers to the Shire of. 

We’re away on time, me in the second group of twenty. Up and over the brick arch spanning the station and rail lines, a right and out to Darnum on flat roads. Little surges and knots and the pace settles and riders find groups that suit them.

I haven’t ridden group for so long. About seven kms out, I chase a small group and hang on. No point doing it all alone at the start. Save some energy in the bunch. We find a rhythm on the back road to Trafalgar where we hand a left and head north into the Great Divide.

The road undulates its way to Willow Grove, the ascents short and straightforward. Up to Hill End they get longer, steeper, until two long grunty drags split the groups up toward Fumina South. Over the top we’re into rain forest.

From here to Noojee there are two climbs, the second brutal, but a bag-piper pipes each rider up and over the top. Two rapid descents follow, the second hurtling me down the mountain at 79kph.

A rock-steady climb of five per cent follows on a car-free back road that winds up to Neerim. The legs are seriously wounded now and I’ve ridden on my own for 30 kms since the Hill End refreshment stop, buffeted by a north-westerly bringing in an afternoon weather change.

A final refreshment stop at Neerim Junction. I see fewer riders. Few pull in for cake, lollies, water. I mount up for the undulations back to Warragul, mostly downhill with a tailwind, but with a sad final insult: five kilometres into the breeze to come home.

The organisers say it's a 119 km course. I have it at 124.66kms, which I cover at an average of 26kph and four hours and 48 minutes in the saddle. We climb 1670 metres over the journey and the top gradient is 15 per cent.

It’s a beautiful, tough but fair ride through pasture, woodlands, forested foothills and the rain forest at the top of the range.

I drive back to the city, direct to Mick’s shop in Croydon. This is my last ride on a creaky Dura Ace system. Age seems to be getting the better of it. The SRAM Apex is to have a go.    

buller

I have come to Mansfield to ride Buller. Mount Buller, that is. The thing is 1600 metres tall and Mansfield is a tad over 300 above sea level. To the top and back is 100kms exact.

From Mansfield the road makes a bee-line out of town. It looks flat but rises slowly and steadily. Two shallow climbs take you over the Glenroy Hills. Now you can see Buller properly and start wondering how the fuck you summon the strength and energy to pedal it.

The road no longer pretends to be flat and rises about 250 metres in total between the start of the ride and Mirimbah at the real start of the climb. This is where cars pay their dues to be allowed onto the mountain. In winter and at weekends. But not today and not bicycles.

It’s Monday morning and the ‘traffic’ has all but disappeared since I left Mansfield at 8:22. It’s close to 10 and the sun is bathing the place in autumnal glory when I pouch the python after a piss and point my nose at the sky. The sign says 15 kms to the top.

The gradient is a pretty much unrelenting six to eight per cent. A flat of maybe 500 metres is the only relief all the way up. The final two kilometres are all double figure grades with a last gasp pitch of 12 per cent. It’s thigh-puncturing stuff.

The descent is fabulous, especially on a non-holiday Monday morning with no traffic in front holding you up, and none harrying you from behind. No rocky rubble litters the road and the surface is mostly smooth.

Finally back on something resembling a flat road, my legs are raw sausage. I determine to have a crack at the road up Battery Hill to Benbullen where my Mansfield hosts live. But with my triple chainring out of commission--the 30-cog ring skates on the chain--there is no hope for me. I dismount before losing momentum and falling off.

The steep section is no more than 150 metres. The cycle computer tells me I’m wheeling the Cervélo up a 24 per cent slope. It’s hard enough walking it in the bike shoes.

So there you go; there I go. Buller is behind me. I’d like to do it again, maybe in early June, when it’s cold, maybe even a bit of snow. But no wind or rain, please. 

packing it in

To pack (it) in, vb. to give up, to admit defeat

I pack in my gym membership the other day: no more pump or spin classes for me in this town. No time remains for gym visits in the coming five weeks as I prepare to quit Bendigo and decamp to Melbourne.

To pack up, vb. to pack goods in compact form, as for transportation or storage

I must pack up my little terrace house in Baxter Street and cart my worldly goods to Croydon. I must pack up my desk and move to a temporary work space in the Bendigo Library two weeks hence: eleven of us will relocate while our condemned building is redeveloped.

To pack in, vb. to cram many things into a small space or time

My mind spins, as it has for weeks, about what to pack first, last and in between. What do I transport in my car and what will I load into a truck? What size truck will I hire? Which bikes go or stay where? When do I transfer utilities into my name so I have gas and electricity?

A million things to think about, a thousand things to do. 

I must continue to find the time to pedal mon vélo. I must squeeze many rides up many mountains into a busy schedule and still find 45.6 hours a fortnight to go to work. And I must find time for the small amount of work my one-person business attracts, like last week’s training days in Sydney.
I must pack it all in without packing it in.

To pack shit, vb. to be afraid, to worry to excess about something

I must also pack it all in without packing shit. For months the gloom of impending interruption to my sedate life casts a pall on everything. Now as D-Day approaches, I settle deliberately into a calm space in my head, telling myself that April is just one mountain to climb. April is my Col du Galibier and I have a whole month to meet the challenge. In July I have but one day.

back spasm

Were there a God, back spasm would be his bounteous gift to unbelievers like me, his way of making me scream his name.

I perch on the edge of a chair as I write, unable to sit any other way, and probably unable to stand when I finish writing. Back spasm—the agonising grab as the back muscles resist almost any movement, especially straightening the back.

Seeking medical rather than numinous explanation, I ask Dr Google what causes back spasm, but his explanations don’t match the half a dozen causes of my personal experience: tying a shoelace, picking up a bath mat, reaching for the toilet paper, vacuum cleaning, and masturbating.

The sixth was the first and it happened in 1976 during the final minutes of the penultimate game of the season between Newstead and Campbells Creek when an opponent knocked me off balance as I executed a handpass. My hand missed the ball. I was pinged for a throw and pinged my back in the process.

My first and most excruciating experience of back spasm and the only cause I regard as legitimate. How can reaching for toilet paper warrant being rendered helpless for several days? Back spasm is the single most debilitating insult (injury is not the right word) to a person’s physical and mental well-being.      

I ask Dr Google about treatment but he doesn’t have a definitive answer to that either. Years ago I asked a physiotherapist treating my broken shoulder what to do for back spasm. She showed me some exercises.

So I clamber with tremendous trepidation from the unlofty height of my own 178cms, bent at 45 degrees from the waist, to the floor, where I lie groaning: “Oh God, oh God …”

On the floor I lie flat on my back on a purple exercise mat, compose myself, then lift my legs alternately into the air. Not far into the air. Five on each leg. Then I lift and cross each leg over the other. Five on each leg. I curl into a ball.

I roll over gingerly onto my front and repeat the leg-lifting. Then it’s onto my back again and curl into a ball. Finally I stretch full length and ‘walk’ my buttocks away from my torso.

Gradually these exercises restore me to myself. One day soon I will be able to get from the floor to an upright position without the aid of table legs or door frames; I will be able to wipe my arse without sweating fearfully; I will be able to turn over in bed in less then five minutes; and I will be able to throw a leg over the bike.

My training program already in tatters and now this.   

take nothing for granted

I am in Melbourne. I have three tasks. Task one is to see my doctor in Emerald and determine if my scaphoid needs repair. Task two is to organise six days of training I will present in Melbourne, Bendigo and Sydney. Task three, no task at all really, is to pick up my good woman and her two children from the airport after their trip to Serbia.

I leave my good woman’s empty house at 8:30 for Upwey where I take the front wheel out of the car, hastily put it back, and drive gingerly around Upwey village looking for a toilet. Luck and timing are on my side.

Having unloaded myself, I unload the Cervélo and set off for Emerald. I find a lovely steady rhythm from the Puffing Billy bridge below Belgrave—the one in all the photos—all the way up through Selby to Hermans Saddle.

Pedalling through Menzies Creek, where I lived, twice, I realise not for the first time, how beautiful it is. Yet I took it for granted: this place, where I brought up my children, where I finally bought a bike, aged 44, and began cycling.

Later, living in Croydon, I rode the Mountain Highway, the “one-in-twenty”, from The Basin up to Sassafras. One in twenty is the gradient: it rises one metre vertically for every 20 metres horizontally: five per cent. Little of it is five per cent. Most of it is three, some is four, and a tiny amount is five. Go figure.

But it's seven kilometres of cycling paradise and surely one of the great cycling roads anywhere in the world: smooth pavement, a steady seven kilometre testing ascent, a fast sinuous descent, a towering avenue of straight-trunked trees all the way.

I rode it so often I took it for granted too.

In Emerald I lean the Cervélo against the toddlers’ playpen in the medical centre’s waiting-room. I’m no longer dripping by the time my doctor summons me. She examines my wrist and thumb and writes a referral for x-rays. She assures me that any treatment needed can wait till after France.

I ride back to Upwey. At 28.5kms the ride is short, but not a metre is flat.

Back in Vermont I tidy house, shop, get petrol, mow lawns, then go to my planning meeting. At six I return to my good woman's home and put the cat out. I drive her large car across the metropolis to the airport. Her flight has landed but she and her children are the last to come through the sliding silver doors.

The love of my life has been in Serbia for five and half weeks. She migrated to Australia in August 1994 with a husband, a toddler, 20kgs of possessions, and no English, in front of her a second bellyful of child and the daunting task of everything.

She, and the daughter she brought with her, became Australian citizens on 19 February 1997. The son was born here. The husband who persuaded her to leave her warring country is gone back to Serbia. Her family still lives in Umka, where she grew up, an outer suburb of Beograd, the city Westerners know as Belgrade.

This is her fifth visit to her native country. Each time it's different, she tells me: “Or perhaps I am changing.” She has changed my life.

I've been sensible enough to live with only two women, and only for a total of seven years. One day I will live with this woman, but there's no hurry. Her children are her priority. If you meet a woman from the other side of the world, you must take time.

And take nothing for granted.

fit or what?

The four people I share an office with keep telling me how fit I am. I don’t openly disagree, but they haven’t a clue. What they mean is that I ride to work and go to the gym so I must be fitter than they are, although they’re years younger and much better looking. But fitter for what?

Training to be a phys ed teacher, I learned that fitness is entirely relative. In a general sense fitness simply means physically fit, a meaningless definition. More specifically, and usefully, fitness describes suitability to a particular purpose.

Hence tuna fisherman Dinko (Dean) Lukin, Australia’s only Olympic gold medal weightlifter—he won in 1984 when the Soviet bloc boycotted the games so the field was open—was fit to lift huge weights, and big fish. Gary Ablett senior made his debut for Geelong that same year and kicked eight goals for Victoria in an interstate game.

For all his remarkable abilities, Ablett was not fit to lift the weights Lukin lifted—nor as a born-again Christian, but failed human being, to be a fisher of men—and Lukin was never fit to play first grade football. Fitness is relative to the task or purpose.

I work for a community welfare agency. My office-mates work with adolescents at risk of homelessness and their usually dysfunctional families. I merely occupy the fifth desk in their office because I’m an ‘odd-bod’ and the desk is spare.

For twelve years I worked in specialist school settings for adolescents with social and emotional problems, ending up as principal. I did what my current colleagues do: worked with difficult, unlovely kids and their often difficult, unlovely families.

These days I don’t truck with the adolescent form of any species, especially homo bogensis. My colleagues are fit for the task (of working with young people) and I am not. So when they tell me I am fit, I demur in a vague way and move on.

The fitness that obsesses me is the fitness to ride a bicycle up mountains. Right now I struggle up One Tree Hill, but come Sunday 24 July—182 days from today—I will ride up the Col du Galibier, whatever the weather, and whether I’m fit for the task or not.

This evening I take my first evening ride for a long time and what an agreeable thing it is. Pedalling east down Tannery Lane, as the sun westers, I cast a twenty-metre-long shadow in front of me. The heat seeps out of the day and although it’s still 28 degrees, the zephyr that wafts over me has a cool tinge to it.

I pedal 33.28kms at 27.7kph but that’s irrelevant because I’m now in Week One, Day One of the Carmichael Training System’s intermediate level success plan, and heart rate is all that matters. My ride tonight is supposedly “one hour in zone 2 with ten minutes tempo on flat terrain”.

Based on a maximum heart rate of 176, zone 2 for me is a heart rate between 115 and 122. I sort of did something roughly like that. A bit. Well, maybe. Supposedly.

Forget the numbers: I feel good and ride well.

field test

At 1.35am something crashes in my house. I get up and inspect each room but can find no picture dangling from a broken wire, no bike on its side, no vase in pieces. A huntsman is above the window in the lounge room but I doubt his clattering woke me.

At 6:38 I wake again. This morning it’s the field test. Last night at the gym I bust a gut on Kirsten’s Cycle class, then stay on the bike for another half hour, in recovery gear, but maintaining a cadence above 110, then 120, and 130 for the last minute.

Today I finally do the Carmichael Training System field test. It’s a three-mile (4.828km) time trial to determine whether I start the CTS seven-weeks-to-a-perfect-ride as a beginner or intermediate. Advanced is out of the question: I’d have to complete the distance in less than eight minutes. Less than ten minutes will do me. Over ten minutes will depress me.

Sandhurst Town Road proves insufficient—it’s a kilometre short. And it proves to be not as flat as thought. I make up the extra kilometre in Myers Flat Road, which means I have to round a 90-degree corner and the course will then be ever so slightly uphill.

It’s supposed to be still but it’s not; by my estimation there’s a 10 to 15 knot westerly, although I’ve no idea what a knot is. This will be a crosswind from my right, which seems sort of neutral.

I don’t ‘go to the bathroom’ before riding, as the CTS suggests. I lie: I do go to the bathroom but don’t manage to shit. (American English is so puritanical.) I’m supposed to have a protein drink 40 minutes before the trial, and I do, but otherwise I’m not to eat for two hours before riding. For me it’s twelve hours. None of this is ideal.

I prime the navigator on the computer and set the stopwatch on the HRM and off I go. I start in the second highest gear in the small ring and quickly reach a cadence of 90. Once round the corner and onto the ‘uphill’ it’s hard to push 80. I hunker down and get into the work. The last kilometre has a couple of bumps which lift the heart rate above 160.

I stop the clock at 9:23. I’m happy with that, but resolve to do it properly at the velodrome. By the time I’m back on my doorstep I’ve logged 42kms at 27.3kph.

I boom back into Bendigo on the big ring and catch two boy racers idling into town to join a bunch. One detects my way ancient grey-bearded presence at the Thistle Street lights and hares off. Wouldn’t I like to be able to rip it up like that whenever the fancy took me? You betcha!

Now I’m off to Pump class to rip the upper body. Pity about those squats and lunges. 

Fogartys Gap

West Ham 0 Arsenal 3. The game finishes at 6:25am EDT. The dog gets first dibs today, so it’s a dawn walk for us.

The rain stopped less than 48 hours ago as I wheel the Cervélo out the gate about 7:50am, hoping the roads on my 80km Porcupine Flat-Harcourt North circuit are passable. The sun is out and it’s already warm.

I haven’t done the field test to determine my maximum heart rate, so I’m working on a cadence never below 70, even climbing, and a heart rate around or above 130. The heart rate is always between 130 and 155.

Water still seeps across patches of road and there are washouts—driveways, corners, low places, where loose gravel and soil has washed across the bitumen. Near Muckleford Creek ten metres of bitumen has removed itself into a paddock.

The greatest damage is to trees. I pass scores of them, quietly lying on their sides as though having a nap. High winds tear off branches and leave the roads littered with leaves and twigs. There was no wind; there is no debris. These trees, their roots loosened by the run-off, simply keeled over under the weight of water in their foliage.

At Porcupine Flat I turn hard left into Fogartys Gap Road. A col is a gap or pass: this is the Col du Fogarty. At 419m it’s a doddle. But after a stop at 56kms to eat a nut bar and check out the overflow at Barkers Creek Reservoir, nothing is a doddle. My legs just don’t want to turn any more.

I flog myself up to the gap at Harcourt North (the Col du Harcourt Nord) but the legs still don’t respond. I flog myself up Laudens Hill coming back into Bendigo and remember my old training principle: always finish strong. So I work hard along Retreat Road. For me there is no retreat. The ride is 82.57kms at 25.9kph.

I think I’m making slow improvement. Tomorrow the field test.    

holding pattern

Bendigo is in a holding pattern, going round in wet circles, wondering if the rain will ever stop.

I shouldn’t call our weather extreme when in the northern half of the continent people drowned in ‘an inland tsunami’. But I can’t recall a ‘rain event’ like this, with humidity over 90 per cent for six days and unrelenting rain. The JRT belts out for a quick piss and comes in soaked. Bendigo Creek has been in torrent for days, not just for a few hours after a downpour.

The rain doesn’t come inside but the humidity does. The front door, swollen with damp, won’t shut. Clothes washed days ago hang damply on the drying rack. And they stink. The red shorts that swoosh when I walk—the material is so stiff—hang limply off my hips.

No breath of wind for five days relieves the clamminess. Random objects stick to each other. The handle of my cane basket sticks to my fingers when I pick it up to go shopping. As I come out of the air-conditioned supermarket, my glasses fog like they did during the build-up in Darwin.

On any day in this town bikes line café footpaths; they whiz past in bunches, riders chattering like monkeys; singly, in pairs and in big groups, they dominate the early morning roads. Cyclists are crazy bastards, but not crazy enough to be out in this.

The streets are empty. The Red Rocket sits in the hall of my house, biding its time. I walk to work and to the gym. Last night Katie is our Cycle class leader, driving us up steep hills to the summits of our heart rates. I max it at 167 for the session.

Thirty minutes seems barely enough, but it’s a relief to climb off the bike and stretch the legs. A 45-minute session is a lifetime. The intensity of these sessions is all well and good but can’t convince me that I shouldn’t be on the road racking up real kilometres.

The bureau says it’ll stop raining, eventually.

This morning I walk to the gym for Pump, umbrella up and eyes down so I don't submerge myself in something deep. Every concavity, gutter, indentation, or hollow is full.

I pump like my life depends on it and when I step out of the gym an hour later the world has changed. Water still lies everywhere, but suddenly the pewter sky you could bang your head on if you stood on tip-toes has lifted. No sun or blue, but someone has turned on the lights.   

The dark brooding clouds have lifted; the rain has stopped. There will be more, but like a woman weeping after the death of a child, the tears cannot last forever. At some point there can be no tears left to cry, no water left to fall from the sky.

gearing up

I’m doing a job. On myself.

What seemed like a leisurely start on 25 December—six months to get fit, albeit with no slacking and a climb in every ride—has morphed into something altogether more intense, and scientific, since I pulled The Lance Armstrong performance program off the shelf. 

Meanwhile in Bendigo it’s unseasonably not summer. Summer here is three months of cloudless skies and a merciless sun pounding you into the asphalt. Our one day of summer, December 31, was 39 degrees, humidity 12 per cent.

In the past two days my rain gauge has recorded 28mls of gentle and consistent rain. The bureau forecasts four more days of the same. The skies are grey as a dog’s guts, the air sticky as a glazed bun. The humidity is 87 per cent.

So I plonk my bum in a chair and get into the D and M chapters of the Carmichael Training System (CTS)—HRMs, field tests, training zones, Tempo, FastPedal, PowerIntervals and FlatSprints.

Dodging showers I take the Sigma Sport PC 14 heart rate monitor with the dead battery to a jeweller but the fat lady behind the counter won’t sing: replacing the battery is “too fiddly”. No such qualms for the jeweller on the other side of the street where another fat lady does the job for ten bucks. Last time it cost $25+ at Mr Minute in a Melbourne shopping plaza. I was outraged then and now.

HRM taken care of, I duck more showers and roll the back wheel from the old banger into the bike shop. After ten minutes manipulation in the august hands of the senior mechanic it emerges somewhat rounder and back on the banger mounted on the trainer it seems to make consistent contact with the roller.

The rain keeps pattering down in lifeless vertical lines, so it’s cycle class at the gym for this black duck. I push myself way hard in Kirsten’s cycle session, the perspiration streaming off the peak of my Headsweats le Tour de France cap.

The diminutive woman in her 60s on the bike beside me is at her first cycle class, no doubt wondering if she’s safe next to a frothing madman, soaked in sweat, moaning and cursing under his breath as he pushes the resistance lever further than ever before.

During the cycle session my heart rate maxes at 164. According to the age-old formula—220 minus age—I shouldn’t get past 161. Five years ago, field testing on a straight stretch of the Melba Highway out near Yarra Glen, I set my high water mark at 176. But this is not a field test.

That’s my next ride. If the rain stops.