Win(d/e)
Send me your headwinds - the strong, the weak, the angled, the brick wall headwinds, the summer mistral, the winter arctic – I’ll have them all.
I’ll gladly turn my face into a wall of air which is trying to get from my front wheel to my back wheel and which would make the journey through my own flesh if it could - with as much force as the weather fronts demand.
You’re probably thinking that I can’t possibly be a cyclist, that cyclists seek tail winds and duck and dive to avoid headwinds? But you must know cyclists who love climbs and who see a descent as the route to the next climb? Do cyclists flock the Alps for the descents? No, it’s the climbs that attract, enthral and brutalise with their breathtaking misery.
For me it’s no different. If you live in a non-Alpine region, the headwind is your Ventoux, building stronger legs, mental character and mechanical efficiency. It’s only in the last year that I’ve embraced headwinds.
On one particular ride in particular as I chose my route carelessly and faced a final 40km home stretch against a forceful winter wind.
Slowly I became aware that I was riding as if on a long climb – the rhythm, the breathing, cadence, relaxing my upper body and mentally embracing the grind – the Galibier was in Ireland.
It’s often been asked how the Dutch pros could climb so well, and my belief is that it’s down to that particular blend of physical and mental tenacity that cycling across a flat and windswept landscape is sure to produce.
On a recent ride with a stronger, faster friend, a tenacious individual who had out-climbed me for the first part of the ride, we turned left into a block headwind. I moved ahead, I believed he was sitting on my wheel, so I tucked into the task in hand and got on with interfering with the intended passage of some fast-moving air.
And I was gone. He’d missed my wheel and the gap was open, not to be closed.
So I’ll have your headwinds gladly - but there’s a price to pay.
Wind for wine.
Wine for wind.
Fair deal? I’d normally reach for an Italian or Spanish red – it’s hard to beat a Ripasso. But as we’re talking headwinds, in the company of Café du Cycliste, it has to be something from the shadow of the beast of Provence, Mt Ventoux - a climb that gravity has decided needs the extra spice of often savage headwinds on the upper slopes.
So, in return for taking on your headwind, a bottle of Provence red would be ideal - something that will flow through the wind-carved channels in my mind.
