This article is part of the “A Love Letter to…” series, in which Cycling Weekly writers sing the praises of their favorite aspects of cycling. The content below is unfiltered, authentic and unpaid.
I was an outlier as a child. While all of my friends in elementary school were playing soccer, scraping their knees, and pretending to be the stars of their Panini sticker albums, I had a very different sports hobby.
I would happily sit with my friends for hours and fill up my own football sticker book, but I was even more excited about two wheels and the bright orange bike kit that was given to me for Christmas one year.
If you haven’t figured out what I’m going to do yet, let me help you. While everyone else of my generation wanted to be Premier League footballers, I was busy pretending to be some random Basque cyclist no one else had heard of, wearing my precious Basque cartel-bascardi gear, Speeding down the roads of Oxfordshire.
I don’t have an Orbea bike, but that doesn’t matter. As far as I’m concerned, this is my first step towards becoming a professional cyclist in the Tour de France in the distant future.
But there was a stumbling block: I was never that fast at that age. Usually a bigger, stronger, older rider will fly by me, sometimes requiring a lighter, more expensive bike to help, it has to be said. But I played to my strengths and used my secret weapon on the descents: the tailwind.
Twelve-year-old me would do my best to keep up with other, more powerful riders on the climbs, imagining I was Iban Mayo (let’s forget about EPO for a moment) or one of the other Basque climbing-feeling cyclists on the team I was wearing.
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But when I reach the top and feel the tailwind behind me just perfect for the descent, the image I adopt changes. Deep down I knew I would never make it to the pros, although a tailwind on my bike ride home as a youngster gave me the brief illusion that I might.
I knew I had the wind at my back, so I would descend quickly before powering up the short, steep climbs scattered throughout the area. Instead of being a lanky Basque climber on the mountain stages of the Tour, I’d shift my imagination and channel my inner Peter Sagan in pursuit of victory in a major classic.
All I needed was a fleet manager to drive over and I was sure they would soon be waving a contract and a pen out the window, urging me to sign.
However, all along, I knew that this was really the tailwind that drove all the work. The breeze was what fueled my imagined victory at Paris-Roubaix. But kids can dream, right?
A small part of me still sees the same kid inside me when I go out riding. Back then, nothing could compare to the feeling of power, freedom and energy that a bike gave me, even if my actual abilities were obscured by the weather from time to time.
But it never mattered. What’s more is the escapism I can look forward to while sitting in a dreary classroom on a Wednesday afternoon.
Now that I’m 32, I still get that extra rush of adrenaline when I feel a tailwind behind me, especially when there are Strava awards up for grabs in my area. I may not be a pro, but I will always try to challenge the best wind-assisted KOMs of them all.
