Hot Pursuit

This is an edited extract from The Escape Artist: Life From The Saddle, published by Fourth Estate

At the beginning of his Big Adventure, Pee-wee Herman has a dream of winning the Tour de France. Over the line he speeds on his beloved red bicycle, still wearing his suit and bow-tie, to the acclaim of the crowds lining the avenue and the despair of the other professional racers. This affectionate pastiche of a bicycle-obsessed fetishist contains a kernel of truth, for everyone who has mounted a racing bike has dreamt of riding down the Champs Elysées at the tête de la course. The bike-racer shares a portion of that glory simply by knowing what it is to ride fast and hard. He belongs to the fraternity of the road, whose membership is free, international and democratic. Cycle-racing is a passport to the continent: I raced in Spain, Belgium and Ireland. To become a member, all you need to have done is to have ridden as if you meant it.

When you race, you feel that that is what life is for, its whole aim and purpose. All racing cyclists -- including amateurs, as I was -- may be addicted to the opiates that the brain releases to tamp down the discomfort of extreme exertion, but more than that they are junkies for the subculture of their sport, its secret knowledge and fraternal spirit.

There were no cyclists in our family, or among my parents' friends, that I knew of. None of us would have been even dimly aware that the Tour de France had come to Britain in 1974 for a single stage. For years, road-racing had been virtually outlawed because of its inconvenience to motor traffic, and the only form of competitive cycling that survived was time-trialling. The latter is, to put it mildly, an unspectacular form of racing, in which competitors are sent off at one-minute intervals to ride against the clock on a given course, generally out and back down the same road, often some lonely stretch of dual carriageway. Because it is a pure test of a solo rider's speed, the contre la montre is sometimes known as the race of truth.

When I was offered a job in London with Lawrence & Wishart -- the house publisher of the British Communist Party -- I celebrated by upping my overdraft to splash out on a new road bike, which I bought from FW Evans in The Cut at Waterloo. I was still a virtual stranger to bike shops, but I knew enough to recognise that Evans was a place for serious cyclists. You could tell because it didn't have any lines of cheap kids' bikes out front.

Three months later, I found myself fishing a pair of cycling shorts out of the sale bin at Ninon's shop in All Saints Road, Notting Hill. It was a matter of days before I was riding to work in them. In my fluorescent-yellow Marxism Today bike-bag I would carry a pair of boxer shorts and jeans to change into amid the dusty boxes in the basement. Every time I washed them -- which I had to do almost daily, otherwise the chamois started smelling like the old goat it had indeed once been -- they turned to cardboard. An application of Vaseline (in place of expensive chamois cream) helped with the stiffness, but after you had been riding for a while, it made the shorts feel as if you were wearing a greasy nappy.

Before shorts had chamois inserts, the early riders of the Tour de France improvised. Legend has it that they would buy a cheap cut of steak from a local butcher in the morning. Ready for the off, they'd stick the slab of beef down their shorts and sit on it like a cushion. They'd ride like that all day -- tenderising the meat with their motion, marinading it in their sweat -- then hand it to the hotel chef in the evening with the instruction that it needed only a minute on each side.

For two or three years running, a group of friends and I took part in a ride from London to Oxford, organised by the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign. I became eclectic in my causes. Soon, the task of collecting sponsorship became more arduous than the ride itself. It was the cycling that carried me along. There was no competition: everyone set off at different times and rode at different speeds, and no one was clocking your time at the end. It was not that I wanted to race against anyone, but just to push myself. That was how I met Mick. We were riding at the same speed. He was on an old Raleigh that was a dirty lemon colour. We kept slipping in and out of each other's view. Sometimes, one of us would get ahead, sometimes the other. I tried speeding up a bit, to see if that would shake him off, but it didn't. There he was, doggedly pedalling away just a few metres behind me. After about 20 minutes, this private race became unsustainable and some acknowledgement became necessary.

I was impressed, and slightly intimidated. Cycle couriers were a new and exotic breed on the streets of London. They tended to opt for a kind of urban-guerrilla anarchist chic. This guy looked more approachable, less of a poseur. I have often thought since that, whatever else Mick and I had in common, the most fundamental thing about our friendship was that we were almost perfectly matched for speed.

My last Communist Party card is dated 1989; I did not renew my membership. Cycling became my new passion. The small society of racing cyclists offered another noble cause to fill that vacuum, without the ideological baggage. In cycling, I found a way to recreate the sense of direction that had abandoned me when the party softly imploded. But where the communist cause had been about a constant refining of means towards endlessly postponed utopian ends, cycling, with its satisfying circularities, presented itself as an ideal project: one in which the means and ends were identical. I would travel with Fausto Coppi, whose slogan was simple: "Ride a bike, ride a bike, ride a bike."

It was Mick who found out about a club to join. The Vélo Club de Londres. The French name appealed to us both. We were ready to be seduced by the romance of life on the wheel. Mick's instinct served us well, because the Vélo Club (always known as "VCL" by its members and other club cyclists) had a kind of unofficial residency at the Herne Hill stadium. Dating from the turn of the last century, the stadium had become a landmark for London cyclists as the capital's only banked track. The grandstand was shabby and the track itself in need of repair. Yet Herne Hill clung to its former prestige. It still possessed an atmosphere of faded glory, like a once fashionable, now down-at-heel seaside resort. The VCL met every Saturday morning for training.

My first Saturday, as I nervously made my way down the driveway between the houses that led to the track, I was alone. Mick had just taken a job in a cycle shop. He was relieved to get out of couriering, with its relentless graft, the noise and grime of traffic, and the ever-present danger of being knocked off, but the new job meant that he had to work weekends.

At the Herne Hill stadium, everyone had to ride a track bike. No bike with gears or brakes was permitted. I was issued with one of the club's ancient stock. When you are used to a normal road bike, the sensation of riding a track bike is unnerving. It is as if the machine has a will of its own. The instant I stopped pedalling, the bike bucked under me, as though trying to throw me off. My legs were pulled violently, almost dislocated at the knee it felt, as they were forced to resume a pedalling motion. I wobbled, nearly lost it, but learned my lesson. Never, ever stop pedalling on a track bike.

For a beginner, as I was, the concept of a bicycle without any brakes is unnerving and counter-intuitive. Especially on a fixed (no-gears bike), where even slowing down is of necessity a gentle, gradual process. Riding a bike without brakes in close formation with other riders was still scarier.

Most track races are very intense and of only a few minutes' duration. This makes your position in the bunch at every moment critical. Just to keep your place, you have to ensure that you leave no gap. If the smallest space opens up between you and the rider in front, another will move up and take the spot. There are times when you have to be ruthless, even physically forceful -- riding with your elbows out, prepared to go shoulder to shoulder if someone tries leaning on you. If you are nervous and hesitant about following wheels and guarding your position, before you know it you'll have ended up at the back of the bunch, which is never the place to be.

The resident coach, Mike Daley, and a club professional, Rob Knight, soon had us in pairs, making two parallel lines a metre or so apart, circling the track at a steady tempo. Each pair would take a turn at the front for a lap, and then swing off, up the banking. As the double line of riders passed below them, the pair would use the banking first to decelerate and then, swinging down, to speed up again to rejoin the bunch at the back. This discipline, called through and off, is the foundation of riding in formation and the fundamental technique of racing: how a breakaway group organises itself to elude the pack; how, too, the bunch will organise itself to chase down the escape. In this technique of shared effort lies the principle of cycle-racing's strange blend of co-operation and competition. That mix of mutual aid and ruthless aggression is regulated by an unwritten but elaborate etiquette -- in effect, a racer's code of honour. After half-an-hour of riding round and round, going through and off, varying the pace, Daley called out, "Next lap: sprint." Sprint?! What did this mean? I looked around. At first, nothing happened; everyone stayed in line as we came down the finishing straight once more. But as we hit the curve, several riders who had been placed at the back started to break out of formation and move up the bunch, higher on the banking. As we rounded on to the back straight, the pace started to build. I found myself going faster, sucked along by the gathering momentum of the bunch. Suddenly, the neat order of the formation was gone: riders were moving everywhere, jockeying for position, squeezing into gaps. After the tameness of the exercises, the sudden liberty of speed was thrilling.

I tried to maintain my place but, still nervous about riding so close, I found myself slipping towards the back of the bunch. As we rounded the last curve and hit the home straight, riders were swooping down off the banking. Most of the riders in front of me were out of the saddle, weight forward, gripping the bar ends, trying to squeeze every last ounce of effort from their legs. Momentarily, I forgot my fear and threw myself into this pell-mell dash. For a second or two I lost myself and became an anonymous part of something much larger, like a swarm of angry bees or a shoal of silver darting fish.

Right in front of me, two riders seemed to wobble and veer into each other. Before I could change direction or react at all, there was a blur of bodies and riderless bikes rolling and skating on the floor in front of me. There was no way through. I felt my front wheel hit something hard. Then all I knew was that I was off. There was nothing to be done now: I tried to relax. The world turned upside down. Light and colour blurred and everything went quiet. Then I landed. The ground jumped up and mugged me, punching me on the back of my head and kicking me on the shoulder and hip. I scrambled to my feet. Already the adrenalin had kicked in, killing the pain but taking away comprehension. Hobbling, I retrieved my bike. It was wrecked: the front wheel comically distorted, the forks pushed back towards the frame. As I dragged it towards the side of the track, the front tyre exploded with a noise like a gunshot. Looking back down the track, I saw the carnage of the crash. Two other riders and their bikes were still grounded.

After that, it was more than a year before I dared to race in a bunch, and much longer still before I rode the track again. But bitten I was. For a time there were four bicycles in my life. I had a training bike, a pale-blue track bike, a mountain bike and, of course, there was my racing bike. Like many bikies, I did not have the money to assemble my dream machine all at once, but the day finally came when I could afford a made-to-measure frame. This was like ordering a bespoke suit. I had to fill in a complex form for the north-east-based frame-builder, Phil Donohue: height and weight, inside leg and torso measurements, arm length from shoulder to cuff and elbow to finger. It was to be made out of Reynolds 653, double-butted and silver-soldered for the perfect combination of lightness and strength. When the frame finally arrived, six weeks later, it gleamed immaculate in its metallic colours ? the red and blue of my club, the Vélo Club de Londres. It seemed impossibly light, even when fully kitted out with Dura-ace hubs, brakes and chainset, Mavic rims, Cinelli bars with cork tape, and Rolls saddle. Stiff, comfortable and fast, the Donohue was everything you could want from a racer. As soon as you mounted it, snapping into the clipless pedals, you felt its coherence and integrity, but above all its pent-up go, its desire for speed.

When you see a professional, everything about him -- bike, jersey, shades, shoes, even legs -- has a brilliant showroom shine. Even on the dreariest of days, they seem to have this look, as though illuminated from inside by an other-worldly energy. We could never hope to emulate that. Our jerseys would, with time, go grey from road grime and frequent washing. Our bikes had to last several seasons, and their paintwork soon lost its lustre. But I did my best to look the part, because to do otherwise would have been to brand myself a loser before even starting.

Turn out your machine as close to mint as possible, and psychologically you already had the jump. And as I learned to race, my relationship with my bike grew into something else. A good bike will become part of its rider. Over time and miles, you adapt to each other. An intimacy develops. If you have found your perfect partner, it will dance with you when you stand on the pedals. Seeing my legs shaved for the first time, pink from the bath and suddenly smooth, was unnerving. It was as if they belonged to someone else. Shaving is little spoken of, yet it's something that unites all racing cyclists. The real question of shaving, the one that no one dares to ask, is where to stop. Some would shave to just above the point where the bottom of their Lycra shorts would reach. This was fine as far as it went, you might say, but it created the distinct visual impression that you were wearing a pair of hair shorts. Others would shave higher, but the one thing a cyclist could not do was shave right up to his "bikini line". The effect of friction from the Lycra shorts' chamois insert on inner thigh stubble was not to be contemplated.

Among civilians, I may have been embarrassed by my shaved legs, but at the same time I was flattered when someone noticed. It gave me a chance to proclaim that I was a cyclist; not just a cyclist, but a racing cyclist. The popular assumption persists that cyclists shave their legs mainly for aerodynamic effect. Except possibly for a small number of specialised track-racing events, such as the Olympic sprint, this is not the case. Some riders maintain that shaving makes the cleaning and dressing of wounds easier. If you fall at 30mph, the blacktop takes off your skin like emery paper set in concrete. According to this "clean wound" theory of shaving, smooth legs are less susceptible to going septic in the event of a scrape. I was never convinced. I still have the scars on my hips, flanks and elbows to back me up. The real reason cyclists shave their legs is very simple: it is because everyone else does it. No one likes to make a direct admission of the fact but, secretly for all, shaving one's legs has, above all, an aesthetic dimension: it is simply how the racing cyclist should look.

It took me a long time to learn how to race, even to the point where I could finish. Hotheadedly, I would be in all the action from the off, as though the race would be decided in the first lap. Tactically, I was naive. I was beginning to get the legs to race with, but did not yet have the head for it. Only gradually did I learn that the way to race was to ride along inconspicuously, watching, waiting, saying to myself, "Bide your time, bide your time." I discovered that you did not even need to be the strongest rider in a race to be placed. You just had to know when to put in a big effort to best effect. Miles. Doing the miles. Getting the miles in. This was the lingua franca of racing cyclists. More even than places and points when the season has started, the number of miles you'd done in training was the standard by which you were measured by your peers. There were occasions when I would get up at 5.30 in the dark of a February morning, so that I could get a two-hour ride in before work. To get the miles in.

Later, as Mick and I both gained experience and needed to fit our training into otherwise increasingly busy lives, we came to realise that, when it came to miles, quality mattered at least as much as quantity. A two-hour ride that comprised an hour at close to full-out effort, averaging at least 20mph, would be of greater benefit than four hours steady-state pedalling, averaging 14-15mph. My pattern was to race at Crystal Palace on Tuesday nights and add a training ride after work on Thursdays. All through the racing season, as long as extended daylight allowed from May to September, there would be a weekly meet in the park at Crystal Palace.

The course made use of part of the old motor-racing circuit; though less than a mile long, it made imaginative use of the contours of the hill. It was a fast, technical circuit, which foxed you for the first few times out. You had to learn how to keep as much momentum as possible into the hairpin, lean the bike over as far as you dared, and keep a tight line among all the other riders. Ideally, you wanted to be on the inside, your shoulder and helmet brushing the fronds of a weeping willow that, with an almost comic sense of the picturesque, marked the centre of the turn's radius. But the trick was to carry as much speed through the corner as possible: if you let too much speed scrub off, it was tempting to start pedalling too soon and risk grounding a pedal. Instead, you tried to keep your speed and then sprint, out of the saddle, as soon as you'd straightened up. Almost immediately, you'd be at the next corner, the right-hander, and then swooping down the hill. But the circuit's greatest challenge was the climb through the trees and back to the straight. It was not especially long, nor horribly steep; just relentless. The circuit was so short, you would hit that gradient every two minutes, your legs still burning, lungs tortured, from the last time around.

It was a merciless circuit: if you weren't fully fit, it found you out very quickly. Even without an attack, the race pace was so implacably high that someone would drop out on every lap. They would "blow up", losing pace with the wheel of the rider in front, letting out a last gasp or grunt of defeat. In a moment of bravado, I let myself be talked into entering the National Criterium Championship. As the day drew nearer, my anxiety grew. I had only, just a few weeks earlier, become a first cat -- the most senior category of amateur and the sole grade that permitted a racing encounter with pros. In any normal weekly race, I could pretty much guarantee that I'd make the selection and survive to the end. If I was feeling good, I might even chip off the front for a lap or two near the end. But in the nationals, there was a distinct possibility that I would be shelled out within just a couple of laps. This would be my comeuppance for the hubris of imagining I could even live with this company, let alone compete with it.

Riders were already gathering on the line, and there was only time for one quick lap before the line-up. Mick wished me luck, but I was already so deep in adrenalin swoon that I hardly heard him. My heart was racing. I felt I couldn't get enough air in my lungs ? and we hadn't even started. I forced myself to take some deep breaths. The bunch was much bigger than anything I had encountered before at the circuit, full of sponsored teams and matching bikes, instead of the usual ragtag mix of club jerseys and idiosyncratic machines. As always, I wished that I'd had another drink and another pee before the start. Then there was a call for silence and a brief talk from the commissaire. He stood back from the track, raised his right arm and fired the starter's pistol. The whiplash crack was greeted with a staccato chorus of clicks as all the riders pressed the cleat of their one loose shoe into the pedal's retaining plate. We were away. I concentrated on staying as far up the bunch as possible, but by the time I reached the first corner, forced almost to a standstill by the funnel effect, there was already a stream of riders sprinting out of the exit. Heart thumping more from nerves than exertion, I followed them out, and down the hill for the first time.

Many riders new to the circuit did not know the line to take, so people were slowing down much more than necessary. Already blocked, I was frustrated, knowing that the more momentum lost going down, the harder we would have to sprint on the way up. The pace was quick, but the expected blast straight from the gun that I had expected did not materialise. True, I was not even near enough the front to know what was happening up there, but the pace seemed more controlled and steady than I had expected: it was fast, but not ridiculous. By the time I reached the finishing line again, I was feeling almost comfortable. The old technique at the hairpin served me well. All the riders queued up on the outside of the bend to make the tightest line possible round the apex, but with so many of them piling up in ranks, they still had to slow right down. All I had to do was charge up the inside, while everyone was coasting towards the bend, slow down as late as possible and swallow up five or six places at a swoop. There was no one to stop you taking the inside line, and the riders on the outside simply had to make way. Some didn't like it, and grumbled: "Oi! Watch it!" But it was mild stuff.

When the race's decisive move came, I had no idea. At some point in the last 10 laps, a breakaway formed, with enough teams represented to forestall any concerted reaction from the bunch. Occasionally, I would look over and glimpse a group of four or five rounding another part of the circuit ahead of us. Every time I looked, they were further ahead, until eventually I saw them no more. Then, with three laps to go, there was suddenly a commotion behind: the breakaway group had made contact with the main field and was working their way through. The shouts were coming from the escapees who did not want to be blocked in their progress.

In effect, the entire bunch was now being lapped; our race rendered irrelevant. But for the breakaways, it was a critical moment: the strongest could work their way through to the front quickly and hope that their rivals would be held up by the mass of other riders. These were moments of confusion. Were we still in the race? Should we pull over? Where were these riders coming through? Theoretically, we were all lapped riders then and should have been pulled out. In practice, this close to the finish, with this many riders, it would have been impossible. It was simply up to us not to impede those who were now racing through our ranks at an improbable speed.

Two laps later, the routed bunch made a desultory, half-hearted gallop for the finish -- a lap down on the winner: the compact, powerful figure of Chris Lillywhite. I rolled in towards the rear, my face streaked with sweat and dust. Inside I was aglow: I had done it. Mick ran up to me, the delight on his face mirroring my own elation. He was clapping my back as I was still rolling. "Well done! You finished! That was fantastic."

Only later did I suspect the part that plain good luck had played in the event -- the particular scenario the race had taken that permitted my survival. The tactical game (in which I was just a bystander), and my local knowledge, had kept me in the race. On another circuit, or another day, it would have been a different story. I cherish the evening when I rode the National Crit Champs, and finished. I was there, and it felt like the greatest day of my life.

By Christmas 1994, my wife Ruth was pregnant. A few weeks after that, we learnt that she was expecting twins. Knowing that this would be my last season of racing, and a brief one at that, I pitched myself into training with more singleminded determination than ever. Sometimes the schedule became so tight that I would get up on a weekday morning when it was still dark, to fit in a training ride before work. The thought of another man might have been: how will I provide for my coming family? More conscious than before of the need to earn, I was busy at work. But I wanted my racing, too, and now I was racing against time.

Over the Easter weekend, I took part in the Tour of Ulster, a three-day stage race through the hills around Enniskillen. Mick and I were riding as part of a team for the South London division of the British Cycling Federation. After a poor first day, our team showed well. On the final day, in a stage that began in driving rain, two of us made a break of five that stayed away for 40 miles. We made the line a matter of seconds before the remnants of the chasing bunch charged home. And given that we were two in a break of five, we should have been able to work out some tactical move at the finish that would have given my teammate at least a shot at the sprint. But, as usual, I had nothing left for the gallop; I was not even thinking clearly, unable to focus on much besides getting over the line. I ended up with fourth place; he with third. But that placing, and a decent time in the previous day's time-trial stage, put me in the top 10. It had been an epic escape, one that later became etched in the memory, in a vivid series of sights and sensations, as a highlight of my cycling career.

Nearly three years later, the twins were two and a half and I was still riding most Saturdays during the winter and spring, meeting Mick at 9.30am in all but the vilest weather. But at some point that year, I stopped shaving my legs. Until then, I had kept up the old habit and tradition, if with less assiduous dedication. I knew I was not fit enough to race any longer, but I had clung to the idea that I was still a racing cyclist. My legs were not so brown in the summer as once they had been, my torso not so whippet lean, but inside I secretly cherished the hope of a return to racing. You need only be 40 to qualify as a veteran in cycling ? it was less than a decade away. Like cycling's old boys with their near-mystical belief in muscle memory, I reckoned I could pick up some form in a couple of months' serious training. In the meantime, I would be a sleeper. As long as I was shaving my legs, the flame of hope had still flickered.

The year had turned, and I had not ridden for two or three weeks, when Mick invited me to join him in a cross-race up at Eastway. By the time the day of the race came round, I wondered at the wisdom of it. The off-road circuit was longer than most ? and faster. It suited the true cross-rider much more than the weekend mountain-bikie like me. Within seconds of the start, I became a backmarker. I pushed myself hard, but, in this company, I was woefully slow. Within half a dozen laps, I was lapped by the front-runners. Confused and nauseated, I paused for a second and thought about whether to struggle on. Then I realised, not exactly that I could not do it, but that I did not have to. There had been a time when the shame of packing had spurred me on, to finish no matter what. That pride had driven me to be fitter so that I could keep pace and stay the course. But now the will was gone; my heart was no longer in it. I pushed my bike back to the clubhouse. In due course, someone would probably enter the letters DNF? Did Not Finish ? next to my name on the start sheet. I showered, packed up my bike, gathered up my family, and left. It was over. Like the peleton, implacable as a swarm of bees, catching up on the lone escapist, life eventually overhauled me. The game was up. I had found I could not give up cycling, in the way that the phrase implies, with a single, irrevocable act of renunciation. I could only let it go, little by little, like paying out line to a kite that grows ever more distant, until finally the end of the twine slips through one's fingers, and the kite is away, gone on the wind.

© Matt Seaton
The Guardian Weekend magazine