Neither of my bike sheds are 'pain caves'... and that's exactly how I like it

I’m a very lucky boy in that I don’t have a pain cave, I have two pain caves. This makes me an apex Zwift predator (see me strut, hear me roar). I’m also an even luckier boy because neither of them are actually pain caves... they’re sheds. Just sheds. Sheds with no glamourising fetishisation of riding a bike going nowhere in them. 

The one closest to the house is full of bike crap. A pile of mountain bike tyres the height of a small child, plus half a dozen boxes of other tyres that have been neatly folded and taped up so you can see the logo, and then chucked into boxes roughly separated into road and cyclo-cross with a new one for gravel.

There are split plastic containers of saddles and seat posts, handlebars and stems, front and rear derailleurs and zip-tied cassettes, brake callipers and levers, a plastic bag hiding some tatty old Campagnolo, and a box of disc rotors of varying strata of worn and wobble that are never going to get used again. It’s a history of a life on two wheels with a patina of wistful sentimentality gommed on it that would probably wash off with a spray of degreaser and a determined rub.

There are several sets of forks, one of which I use for hammering home headset crown races as it has the steerer tube removed. There’s a chest of drawers with the random stuff in: tools for obsolete parts, imperial Allen keys, some suspension seat post elastomers, jockey wheels held together with freezer ties, a healthy breeding colony of plastic light mounts, a pick-up-sticks of quick releases and enough ancient alloy bits of uncertain use to keep Alice Roberts going for another series. A bag of plumbing paraphernalia, tins of paint, jars of nails, a garden table, a power drill and accessories, some bamboo canes and all the stuff, tat and maybe-useful-someday gubbins that a shed is meant to have in it. See me shuffle about rummaging for something I know is in here somewhere, hear me mutter and tut.

While there might be enough parts in there to build up a bike or two, I have never ridden my bike in my shed. 

That's because for me, cycling is about being outside. 

A bike is a conduit for me to experience as much outside in the time I can spare. I can’t remember how I settled on cycling as it was a long old time ago, and I suspect it was a slow assimilation and progression from just riding to my mates and the sweet shop over there, but I was shockingly flailing at team sports, walking was too slow and running was simply painful. Bikes offered ease, freedom, speed and getting to the real outside quickly without having to deal with the complications of other people.

Over the intervening years I’ve discovered that it does bring with it countless other benefits, but mainly I use cycling to dive into the space rushing around my head. I can get a little tetchy if I can’t feel the wind and the noise and sometimes the rain, and once a while the sun, and the heat and the cold and the surrounding myself in all of the ever-changing whatever that stepping out the front door might entail. It is the full body immersive experience, that starts with the standing in the street divining the colour of the sky and speed and shape of the clouds to decide how many or few clothes to wear, and what to roll in the back pocket for later thanks to living in a temperate climate.

Others may embrace cycling for its fitness gain, its sociability, its travelling to new places, its riding to work-shops-friends-pub, its pedalling a long way, its riding a short way but faster; and while all of those things are also vitally important to me and during any ride some or all of those will bubble cheerfully to the surface, it’s doing all of this with the elements buffeting my face and air billowing around my grey matter that matters the most. 

It is, I think, being involved, immersed, noticing the headwind kick in as you turn that corner, or the reward of the tailwind after a few hours of battering into it. It is the satisfaction and relief of making it to the top of the climb, it is feeling more than a fan in the face and gliding through a collection of pixels. For all the mumbled oaths of the last miles home in the cold and sloughing wet clothes next to the washing machine whilst spooning peanut butter straight from the jar, there is the inhaling a fridge-fresh Fanta while your skin cracklings in the sun. It is the ache of hunger and tiredness with still enough miles to go and then getting a corner just right so it makes you smile, and that ache and hunger is immediately forgotten. It is both the warm embracing hug and cold sharp slap against the skin. Feeling something, I think. 

It is noticing the thousand imperceptible things that go by unnoticed in the minutiae of differences within the day to day on the roads that I’ve ridden day after day, month after month, year after year. The sigh of realising that winter’s not going to hold back any longer because that puddle on that corner has settled again and will be there for the next six months, and the counterpoint of the hushed rejoicing when it disappears at about the same time the sun doesn’t dip below the hill until 6pm and you can maybe just maybe think about going a layer lighter on the next ride.

All of these things and little moments are more important to me than watts and power-ups. It is the feel and rumble and drag of different tarmac textures and the swerves round potholes and drain covers, the total concentration mixed with the cocoon of mindlessness that can wash over after an hour or so when my body has stretched into the ride and settled into itself. And it goes quiet for a bit. Which is why I’m here. Even the mundane nothing of tapping out the miles is a necessary comfort.

Of course, this mean that there are times when I’m stuck indoors tracing rain drops down the window pane. There are seemingly endless interminable, head-filling, thick dark cloying soup days. So I mindlessly and mindfully bike tinker and do stretches and basic body maintenance routines instead, so that my rickety old body might be a little more limber for when it’s my level of passable to go outside again.

While there is a level of rain that it is pleasurable to ride in, and the romantic in me sees a beauty in it, it happens only infrequently. It’s often becomes just a retrospective justification for that very expensive jacket, and it can get old pretty damn quickly. Some days it’s a faux-rugged giggle, some days I’ve done this shit enough times already and I don’t need to do it again.

I’ve tried riding a bike indoors, and while I get a sweat on and feel like I’ve moved blood and air around a little bit faster than just being on the sofa and made lungs and legs hurt and worried about dissolving headset grease with sweat, I feel desperately unfulfilled and… empty. I have some rollers that are trundled out once a year just to check I’ll never really use them, and I bothered a turbo for a while when I had a broken arm, merely wanting to agitate legs to stop them from atrophying while I watched half a film a day. It was the Turbo Of Illness that was passed around a group of friends for several years to whomever was broken at the time and needed to fool their muscles that they were riding a bike. I’m not sure if anyone knows who actually owned it initially, I’m pretty sure no one knows where it is now, I’m guessing under some stairs where most turbo trainers hibernate and die. That has been it. 

I’m not dismissing riding staying still, as it is clearly a remarkably effective tool if that’s what you want. I’ve noticed when cycling friends have spent time in their garages and sheds indulging their sufferfests that they’ve got noticeably quicker, and it takes a little more effort on my behalf to keep up with them on the hills, or I watch the elastic snap and resolve to up my game. I see it as good training for me, for free.

Does it mean that in whatever race I might enter I’m erring towards the fast sluggish rather than the sprightly, and I’m there mainly to prop up a page of names? Yes. Am I that bothered? Not really, as my personality isn’t podium-based. Do I know that if I used this static tool in the shed as part of structured training I would be better able to withstand the rides I want to do throughout the year, those big rides with enough outside as it is? Absolutely. If I want to ramp up the efforts I’ll sprinkle more hills into my ride instead, and then throw another one in just after I’m about ready to go home. When there’s no option to just climb off and stagger back into the house, it tends to concentrate the mind and focus argumentative legs towards one more pedal revolution. It’s a training regime of sorts, and more importantly it makes me smile inside. 

Crawling into a cave (Pain, Man or otherwise) to play Super Mario Cipollini Bros just isn’t for me, and that’s aside from that posturing terminology giving me the eyerolls. I need to ride a bike outside because it’s Outside, and that brings me necessary release and escape. I am happy to tolerate that this option might not be available all the time, and to accept both the rain and the sunshine with equal grace and apply some kind of carrot-based system to every cold, gritty, damp, component-destroying ride followed by a aftercare regime that’s three times as long as the ride with the promise of skipping up the road under bucolic dappled shadow some time later often nudges me out the door.

I might be miserable, but it’s a more contented miserable than your being in a shed miserable...