My strongest memories of cycling are of bad moments.
This should actually come as little surprise, as a good deal of research has found that we tend to pay more attention to, and react more strongly to, negative rather than positive events. This sharp initial response to the negative – perhaps an evolutionary adaptation to help stay alive – “burns” itself on to our brains, making it easier to recall.
A few memories, then. There was the time, riding one August afternoon in the mountains of Gifu, Japan, that I found myself on the seemingly interminable switch-backed climb of the Amou Pass, with little protection from the sun and the temperature perched in the high 30s.
My eyes stinging with sweat, I focused intently on the cycling computer mounted on my handlebars. As I began to reach what I thought was the summit, the computer would cheerily announce the impending end of the climb. But cruelly, owing to some quirk of mapping, it would then simply reset and, like a digital mirage, suddenly reveal some new distance to the top. After stopping several times in what shade was available, I eventually reached the peak, in the throes of heat stroke (or, as it turned out, COVID, which I tested positive for the next day).
On another occasion I was riding with a group on the Umbrail Pass, in the high mountains on the Swiss-Italian border, when, after a sustained period of climbing, I began to go into a severe state of hypoglycaemia – what cyclists colloquially call “bonking”. I'd neglected to eat, and when I finally began to, I was already past the point of recovery. I inched up the twisting mountain pass, each grinding pedal stroke bleeding into another, my mind a cavern of existential dread. I felt the roadside grass willing me to simply collapse into its verdant embrace. A fellow cyclist – a congenitally sunny sort – pulled up alongside, trying to offer words of encouragement. “Can I sing for you, Tom?” I looked over in blank desperation, in disgust. I just wanted her – and the entire world – to go away.
One last memory. A bike race, in the Catskill Mountains of New York State. A few hours into the race, I approached the so-called “Devil's Kitchen”, one of the most notorious climbs in the northeastern United States (in general, any road bearing a Satanic moniker, or a name like “Sky Top Drive”, is to be dreaded in cycling). Over nearly four kilometres, it pitches upward at an average gradient of 10 per cent, with some sections approaching 20 per cent. It was on one of these latter slopes that I found I had run out of gearing – and legs. Unable to push myself up, I slalomed, side to side, trying to rob the mountain of its immoveable force. I soon had to “clip out”, to take my feet off the pedals and walk. This may seem a trivial inconvenience, but to a cyclist, leaving one's bike is like a captain abandoning ship, a heart-rending last resort. As I trudged up the hill, a professional team passed me by, their legs pumping with metronomic fury.
You may have noticed that all these cycling episodes that live so opulently in my memory involve one thing: mountains.
Peaks, cols, hills, alps, sierras, horns, fells, massifs, ridges. Whatever form they take, these geographic upwellings are the crux of cycling. “It is impossible to talk about cycling without talking about mountains,” writes Susannah Osborne in the introduction to the book Mountains: Epic Cycling Climbs. “Mont Ventoux, the Passo dello Stelvio, the Alpe d'Huez – these famous peaks have become temples where riders go to create a sense of self.” And while cyclists are technically not conquering mountains, but the roads by which civilisations have tried to conquer mountains, cycling here shares something with alpinism. “It's not the mountains we conquer,” said the great mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary, “but ourselves.”
In those high reaches, memories (not always good) are made. The Italian cycling legend Fausto Coppi, recounting his acclaimed victory in the 1941 edition of the Giro di Toscana, said that a vicious 15 kilometre climb up the Colle Saltino – without cheering spectators, the mud, rain and wind his only companions – was one of the most severe struggles he ever experienced. “I faced that climb alone and I finished it,” he wrote. “I dreamed about it many times and still see it as a nightmare.” He reached the summit in tears.
Mountains are points of inflection, looming physical and psychological barriers, the stages on which races like the Tour de France are typically decided. In 2024, for instance, the Slovenian superstar Tadej Pogačar essentially finished off the race on a day when he turned in what has been acclaimed as the greatest climbing performance ever – a record-setting ascent of the Plateau de Beille (eclipsing Marco Pantani's 1998 ride). Pogačar had actually been sharing the blistering pace with Danish rider Jonas Vingegaard for much of the climb, but with five kilometres to go, the Dane, riding in front, seemingly gestured for his rival to take a turn at the front. The Slovenian read this commonplace gesture as a “tell” that the Dane was flagging and launched an explosive attack, leaving behind his rival (who turned in the second greatest climb of all time) for good.
As a cyclist who is neither professional nor equipped with the typical climber's physique – I am more the domestique, the tall, not particularly lithe workhorse who can put in sustained efforts at the front on flat stretches – the mountain itself becomes the main adversary, mere survival the primary goal. Over the years, I have deployed various strategies to try to get over them – positive self-talk, envisioning an invisible hand giving me a push on the back, music via earbuds.
One bit of advice often given is to break the mountain down into a series of small goals (first make it to that signpost, then choose a new objective). The former professional cyclist Phil Gaimon once advised me to divide any climb into thirds. “The first third I'm holding back my effort and telling myself ‘easy',” he said. “The second third ‘steady,' and then the final third I can feel like I'm pushing hard.”
There are probably metaphors for all sorts of life challenges here. When, for example, I have gone very hard into a climb initially, wanting to get it over with as soon as possible, I have often found myself surging ahead of other riders, only to dramatically flag well before the top. Better to begin slowly, to acclimatise, to set a rhythm, to try and understand the demands of the task, and only once you have begun to master it, fully extend yourself. Do not fixate on what others are doing – it will only stress you out – instead find your own internal rhythm and focus on it. “No matter how fast you are,” Gaimon told me, “everyone is equally spent at the top.”
During my tortuous ride in the Japanese Alps, I would occasionally come across a hokora, a small shrine of the Shinto religion – a reminder that, in many traditions, mountains are associated with the sacred. The very act of scaling them can be devotional. I wasn't climbing with that in mind, but I cannot deny that on that ride I felt I had gone through some test of faith – in myself – and come out the other side somehow changed. And here is something curious: even though, in that moment, I felt entirely bad, in retrospect, that negative experience has become a positive, enduring memory. It transcended. By contrast, many of the moments of simple joy and sheer pleasure that I have felt while cycling have simply left me, like sweat being flicked from my body by the wind. We need these mountains, metaphorical or otherwise, to feel whole.
Illustrations Credits: Elisabetta Bianchi
