It Is About the Bike: The Life and Times of an Ordinary Racing Cyclist

By Paul Bland

The book traces a young mans upbringing in a working class part of Sheffield. Like most school leavers of his era, he enters into the steel industry, and a heavybeer-drinking culture. In an attempt to lose weight and return to a reasonable level of fitness he resorts to his childhood love of cycling. His enthusiasm for his passion soon turns to obsession. His life changes, his job and family are sacrificed in pursuit of his goal. Eventually, he realises he isnt destined for greatness and rediscovers how to ride a bike just for enjoyment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jun 23, 2006
• ISBN: 9781467017664

Paul Bland

Paul Bland was born in Sheffield in 1953. His obsession with amateur cycling left little time for writing, until now. This is Paul's first book.

Book preview

Prologue 

Inspired by Lance Armstrong’s book ‘It’s not about the Bike.’ I started to contemplate how many competitive cyclists there are in the world who remain unknown. We train like demons and sometimes have dreams of great things (or not so great) and these aspirations amount to precisely nothing. I was going on holiday at the time Armstrong’s book was being hailed as a classic. It was the first holiday that Jane and I had had together without the children. They had grown up and found their own idea of fun, leaving Jane and myself to cope with holidays without them. I took the opportunity to sit on a beach and just relax with a book. My choice of book wasn’t difficult - I had always been a cycling nut since I can remember and Lance Armstrong’s book was very much a talking point. In my circle of friends, the jury hasn’t quite come to a decision on the bloke. Some hold the view that he is a typically brash arrogant Texan, and they couldn’t wait until the next big gun came along to kick his arse. They also argue that he has picked out the Tour de France and he is basically crap for the rest of the year, unlike Eddie Merckx and Bernard Hinault who have won everything in front of them. The other side of the argument is that the man is God, Muhammad Ali on a bike. Whatever you think about the bloke as a person, you cannot help being filled with awe at how he first fought for his life with his battle against cancer and once cured of his illness, applied that same will and fighting spirit to become arguably the best Tour de France rider ever.

If you draw comparisons between Lance’s cycling career and mine, there are some similarities. For example, we both trained like Tour de France riders but I’m afraid that’s where the similarity ends. Lance went on after fighting testicular cancer to win the Tour de France seven times, and join an elite group of superhuman athletes. I went on to lose a couple of good jobs, ruin any career prospects I had, almost lost my marriage and won very little. But cycling changed my life. I went from a well-rounded fifteen stone, inactive, seven pints of beer a day sort of bloke to a very intensive five hundred mile a week anorexic bike racer, which on reflection, improved my health and well-being. Unfortunately, when the bug bit me, I didn’t know when to stop. Like the gambler at the card table or the punter at Ladbrokes who thought he had found the recipe for success, I thought that this bike or this type of training was going to make me that bit faster. If only I could finish work at 4pm instead of 5pm I could get those extra miles in. I was totally addicted to the bike.

Now I’m cured I can look back and think ‘what if?’ What if for the last quarter of a century I had channelled my energies into a business venture or a career and poured as much time and effort as I had pushing the pedals? I could have been a millionaire perhaps, who knows? If you believe that rubbish, you will believe anything. More than likely I would have carried on being the boozer and under-achiever I was before I discovered the bike. The present predicament I find myself in seems to prove that theory.

Stage 1

Early Years 

My pre-teenage years were spent in a modest terraced council-owned house in a run- down area, two miles north of Sheffield city centre. Between Hill Foot Bridge and the Owlerton dog track there was a community where strangely the streets ran in alphabetical order; Anlaby, Brough, Cottom, Driffield, and Eden Street, giving the area a bit of uniqueness. These streets were sandwiched between the steelworks of Daniel Doncaster’s and Easterbrook’s and Alcard on Penistone Road. I lived at 10 Anlaby Street, with my parents Muriel and Tommy.

The houses belonged to a bygone era, the streets were cobbled and the front door opened onto the street with no sign of a blade of grass or shrub. Each house had a tarmac back yard that backed onto another back yard of the next street. At the top of each street was a high wall and below a large drop of about ten metres to the dirty polluted river Don. The Don once held fish, so I was told, before being used by the nearby factories as a dumping ground for toxic chemicals.

The river Don and its banks were an adventure playground for the children. We used to build rafts out of oil drums and debris we found and shot at rats with air rifles. The area was a poor and drab industrial part of Sheffield. I thought it was how everybody lived their lives. When I now occasionally drive past or ride through on my bike I can’t recognise or visualise the place where I was brought up. It is only Daniel Doncaster’s, which still exists as a reminder of my past. The streets and shops on the opposite side of Penistone Road are now gone to make way for a wide road.

Ironically, a showroom exhibiting expensive cars has replaced our streets leaving the two steelworks intact either side. The original Penistone Road, constructed for light traffic many years ago, is a minor slip road now running parallel to the dual carriageway.

Looking back to my childhood days living in those rundown surroundings, it strikes a contrast today and how people live their lives back then. I felt a sense of community, which I don’t feel today. People tended to know everybody in their street and their surrounding area. It was nothing tangible, but you knew it was there. With four houses sharing one backyard, how could you not know your neighbours and their business?

Of course, life wasn’t always harmonious within the community, not everybody got on. There were fights occasionally, but rifts were soon healed. There was a working class comradeship. There were, and still are, wealthy areas of Sheffield like Dore and Totley where the well-heeled (as my old man would call them) lived. My community was the only world I knew or cared about. Adults knew the divide and what it meant, while children lived in innocence and ignorance. There was seldom need or means to explore other areas. Shops were close by in a pre-hypermarket, car-free community. Those that had cars, and they were only a few, were usually considered as having a ‘bob or two’ but then became the subject of ridicule when as a rule, their old banger proved to be unreliable.

My mother made the evening meal for our family. She would look down the street from the living room window anxiously, and return to her cooking until she would catch sight of Dad swaggering up the street after a day’s work. He was instantly recognisable from his walk, his flat cap over his eyes and his army surplus snap bag across his shoulder. He expected his tea to be ready on time and it was served up with timely precision as he walked through the door. My mother knew what time he finished work, she also knew what bus he would catch, and what time it would arrive at the end of the street. There was no excuse for being late with the tea. Tea always comprised of a traditional full meal with meat and three vegetables, with treacle sponge and custard for afters. In this family, like most others, I suppose the roles were clearly defined and there were accepted without any reason to question. Political correctness and women’s liberation had not arrived. Dad was the breadwinner and my mother accepted the role of housewife without question, and which included attending to his every need.

Dad was about five feet eight inches tall, he had a lean build, without carrying any fat. He complained that he had short legs and always had to have his trousers shortened (but I never noticed). His hair was thin on top and brushed over his head Bobby Charlton style. I was scared of him. What he said went, what he told me to do I did without a debate. I had learned from bitter experience that was, without doubt the safest course of action. My mother was five feet two inches, stout with dark brown hair, which she dyed a dark chestnut colour, as the grey was showing through her natural shade. With my mother, there was perhaps a little room for manoeuvre when she spoke, but not a lot. Both my parents had a physical and mental toughness about them. Their mental toughness was probably brought about by the era they were brought up in, and their physical toughness was the result of both having done hard manual work all their life.

My Dad joked that my mother’s job was to replace his mother who was getting too old to look after him. This was a cruel taunt that must have hurt my Mum, even if it wasn’t true. He was born into hard times, one of fourteen children, most of them getting killed in World War II. With little formal education, he started work at fourteen to provide for his mother and her younger children. He secured a semi-skilled job at GEC, which provided stability and income. Dad had been at he same place for over twenty years. He met Mum, and he worked there to the end. When they married after a brief courtship, Mum became the housewife and mother. They tried for a second child, but she died at birth and they never tried again. Mum was in her mid thirties by then, past her best child-bearing days. I was their one child to bring up. They thought I would have a better life than they had enjoyed, but that wouldn’t be difficult. Mum was in service from an early age and Dad stole coal and wood to sell to support his younger brothers and sisters. When they first got married, they lived with my Dad’s mother but things didn’t work out, so they ended up on Anlaby Street.

As we tucked into our evening meal Mum looked to Dad for approval. Is your meat tender dear? Tough as old boots would be the reply. How much did you pay for this rubbish? My mother would defend herself with It is best undercut.

I didn’t like any of the dinner except for the treacle pudding. I would take the food out of my mouth when my parents weren’t looking, and slide a handful under the table. Peggy, our dog, who was half-terrier, half-spaniel would devour the morsels instantly and lick my hand clean at the same time. Meal-time was always an ordeal for me. The strangest things were served up, I really didn’t want to know what I was eating, nor, should I say, the dog was eating. Tripe and onions, cow heel, herring roes on toast, bag and chickling. If I did ask, all would get as a reply was ‘’It’s good for you. Get it eaten.’’ I discovered later in life that what we ate with the strange names were the bits of an animal that nobody else wanted. All these and more strange sounding animal parts were purchased at the tripe shop on Penistone Road.

For a semi-skilled worker with no formal qualifications, Dad surprisingly had a good imagination and innovative skills. When I look back at some of his creations, they were quite amazing, even if a little bit eccentric. He used his skills to brighten up the drab back yard. He transformed a tarmac back yard into a garden. He used cut-down beer barrels he somehow obtained from the brewery to pot plants. He would cut the barrels in half, decorate them, and fill them with soil. The plants were usually from cuttings that he again acquired. We used to transport the soil in sacks from over two miles away on a home-made trolley. An old derelict cottage provided him with the soil he needed. The outside walls of our house were whitewashed and wooden trestles supported sweet peas that climbed the walls. The garden was a conversation piece amongst the neighbours. Nobody else could be bothered and had difficulty in comprehending my old man’s endeavours. But dad liked being different and it never bothered him what others thought. At the time I couldn’t understand why he did these things. It’s only when I look back I admire him. Kids don’t like to be different and don’t want a Dad that’s different. His innovative skills didn’t stop at gardening. He also made gadgets for his other passion, which was fishing. He made equipment he needed that he couldn’t find at the fishing tackle shop. A rod rest that fitted to the basket and a collapsible landing net were items in Dad’s tackle box years before they were available in the shops.

The most striking recollection I can remember about my early years was both how brutally harsh, yet simple life was. Lesson 1: if somebody hits you, you hit them back. If you don’t, your dad hits you. A simple but effective lesson I learned when Dad witnessed me being bullied by two lads that were considerably older and bigger than me. After seeing me give up the fight in a damage limitation retreat, he spelled out how I was to redeem myself. I remember being ordered out of the house to charge at this unsuspecting youth with arms flailing windmill style. My old man didn’t seem to mind me going down fighting as long as the effort and courage was there.

My dad applied the same approach in teaching me how to swim. I had two weeks with an inflatable rubber ring, and after that it