French Revolutions

was
extra kilometres. I’d averaged 27.7 for my 16-kilometre prologue, and if I
couldn’t do better than that now then all that had happened since would have
been in vain.
    Away from the roundabouts and traffic
lights and out across the flat fields and stuffy, muggy forests, things began
to pick up. I was grinding along in top gear, starting to taste metal but
keeping the rhythm, and then with my AVS up to 26 I rounded a corner at
substantially greater speed and found the path abruptly taped off and guarded
by two girls with clipboards sitting on camp stools. To cut a short story
shorter, I stopped. The one who had been bold enough not to hurl herself
backwards off her stool looked at the dirty, hot wheel near her head, then up
at its pilot. ‘Sorry,’ I panted, noting for the second time in half an hour how
rude it was to apologise in a foreign language.
    For a very small moment I attempted
to mash my dozen or so words of German into an appropriate query, but had only
got as far as ‘Quick, Mr Captain: forward through technology!’ when a lazy
peloton appeared ahead. As its lead members reached us and broke off towards a
neighbouring industrial estate, the girls ticked boxes and wrote down numbers;
I deduced that this was some sort of sponsored cycling event and in a flurry of
clumsy recleating set off in pursuit.
    In something of a fury of pent-up
pedalling I careered past the backmarkers, and was up to 45 k.p.h. when I hit
the front past the final light-industrial unit, holding off a surprised trio of
leg-shavers in matching courier-firm jerseys. Ignoring an indistinct cry of
alarm from another set of marshals I bumped up the kerb and rejoined the cycle
path, leaving everyone to continue their laps in peace. Feeble Sunday-morning
amateurs.
    A rollerblader didn’t hear me coming
and almost came a cropper, then the route branched off along a tiny road
flanked by overgrown pillboxes. It was quiet now and again I put my head down,
staring at the sun-bleached hairs on my brown knees. I bared a lot of teeth and
gritted them hard, knowing that although I’d never get anywhere near the 50
k.p.h. the pros would average — average — along this route, at least I
could put in the same agonising effort. Through quiet villages I glanced at my
distorted reflection as it whizzed across the convex mirrors outside every
concealed entrance, trying to keep my hands off the brakes even before sharp
corners or zebra crossings, promoting the maintenance of momentum above
accident prevention in my list of priorities. The AVS was up to 31 k.p.h. when,
with 38k covered, I raced across a junction towards the Rhine and the French
border. And in fairness, it was 32 when, just under twenty minutes and just
over 10 kilometres later, I crossed the same junction for the third time. I was
lost. Looking at the straightforward route on the map, it didn’t make any sort
of sense, but then by this stage nor did I.
    Suffering more types of distress than
I had ever experienced simultaneously I shouldered ZR and slipped and careered
madly down a muddy embankment to the service station I’d noticed alongside the
motorway beneath me. A man with a huge, hairy face was filling up his old
Transit van. ‘ Frankreich ? France ? France?’ I jabbered, feeling my legs beginning to seize up. ‘Da?’ he said, in some sort of
thick accent, and hurling ZR against a rack of antifreeze I ran into the shop.
‘ Frankreich? ’ I yelped at an old couple perusing the biscuits; the
husband nodded slowly and raised a thoughtful hand to his white stubble, but
before it got there I was in the beverage aisle, sweatily buttonholing a man in
a boiler suit who could only respond to my question with one of his own, and a
teenage girl who didn’t even manage that. Tears were welling up when I turned
to see a shirtless youth with a towel over his shoulder, and before I could say
anything he’d said, ‘The road to France, yeah?’ in fluent Lancastrian. I nodded
and panted through his straightforward instructions — naturally enough, my
mistake had been in following a fingerpost labelled ‘Frankreich’ — and with a
breathless sound intended to express gratitude ran back outside and remounted.
But not for very long. Those nascent twinges of muscle discomfort suggested
that my legs might be taking advantage of this respite to formally register
their complaint, and the unlubricated paroxysm that accompanied my first
revolution caused the unwelling of those