French Revolutions

another, then a Coke to satisfy what
was to become a habitual craving for sugar. More bread. Pudding where
applicable (which is to say, when included as part of the menu deal). I’d been
yawning almost uncontrollably for most of the previous twenty-four waking
hours, which reminded me of the importance of double espresso as part of a
balanced cycling diet.
    Odd as it may seem, caffeine is on
the International Cycling Union’s list of controlled substances: a limit of six
cups a day is apparently the rough guideline. All riders, even Chris Boardman,
start a race day with two big coffees; Paul Kimmage, nodding off in the saddle
during a debilitating stage of the Tour of Italy, had to shove up a caffeine
suppository to keep going (that was bad enough, but you should have seen his
face when the Coffeemate and sugar lumps went in). I had a picture of Eddy
Merckx in one of my issues of procycling that was to become something of
an iconic image for me in times of crisis. Flat out on a dressing-room bench,
still wearing half his crap-splattered kit, one sock off, one sock on, mouth
gaping limply, dead to the world: it was all you ever needed to know about the
absurd physical demands of the sport. Just thinking about it made me want a
coffee. And a lift home.
    With a slightly embarrassed cough we
move on to the ‘Fluids — Other’ section. I hadn’t thought of alcohol as a
performance-enhancing drug — to my knowledge, strip Cluedo has yet to be
ratified by the International Olympic Committee — but it was quickly becoming
apparent that, in cycling, anything that makes the world seem a better place
(or anyway a different place) has got to have something going for it. In the
early Tours it was by no means uncommon to watch riders stopping to down a huge
bottle of wine, and in my 1973 Tour of Italy video I’d seen domestiques
carrying bottles of lager up to the front runners. Bernard Hinault used to get
his bidon filled with champagne before the last climb of the day, and when he
quit the Renault team it was over an argument with his team boss about how much
wine he was allowed at dinner. At the fateful foot of Ventoux, Tom Simpson
joined a crowd of other riders on a bar-raid: he necked a cognac, which can’t
have done wonders for an amphetamine-jittered constitution; one of the French
riders sank two glasses of red wine.
    Anyway, there we are. The prospect of
dining in French restaurants without drinking wine was too beastly to
contemplate, and now I had an excuse (we’ll just gloss over Tom for the
moment). I drank a quarter-litre of wine that day; the next it was up to half,
and so it remained every lunchtime thenceforth. Always rosé, though, which I
don’t actually like very much but somehow seemed less tawdry. You don’t see
tramps on benches with their teeth stained pink by years of rosé abuse.
    ‘Combien de kilomètres?’
    I looked up from the bill —
ludicrously small for such a parade of comestibles — to see a well-presented
old gent who looked like a character from Jean de Florette dressed up
for market day.
    ‘Combien de kilomètres par jour?’ he
asked again, tilting his head at ZR. ‘Deux cents? Cent cinquante?’
    A Frenchman who thought I looked
capable of doing 200 kilometres a day? I was overwhelmed. ‘Cent trente,’ I
replied with a humbled smile, even though this almost randomly selected figure
was clearly at the very limit of my capabilities.
    ‘Oh, c’est bien, c’est bien,’ he said
sympathetically, and I knew then I would be morally obliged to do it.
    I finally saw some cyclists as I left
town, four of them in their fifties, pedalling towards me in big helmets,
rear-view mirrors on their handlebars. Those, the panniers and the scoutmaster
shorts smacked of a certain Englishness, a suggestion confirmed as the words
‘Bob’s off to do a recce’ were blown towards me as they passed. I was still
wearing my own baggy overshorts, but suddenly I knew they wouldn’t be making
another appearance. Looking at myself in shop windows I’d seen one of the more
outlandish combinations from those children’s books where you make hilarious
figures by matching different heads to torsos and legs. I was stuck with the
Seventies pot-holer helmet — the incident on Kew Bridge was sure to be repeated
soon — but the knobbly-kneed molester legwear was bound for the bin. Old Jean
de Florette had taken me seriously; maybe it was time I did so myself.
    The rivers were bulging with