After reading an Escape article before the holidays headlined Thoughts on one ride with Neilson Powless, former road pro and current pro privateer Joe Laverick sent in this piece on a group ride viewed from the opposite perspective.
“My day-to-day life is training with some of the world’s best riders, and we often forget that that’s not normal,” Laverick said. “Travelling home for the Christmas break, I headed back to the local group ride that I grew up on.”
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“Be careful,” my mum and dad quip in unison as I step out the door of our family home to go training. I travel around the world racing my bike for a living, but you’re never too old to have your parents warn you on road safety.
I’m in Grimsby, Lincolnshire for the Christmas holidays. I was born and raised here, spun on these roads until I was just past twenty. Five years ago, just a few weeks after my birthday, I moved away to chase the pro-cycling dream in France. I never really moved back.
North East Lincolnshire isn’t known as an epic cycling hotspot, but it’s my home. It’s where I learned to love the sport. It’s these home roads, and the people who ride them, that taught me how to ride a bike. This week I’m back, riding solo around the lanes on Christmas Day.
The climb that I once did ‘hill reps’ up is now a mere speedbump, the loop that was once my ‘big ride’ is now an addition to the end of the training day.
It’s Boxing Day morning and I pedal over to the local group ride. I arrive at 09:34 to a barrage of abuse as they’re just pulling out of the car park. I’m late, but purposefully so – these boys never roll out on time.
It doesn’t matter than I’m now five years older. To all the guys on this group, I’ll always be ‘junior’. I’m the kid they had to nurse home from the cafe aged fifteen, I’m the kid they taught how to change an inner tube, I’m the kid they’ve watched flee the nest with a dream.
When I first got into the sport, these were the fast boys, the group that I was scared to go out with. The speeds were intimidating and the people too. It was an old school cycling club education. Tough love and respect through suffering.
I never got an easy ride because I was a fifteen year old kid. I once complained that Briggsy wasn’t letting me sit in the draft while riding in a crosswind. He was pushing me out into the wind. “Push him back” was the order from someone else. Briggsy is forty years my senior, but I pushed him back and he let me in. Lesson learned.
There are few situations in life where you spend hours upon hours as a teenager with a group of guys whose seniority on you is measured in decades. It forced me to grow up fast, both as a bike rider and a person. It probably got me in trouble at times too; from a young age, I got used to the banter of those older than me. It’s safe to say my school teachers weren’t always the biggest fan.
As we roll out of the car park and towards the coast road, I ride up the side of the group. Looking around, everyone has played a small part in my story. There’s Dave Robbo who’s in his sixties now, stronger than an ox; he’s the one who nursed me home from the cafe a decade ago. There’s Briggsy who I first learned to push back on, and who lent me his TT bike when I was a junior. Scof has driven me to races, Deno will never not remind me of the day he put me to the sword – he was my driving instructor too. There’s Jonno the ex-pro who has guided me on all things good in life, both on and off the bike. There’s Tintac, the man to blame for my coffee addiction. He ordered me a latte aged sixteen and forced me to like the thing. Then there’s Nige who’ll always be there to critique your puncture-changing skills. He worked with my dad 35 years ago, too. Each helped me in their own little way: a nugget of information, getting told to harden the f*ck up, lending me equipment, or financial help.
We ride out to the cafe at a slow speed. I’m sitting at the front and people are changing around me. Tony comes and pulls a strong turn. Our aim is the local Tennis Centre, they make good cake and cheap coffee. The perfect combination on a northern group ride. It’s Boxing Day, so it’s closed, the local Starbucks will do instead.
“Three pounds fifty and I have to walk over there and collect it myself,” one of the old guys chunters. Starbucks isn’t the usual stop on a Grimsby bike ride, it’s usually a fishing ponds…
As we exit the cafe, the trash talk and goading begins. Like every masters group ride, the pace only goes up from here. Once upon a time, smashing it home with the fast guys was the highlight of my week, these days it feels a little different. The joy in going hard never dies.
The goading and shouting continues as we get closer to home. Everyone knows how this is going to end, but reality has never stopped the opportunity for a good sledge. I take the front and start winding up the pace. I’m playing, payback for those early years of pain, going just fast enough.
We turn left onto Tetney straight, it’s a kilometre to the sign from the corner. I ease out of the corner, making sure everyone gets on the train, and then wind-up my acceleration as if I’m doing a lead-out in a race. I tell the boys I’ll let them sprint for the sign.
I was probably sixteen or seventeen when I first won the town sign sprint. I spent years wanting it. I went home that day and told my parents.
I flick my elbow and spot a gap behind me, there’s just Wrighty and Robbo left ten metres behind. You know what, it was just as fun as all those years ago.
We slow to let everyone catch back on for the ride through town. There’s silence, just heavy breathing and freewheels. The group comes back in one and twos.
“I let you win that one junior,” someone gasps from the back.
In that moment, I could’ve been fifteen again. Both everything, and nothing, has changed.
I’m writing this sitting in the spare room at my parents house. I’m wearing my school leavers hoodie with a ‘17’ on the back, indicating my graduating year. Coming home really is a time capsule.
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