9 April - Commuter cyclist in training?
A little training insight from…Sophie Jerram
Sophie is co-director of Now Future and Letting Space. She is a curator, artist and communications associate with the Hikurangi Foundation. And most importantly, she is a Day 4 - South Island cyclist. Look out for her pedaling from Tekapo to Geraldine.
9th April. 8am, Wedderburn, Central Otago, New Zealand. The early morning mist is sitting unusually low over our surrounding farmland and threatening my plans for a training ride - cycling the 75k to the town of Alexandra. The adrenaline has been coursing in my veins since about 5am and now it feels like it’s going to be wasted - visibility is about 3 metres which doesn’t feel safe on a state highway with truck drivers unused to sharing the road with bicycles.
I’m especially nervous because I’m not a huge biker. I’m doing a short leg of the inaugural Tour of New Zealand because I think cycling is a great form of commuter transport, for adults and kids - and because I’d love for all our roads to be safer for bikes. But I am no multi-sport fanatic. When we are home in Wellington, I’m more likely seen biking to a meeting, (for haste) in skirts and heels, often borrowing my son’s skate helmet and visibility vest. My road bike was bought second hand last year for getting around town.
I also have a 20 yr old mountain bike -bought second hand -that we use for the Otago Rail Trail, which is adjacent to our farm cottage here in Wedderburn. In my short training for the Tour I realise I’ve been spoiled by thinking of ‘biking’ as what the family and I do on the Rail Trail - the dirt track has a fabulous gradient - perfect for trains, and now bikes. If cycling has a future in New Zealand for ordinary types like me then highway road design will need to accommodate for our lack of combustion engines. The up bits on main roads are a real challenge and the down bits also seem very steep.
Enough complaining about my folly; I’ve actually felt very good getting prepared for this race. And there are bigger concerns: apparently the world has less than 20 years before total collapse according to an email I received last night. “Predictions from Limits to Growth on track for global economic collapse.”
From our rural idyll the idea of this seems both like a distant fiction and as if it has already occurred. Farmland in New Zealand - especially when covered in mist - can have that post-apocalyptic feeling; it’s easy to feel like Bruno Lawrence in The Quiet Earth.
And with that email it is easy to wonder what AM I doing by taking part in the Tour of New Zealand?
Given the hostility to many cyclists on the road, am I propagating the myth of New Zealand’s sustainable green, outdoorsy lifestyle? Am I joining the ranks of the obsessives, deludedly framing my ‘athletic’ life in a lush landscape? Am I one of those eeking out New Zealand’s ‘last utopia’ status, as American debt climbs at $150m an hour and the global population climbs by 300 million in the week of the tour? Yes, probably.
Cheery thoughts for Easter Monday. The good thing about biking and exercise in general is that there’s a mellowing of rabid thoughts after exertion. They linger like the scent of burnt toast but are not experienced w the same intensity… I will try to answer some of these questions when I’m in the saddle but I tell myself, as I have many times before, that I can only do my small bit.
And the sun breaks through and all is OK, for now. Time to get on the bike.
