I was an idiot for wanting her to when she’d tried to leave all this behind.
I was sharing a room with Derek, who was thankfully such a gasbag that he didn’t notice me sinking into something like panic. I slept so poorly on Friday night before the opening stage, I had to rip off my smart watch, so I didn’t have to explain my stats to Dad, although the fact that I’d taken it off would alert him anyway.
All the stupid psychology sessions I’d bluffed my way through, pretending everything was apples. I wondered what would have happened if I’d actually told the therapist everything. The only answer I got from the darkened ceiling overnight was that it was too late to wonder about that now.
She was watching me at breakfast, although she tried not to let me catch her. The thought that this was the end – the beginning of the Tour, but the end of Leesa’s interest in me – wouldn’t leave me alone.
Dad’s final pep talk –Keep your pants on and don’t lose it on the descent!– washed over me without sticking and I shoved on a pair of headphones in an attempt to shut out everything else while I waited for my turn on the starting ramp.
I had a love-hate relationship with Individual Time Trials – and everything else in my life right now apparently. Today’s was short, only 35 km. Tomorrow, I’d have to save my strength for the end of the mammoth 195 km route, but today I could belt it out. The course was mostly flat and Derek and I had done a recce of the whole thing yesterday. The biggest danger was misjudging a sharp turn after the descent back into Strasbourg.
But it was 35 km where I couldn’t afford even a second of distraction. Sometimes it was easier to slog it through five hours of low-pressure racing than minutes where every second counted.
There were cameras everywhere. They were already painting the white jersey on me. Next year I would no longer be eligible for the young rider classification. Dad would have to live with himself if I didn’t cut it as a real champion. There was only one guarantee in this sport: I wouldn’t always win. Dad didn’t want to admit that, but I had to.
I tossed my phone from hand to hand restlessly. I would be one of the last to start, as a race favourite. The wait was like a physical pressure on my chest. The electronic beats pounding in my ears didn’t help.
A clamour among the swannies caught my attention and they told me Derek had burned up the route, shooting unexpectedly to second place. There was a good chance I wouldn’t beat his time. That thought twinged a little, knowing that Derek would sacrifice his own chances of success for me for the rest of the Tour.
But when he made it back to the bus, dripping with sweat from the baking sunshine and concentrated effort, I was so fucking proud of him.
‘I’ll be drafting you one day,’ I said as I clapped him on the back. ‘When I’m an old man,’ I added.
‘Never, then?’ Derek quipped. ‘Don’t tell me my chances of success are reliant on you growing up,’ he said with a mock groan.
I chuckled, but his words struck me. Every minute of the past hour had felt like a year of my life. I must be a wizened geezer by now. Too young for Leesa and now suddenly too old.
The helmet was slippery in my hands as I stood to make my way to the start. Time-trial helmets were smooth and heavy, hiding our faces behind a round visor and making us look like actors in a tacky sci-fi production, but if they shaved a few seconds off, the sacrifice of looking like a dork was just about worth it.
My heart thudded loudly in my chest as I accepted my bike and rolled it to the starting line, at the top of a yellow ramp, the years of my life devoted to this sport hanging off me like invisible sinkers.
Throwing my leg over the frame, I clicked in one shoe and then the next, once the assistant had a firm hold of my saddle. Head down, I stared at the road ahead of me, suddenly imagining it as my own future: empty and entirely up to me.
Empty, because Leesa wouldn’t be in it.
My instincts triggered by the starter beep, I launched my bike down the ramp and into the race.
The route I’d practised – in real life and in video reconnaissance footage – over and over again, whipped by in a blur of supporters and within a few minutes, I’d left the cobbled old town of Strasbourg behind, the canal glinting in the late afternoon sunlight.
The course wasn’t so short that I could let loose right from the beginning, so I settled into the rhythm that lived in my blood – pedalling, breath, metabolism all pushed in a fine balance. My awareness narrowed to the road, the air on my chin, forces of gravity and momentum. Keeping a loose grip on the time-trial handlebars, my elbows in the rests, the tucked body position was second nature after the hours – years – of practice. About 40 minutes of intense concentration in nearly 30-degree heat and I’d have completed the first stage of this year’s Tour.
Without other riders around me, no drafting or the power of the peloton to propel me along, I was exposed – racing against myself. But the odd sense of having a blank slate intrigued me as I flew around a curve through fields of tall wheat, swaying in the breeze under an expansive sky. There was something to learn here, a step I’d been fumbling to take ever since Dad formally made me lead rider.
Before any of these half-formed ideas could solidify in my mind, Alan’s voice crackled in my ear. ‘Thirty seconds down, C.’
Thirty seconds! It might as well have been a year. Shit, I had to get my head in the game.
The shot of panic was useful, adrenaline giving my muscles a boost as I hurtled through the next colourful little village, past the pastel-pink chateau with its red roof dotted with windows and two turrets.
‘Twenty-three seconds’ was Alan’s update at the next time checkpoint. It wasn’t disastrous, but the burn was making its way up my body and drips of sweat blurred my vision. My heartrate was all over the place – or my brain was. I risked a glance at my bike computer to see my power output well above what I was aiming for on this course. At least that explained the sting in my lungs.
Forcing myself to slow down took all of my concentration. My focus spun in and out and all my hours spent on this route went out the window as I reacted purely on instinct.
‘Thirty-one seconds,’ came Alan’s voice once again.
I was about three-quarters through – maybe? Too little time to finish well. Now it was about mitigating the damage. There was a point somewhere up ahead where I could go all out. I’d tested myself against this route. But I couldn’t quite remember where.
My bike gave a sudden jerk and I wrenched on the handlebars, breaking position for a split second while I regained my balance, veering to one side. The front wheel must have found a stone. It rattled me, but when I shook the sweat from my eyes and resumed my bent posture over the bike, the relief that I wasn’t sprawled on the road, covered in cuts and grazes, gave me a much-needed moment of clarity.
