When you’re in third grade in an all-boys’ school, physical prowess matters. Little boys revere good batsmen, fast runners and strong people.

Though I’ve always been tall for my age, I was horrible at sports of any kind. In fact, I was such a slow runner that I’d be embarrassed to lean forward at the starting line the way the other boys did. When I batted at cricket, I’d swing and miss ten times more often than I’d make contact. So it was a strange moment when, at age 38, I received my first medal for a sports activity — specifically a bicycle race.

Three weeks ago, the last time I’d been in an organised bicycle race was 1983 when my junior school had a ‘slow race’ on Sports Day. Now, nearly 30 years later, I was in a team taking turns at ‘pulling’ the paceline along, attempting to cover 33.5km as fast as we possibly could. With flyovers enroute and strong headwinds on the return, we managed to do it in just under 53 minutes, earning us an average speed of 38km/h. Not bad, but it got us a distant second place to the team that did it in just 46 minutes.

The Bangalore Bicycle Championships is a small but enthusiastic organisation at the beginning of a whole new culture. It organises races throughout the year with winners getting T-shirts and rather nice medals that are machine cut from thick cardboard, designed to look like a bicycle cog. There’s a lot of fun and healthy competition (though as with anything competitive, there are a few darker moments in its past).

Job well done

But as you can imagine, you shouldn’t read too much into our second place — not in an international context at any rate. We were happy, however, for we’d worked hard and played well as a team. Our strategy had been tight and we pushed to the limits of our ability.

Time trials, with their staggered starts and racing against the clock, are not exactly a spectator sport, but they do require a lot of inward focus on the part of the riders. Simply being physically able to ride hard for 33.5km comes from a lot of miles in the saddle, but to ride at the limit of one’s ability needs a lot of concentration.

Push too hard and you’re off the pack, able to do nothing but limp home alone in the wind. Push too little and well, you’re not in a race to take it easy.

For me though, the surprising source of satisfaction was not to have a podium finish, but to have pulled for the team. It felt good wearing the team jersey, the seven of us dressed identically at the start line.

There’s a rhythm and high level of trust in the paceline as we rotate around each other at 45km/h, shielding the people behind us from that cruel wind; the organism as a whole travelling much faster than each of its individual parts ever could. This weekend four of us will travel out of town for a race, so we’ll represent our city as well in some small way (though of course only within the cycling community).

Last evening the team met for a celebratory dinner, and though most people around the table were little more than acquaintances to me, I was able to chat and laugh with an ease that usually only comes with much older friends.

It’s pretty fascinating, I thought, how the act of working hard to move faster than other people anchors one in so many ways. The little boy from 1983 is no longer embarrassed to lean forward at the start line.

 

Gautam Raja is a journalist based in Bangalore, India.