Etape du Tour: Bicycles, lycra and hypothermia, a uniquely French experience.

It’s the middle of summer in France, I have the beginnings of hypothermia and I have 60km to go in the 2008 Etape du Tour.

I’m 47, I’ve ridden and raced bikes for 36 years, I’ve been fortunate to have been able to ride pretty much everyone of those years, no breaks or years off as children arrived or a career needed focus - just consistent year in year out riding. In fact I love cycling as much now as when at 11 years old I first bought my a shiny white and chrome Carlton Trophy 10 speed racing bike.

I quickly became obsessed with cycling and raced as much as I could, I was lucky enough to ride for my country by the time I was 19. By 20 I headed off to France to race for the notorious ACBB club. Its funny but at the time it wasn’t always pleasant, riding in big races with huge fields full of some of the best amateur riders in the world in crap weather, riding for a team that couldn’t care less about you.

In no way could it be called glamorous!

But now I can look back on it, they are some of the most precious life defining moments I have ever had, at the time I think you most certainly have a vague understanding that this is a great experience but right then and there, it is everything you can do to get through it.

I have gone on to live in a number of countries and raced my bike in each one of them, so what the hell am I doing in July 1,800m up a mountain in the Pyrenees in sub-zero temperatures and seriously questioning why the hell I took up this damn sport.

Back in New Zealand I ride with a bunch of guys, a few of them are the same guys I raced with as a schoolboy, so yes we go back a few years. We generally do the same rides at the same time of the day, at the same time of the week, so it is fair to say that the whole thing was getting a little same old, same old.

Suddenly Andrew, my closest friend on and off the bike announced that he and his family were packing up their life and moving to Italy, they had bought a faltering coffee machine manufacturing business and he was off to turn the business around and make his fortune.

I felt good for him and bloody envious as well, we had done a similar thing in 2000 we had quickly packed up our life in New Zealand and joined a start-up dotcom in San Francisco. This meant we lived in the US for a couple of years, we then moved to the UK for a while and then finally moved back to New Zealand, so moving and living in different countries is a hobby of mine.

Moving back to New Zealand was great, it is a fabulous place to live but I often ask myself if it was the best thing to do, I still miss the excitement and sense of being at the centre of the world that living in London gives you.

But we did it and we now have a fantastic life and business, so no regrets.

Meanwhile the bike riding was getting into a rut for sure, I had no particular goals other than beating the crap out of my training bunch or stopping them beating the crap out of me, and the occasional bit of racing at times. Everyone who rides a bike, runs, walks with a group of people knows how it goes:

Sport + ego = competition.

It is the same the world over, we are hardwired to be top dog whenever we get the chance.