Why I Bike in Pink.

August 24 2020, we had a call that changed my family deeply. My uncle David had a heart attack in the night and passed away. The next 6 hours involved navigating Covid protocols and passport rules to get my dad home to England to be with my grandparents, his younger brother and David’s partner Lisa and family. David was 57, and we had a cycling trip planned for the next summer for my Dad’s 60th. I had ridden with him for the first time when I went back to the UK last year. In small words it was devastating, and the biggest impact was yet to come.

David has been since added into the Manchester RCC club wall and is a crest on the Team Chronometers kit. My own entry into cycling was very personal; my dad and I found cycling together soon after he was diagnosed with cardiovascular disease, and it became our thing. We spent days and hours riding together for the 3 years prior to David’s death. David got involved shortly after he felt our bug – he always was someone who would dive into something at the deep end and this was no different. He once ran a half marathon a day for 33 days to raise awareness of the wage gap between men and women in the UK, so when he passed away I knew there was only one thing I could do that would give him a send-off in my heart and an effort that he would be proud of: I decided I would ride 57km a day for 57days. I didn’t think too hard about it, no restrictions - inside, outside, all at once or all split up – it didn’t matter, that was just what I was going to do. So I did.

While I was cycling here, my dad was meeting all of David’s teammates in the UK and getting to know them, riding with them on David’s bike, and wearing David’s helmet. I struggle to express in words on a page the amount of healing and completeness it gave me to grieve with rubber to concrete. Every km felt like an entrenched love letter to the road, of the love that I had and the family that cycling was building around me. No days were hard – it seems strange to say that but they weren’t. There wasn’t a day where I thought “fuck I’m done, this is it, this is the day I break the streak”, it just kept going. I’d wake up early or do the last few clicks before bed, but it always got done.

Days turned to months and as day 57 clicked by I could stop – but I didn’t. I finished at 63 days on year one, and this was just the beginning. It grew me as a rider and a person, and I got to do it alongside my dad. The next year we started on David’s birthday; we found David’s hill near Lions Bay and did a tour of all the David-related streets, parks, etc. that we could find.

This was a mission. A quest for something much greater than the sum of days or kilometres and it has driven me on a different trajectory.

This is really the thing that got me ready to even consider racing. Some of you have heard this story along the way, but I could not imagine a better place to feel at home, to feel connected to and impacting a community with. This whole year I have raced in David’s helmet, so every win and every failure has not been on my shoulders but supported with all the people who have been impacted by genuine gestures of kindness along the way.

D.C.R.