There was a period a few years ago when I didn't have enough time for cycling, but being a compulsive exerciser, I had to find something else I could fit in to the daily schedule. So I used to swim three or four times a week. Eventually, bored with my own routine of length-swimming, I joined a club and went to its training sessions.
Join a swimming club and you meet people who have a real affinity for water. It's their element, and in it they have a grace and ease we ordinary mortals can only wonder at. They skim and glide, travelling far faster and with fewer strokes than laboured thrashers like me. Occasionally, there would be days when their influence would seem to rub off, or inspire me somehow, and then I would glimpse that glorious rhythmical effortlessness, and the water would part for me as though no more substantial than skeins of silk. More often, my clumsy struggling made it seem like wading through treacle - when, in the phrase of a clubmate, I swam "like a bag of spanners".
Part of it is technique; with more coaching, no doubt I might have been a better swimmer. That is, I could have been made into a more mechanically efficient swimmer. But I was never going to be a beautiful swimmer, the sort of aquatic artist who just makes you want to sit and watch, mesmerised. As with the dancer who stands out from the troupe, the one your eye is naturally drawn to, it's more than mere excellence; they are doing something poetic.
I went back to cycling, both for the practical reason that I found I had more time and because I realised how much I loved and missed it. By not riding a bike, I was missing a vital form of self-expression, a part of myself even. I can't claim to be any great cycling stylist, but I have some instinct for what feels right on a bike. There are always too many days when I am "pedalling squares", as cyclists call it - when it's all effort, you can't find a good cadence, whichever gear you're in is wrong, your limbs feel heavy and uncoordinated. It's as though you are riding into a headwind - of your own making.
But there are days of grace, too, when you feel light and strong, when you dance on the pedals and feel the bike whip and fly under you. At those times, you could be Fausto Coppi - perhaps the greatest pedaller of them all: long, slender limbs spinning with the precision of a Swiss watch yet with the smooth power of locomotive pistons. Only a slight roll of the shoulders might hint at his fatigue; otherwise, the upper body was so still and relaxed that he could have been typing a letter at his desk, not conquering a pass in the Dolomites.
If you get the chance, watch some archive footage of il Campionissimo, and fix that gorgeous, fluid style in your head. Few of us can hope to emulate it, but we can aspire. It's like the "swing thought" John Updike writes about in Golf Dreams: an idealised mental image of what it feels like to hit a straight, sweet shot. Think of it too consciously, try to make it work like an instruction manual, and it falls apart. As Updike would know, it's the same when a good line delivers itself, all the right words in order, as if by magic. You can't make it happen. But practice doesn't hurt.
