Perhaps the last time I’ll harp on about the bike ride at the weekend (or perhaps maybe tomorrow too)
The photo attached to this blog is from that bike ride, well almost from it.
The shot was taken about 2km below the summit of the Alpe di Pampeago outside Predazzo.
The Tag sign was placed there by the organisers of the Haute Route as part of the sponsorship of the event 2km from the base of the summit of the time trial on Sunday, which was an 8km time trial up the alp as fast as possible with gradients in excess of 15%.
It took me 47 minutes. It took the male winner 30 minutes. So what’s the point of writing about this if not just a humble brag and to show you one of my favourite ever photographs of me or to shout about how I managed to peak for one weekend after nine months of work?
The point of the blog is that the photo is a lie, as almost all of these marketing photos are. As almost all our Facebook photos are.
The photograph is carefully selected and carefully manufactured to sell watches, or at least to show the watch sellers that they were represented at the race.
The photograph wasn’t even taken during the race.
After Simon and Suzy and I had summitted at the time trial and finished and cried, got our breath back, ate some pizza, put on our arm warmers and our jackets and our buffs and our gloves so that we could descend down the alp with wind chill factors at about -2 we set off.
We rolled for about 2km at 40 or 50mph until there was a photographer stood in the middle of the road waving her arms. I thought someone had come off their bike, I thought it was an emergency. It was for her.
It turned out she needed a picture of someone passing the watch sign for the sponsors and she hadn’t got it and the race was over.
She asked if any of us would be prepared to strip down and cycle back up the hill past the sign. Despite the pain in my legs I decided to help her.
The result was that photo there which was published on the Haute Route website on the Sunday night and in which I looked, for what is I believe the first time in my life, like a cyclist.
It’s like this now though isn’t it?
Manufactured, contrived, set up.
About 35 minutes before that I passed that sign during the race. My arm warmers were folded around my wrists and the jacket was in my back pocket. My cycle top was zipped right down and my orange base layer was soaking with sweat. Snot would have been running out of my nose, saliva out of my mouth, my eyes would have been glazed over and sweat dripping off my chin.
In short, I would have looked like a mess because the time trial was so hard. But we didn’t get that shot and it probably wouldn’t have sold a watch.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the photo. It’s a raw image, it’s not photoshopped and it’s what I looked like at that moment. For many years I would never have thought I would have made that.
But remember that it’s false.
Remember that just a few minutes before I looked like I was having a stroke. On my return on Monday evening I was doing the dishes, running after the kids and opening my emails.
By the time it got to Wednesday morning I came down the stairs to two big mounds of dung that my dog had left for me before I took her out for a walk and then I got to more domestic chores before I went back to work.
We know that life isn’t perfect, all of us know that but we continue to believe some of the images as though the people that post them live in that world all the time. They don’t and they won’t and they can’t.
It’s always worth remembering that I think.
Blog Post Number: 1777
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