Pull

"Learn to control your emotions, or they will control you." -- Gary Mack

Let me amend that. Learn to harness your anger and your frustration, and you'll be pleasantly surprised by how far it can take you.

Eight-twenty: six people. Eight-thirty: closer to twenty-five. Everyone's started to roll back after holidays, including some (but not all) of the hammerheads. My instructions: Draft, draft, draft. I'm not sure how to handle this. The easiest option is to draft someone who rides with Group C, but I know that I'm going to be bored as hell if I keep doing that. I want to ride faster, push myself harder, but it looks like anyone who would have ridden with Group B hasn't bothered to show up. Well, not totally. Edu's here. Alberto's here, too, but Alfredo isn't, and Alberto, unaccompanied, will usually go pretty fast.

"We going in groups?" I ask Pepe el Presi.

"I think we're gonna go in one group," he says.

This is a bit of a misnomer. There's never one group; there's always a system of pairings and sub-groups and cross-hatched matrices of who rides with who and who won't go with someone special, so I've just learned to try to go as fast as I can and see who I end up with. Especially on days like this. Most days, getting everyone back on their bikes and in gear is an easy enough task. Days like this, when it's hot and a considerable people have rolled in at the last minute (probably because they've just rolled out of bed), it's like herding cats. Bit by bit, we trickle out of the Plaza, trying not to skid out on the bed of sand the road workers have laid down as they repave the street that leads to Bravo Murillo.

I get irritated more than I get angry. I consider myself a moderately rational person: I'm far from being the living embodiment of Zen, but I'm a long way from being the Tasmanian Devil. But I'm not inhuman. I dislike being blown off, being ignored tends to rub me the wrong way, and if I've gone to the expense and trouble of joining a club, I expect to be included, not left to fend for myself.

And it happens again. For reasons I don't totally understand, I always tend to get separated from the group in the three kilometres between the bike lane/M607 split and the Autonomous University. It never ceases to piss me off, but because I don't really know what I'm doing to get left behind. And it happens again today, but this time, with an added twist: Everybody is getting flats. Everybody. The main culprit: thistles. Road maintenance workers in Spain don't use lawn mowers; they use weed-whackers. So the dead vegetation that blows onto the shoulders of the road and the bike lane tends to be sliced and diced into various pieces, rather than shredded so small that the resulting detrius can't cause problems. The thistle heads have given up their thorns, which are too small to see from the seat of a bike that's going 32 km/h. First it's Zurdo. Then Ángelito. Then Eva. Then Eva's dad. Then Agnes, the new woman who's joined us. Paul. Sebastià. In total, over a dozen people end up flatting out, which is a bitch for Raúl, who's driving the club car, but kind of a bonus for me, since it takes out the fastest riders.

But I still get separated. I get to the Autónoma, and all I see are heads disappearing as the bike lane dips under the turnoff to Alcobendas. I lay it on to get in and out of the tunnel, but they're going over the bridge by the army base.

I am not getting left behind today.

I don't know where the thought comes from. It's not even a particularly angry thought: it's just a matter-of-fact statement, like it's hot out or Alberto's wearing white shorts again.

I am not getting left behind today.

They've spent four months leaving me behind. Half of them just got back from holidays, which means that they can't keep the rhythm up forever.

I am not getting left behind today.

I come off the bridge by the army base knotted up in a gorilla tuck. Six hundred metres ahead, I can see them head up the hill.

I am not getting left behind today.

And then I start getting angry. Nadie te regala nada en el ciclismo, Pedro Delgado never tires of saying, and you know what? If no one's going to give me any gifts, I'm gonna start taking my due. I'm gonna start stealing what no one is willing to give. And if I blow up, so what? I just hang back and go with Group C.

I can see Alberto's white shorts ahead. I can see heads bobbing; and, most importantly, I can see heads start to bow down. Heads that start to fall are a sure sign that you have to attack, even more than a line of cyclists that get drawn out. In we go.

You bastards are not going to drop me any more.

Three or four mountain bikers are hanging off the rear wheels of our bunch. (A short aside: I realize it's a bike path, but can someone please explain why a man would pay two thousand Euros for a double-suspension mountain bike and never take it off asphalt?) I worm my way up through the group, the mountain bikers eventually veer off at Colmenar Viejo, and I hang on with most of the group until the turnoff to the M325 towards San Pedro.

"How long have you been doing this?" says Mario, who I've seen with the group but who I wouldn't have been fast enough to keep up with three months ago. (Mario is easily identifiable by his Barbie-pink Kaiku culottes, which can be seen by motorists a kilometre away.) One year. Well, less than a year. What do we consider "doing this?" Do I count the time from when I joined the Chamartín? From the day Ellie showed up at Ciclowork, her deep blue carbon frame glowing in the afternoon sunlight and Susanna kept grinning and saying, "Go ahead! Touch her! She's all yours!", and I spent the afternoon hugging her, watching the ascent up l'Anglirú in the 2008 Vuelta, cheering on Alberto Contador and wondering what in God's name I'd gotten myself into by buying an expensive road bike. I guess the easy answer is that no matter how long I've been doing this, I haven't probably been doing it long enough. But after twenty-six years of just thinking about it, I finally did do it. So I guess I don't know what the correct answer is.

We don't exactly fly up the west side of San Pedro, but we work it hard enough that the descent off the peak down to Guadalix is a treat. I feel good going down, too. I corner more aggressively and go down far faster than I would attempt to do if I were on my own, especially because I'm more confident about using all of the pavement and all of the road at my disposal.

Alberto, Carlos and a bunch of other are hanging out at the fountain that lies within the Guadalix town limits. We chat, we wait for the others, and when about twenty of us have gathered, we set off again - Edu and I going directly towards Miraflores, the rest (including Mario, who said he wasn't sure he was going to do the extension) head up to Bustarviejo.

Edu, having just come back from holidays, isn't up to a lot of hammering, so I head up to Miraflores by myself. We meet at a bar that's not far from the turnoff to Canencia, and the truth comes out: between the flats and the vacations, not many people made it up to Miraflores. Luckily, David does make it up - the first time we've had a chance to chat since he got back from the Alps - and with more people taking part these days, the atmosphere is a little lighter.

And on the way back, I pull harder. I pass a bunch of the guys in the club (though I get buried by Angelito and a couple of others near El Goloso) and I refuse to give up. I am not going to get left behind any more.