National champion cyclist Ken keeps ahead of the pack
Last updated 06:59, Friday, 25 July 2008
IT DOESN’T take long before he’s laid out the road map for our conversation. An article celebrating the fact that he had become a double national champion in two recent veterans events had labelled him an OAP (old age pedaller).
“I really took exception to that!” he says down the phone, raising his Lancastrian burr in mock-horror.
“Mind you, the reporter was right what he was saying, I suppose.
“But when I’m riding with all the young lads, I just feel I’m one of them.”
Though he may not feel or look like a 68-year-old, the great wheel of time keeps spinning and Ken Hargreaves admits he is considering hanging up his lycra race suit.
He has said it before (usually after a poor race), but this time its a bit more serious.
He settles into a sofa at his neat home in Eaglesfield, near Cockermouth, fixes a resigned smile and says: “I have promised my wife I will retire from competitive racing when I’m 70.
“There are a lot of sacrifices you have to make as a family.
“Albeit we enjoy caravan holidays, we tend to combine them together with my race meetings.
“It does take a lot of planning and training to race at a high level. You need a lot of commitment.
“People don’t believe me when I say I’m going to retire because I’ve said it before but. . .”
He shrugs his shoulders and his tanned face – a mix of windburn and sunshine judging by recent weather – creases into another grin.
The 68-year-old originally retired from competitive cycling in his 20s.
Ken took up riding in the mid-1950s with the Horwich Cycle Club in his native Lancashire.
He didn’t enjoy team sports, Horwich had a good name as a club and he could compete as an individual.
He perches on the edge of the sofa and grins: “I remember my first racer, I had saved up like mad – £15 would get you a good machine in those days.
“There was a bike shop in Chorley and I would press my nose against its window and stare at this gorgeous blue Viking.
“Then I got a Sun Manxman, I will never forget that.
“Some bikes feel good, others less so, that was special.”
He won a junior championship aged 15, but within six years had given up to concentrate on work . . girls . . . life.
That involved a career as an engineer for British Leyland, helping design and test buses.
The former works manager of the Leyland bus factory at Lillyhall, moved to the area from Lancashire.
He enjoyed walking in the fells and took up fell-running and then triathlons to satisfy his competitive edge.
He realised his cycling skills were far better than many of his triathlon competitors and when a dodgy knee forced him to quit running in 1987, it was only natural to take up road racing and time-trialling more seriously.
He was 47.
Now he spends hours and hours perched on a saddle every week pedalling hundreds of miles for the Derwent Valley Cycling Club, Velo Club Cumbria and professionally for Team Swift of Yorkshire.
In the summer, he goes for 60 or 70-mile spins through the lanes of West Cumbria, just to keep things ticking over for weekend racing.
During the winter, he saddles up on the bike machine in his den, whacks up his sound system and pedals like fury for more than an hour to nowhere in particular.
The big speakers teeter on top of a display cabinet stuffed with cups and medals, while on the desk opposite are more cups and awards and certificates on the wall behind for the British Best All-Rounder competition.
His aim this season is to claim another certificate, but to do that he has to compete in 25, 50 and 100-mile races and make sure he clocks average speeds of more than 22 miles per hour.
So summer for him and Sheila has already been plotted in Yorkshire, Cambridge, Lincolnshire...
The den also includes photos of him racing all over England and in France.
He says France is a different world when it comes to riding a bike because motorists are more aware and have more respect for those on two wheels.
“The traffic is against you in this country, ” he sighs.
The 68-year-old has been knocked off his bike twice by motorists who simply didn’t see him, once when someone turned directly across him and once when a motorist pulled out directly in front of him.
But his worst accident was self-inflicted.
He had been watching a fell race at the top of Newlands Pass and cycled down too fast.
Tracing the arc of a scar from eyebrow to ear he says: “I got into a speed wobble that threw me onto rocks, fractured my right eye socket, nose and broke my shoulder.
“I didn’t lose consciousness, but all I can remember is I was lying on the road and I couldn’t see anything..
“A friend followed me and he threw me in the back of his van and rushed me to hospital in Whitehaven.
“Ever since I’ve worn a crash helmet.”
He would like more youngsters to take up the sport, but admits he fears for them on our roads.
There’s also the problem with getting kitted out.
You can buy a decent road bike for around £400, but a competitive one would cost from £800-£1,200 and a top of the range model anything from about £5,000.
A lycra skin suit costs £60, which can be wrecked with just one fall.
But the competition and the camaraderie of the sport is worth every penny to Ken.
He has raced against some veterans of the Tour de France and has pedalled some of the most famous of the stages.
Steep climbs up to ski resorts such as the Col du Galibier, the Col du Tourmalet and L’Alpe d’Huez.
It’s the grim, punishing d’Huez – all 21 hairpins of a climb with an average gradient of about 7.7 per cent – that sticks in his mind.
He and Sheila were following the Tour in 1991 and parked up where they thought they were near the top.
“I cycled down to the bottom to ride all the way to the top, but when I reached Sheila, there was still another 10km to go!
“The difference between the climbs in France and in this country is that in France they are all reasonable gradients, but it is the length of the climb that eventually gets to you.
“The hills here are more inconsistent. They can be steeper, but they are shorter, in France they just go on forever.”
The hill climbs have made Ken realise that he can’t go on forever racing. The problem is, will he want to continue cycling?
He says: “There is the pure cyclist, who enjoys cycling for cycling’s sake and who goes on long club rides.
“I would not classify myself in that way, I enjoy the competitive side, the racing. As Chris Boardman said: ‘I’m not a cyclist, I’m an athlete that uses a bike.’
“If I retire from cycling, I don’t know if I will continue riding.”
Among the four bikes that Ken keeps in his den is the one that Boardman won the 1998 Tour de France prologue time trial with.
A sleek streak of British cycling history.
Ken is now that he is considering consigning himself to Cumbria’s cycling history, wondering what comes next.
He says: “One of my biggest fears is that if I do retire, I will have to replace it with something. Sheila and I enjoy walking in the fells and we’re members of the National Trust and enjoy visiting places. I would like to put back some time with her – some of the time she has given me.
“Whatever I do, it won’t be golf.”
Family holidays have tended to coincide with his competition appearances – not so much a busman’s holiday as a cyclist’s breakaway.
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