I cannot wheelie. I cannot ride with no hands. I am s**t at bikes.

I’ve never been able to wheelie, and I’ve never been able to ride hands-free with any confidence for any length of time either. These are the metrics I will always use to measure myself as a cyclist. I am my own harshest critic.

I should be at peace with my cycling resumé. I can ride road, cyclocross, gravel and mountain bikes to a competent level over acceptable distances, and I have raced each of them. Thanks mostly to being shrewd with the events I choose to enter, I have even stood on a podium once or twice.

But I’m still no good at bikes, because I still can’t wheelie or ride no hands. 

I’ve been lucky enough to travel the world with my bike, and have ridden places that would make for a bucket list a few pages long. I have ridden countless sportives, Etapes, Gran Fondos and Tour de France stage events to have had enough of doing them, and struck out on my own to cross countries, circumnavigate others and grunt to the highest points in many. If this sounds like a humblebrag, I still remember the first time I sat in a mess on a kerb a mile from my home not knowing what The Bonk was, and I can remember the last time it happened too. I’ve also sat on the kitchen floor eating cheese like it was an apple while spooning peanut butter out the jar with my fingers when I’ve just about wobbled home. I’ve slept on a park bench. Cried. Crashed enough times, broken a few bones, made myself ill, got better, got ill again. I’ve sat on wheels and made sure people have got home by hanging off mine, done my time working on the chaingang.

But I’m still not a proper cyclist, because I still can’t wheelie or ride no hands. 

As well as competed in a lot of races. I’ve helped put them on too. I’ve got up before the crack of dawn to put arrows up and stand in a field, sometimes in the baking sun, other times ankle deep in mud. My cycling palmares is a life well spent, but all of it is for nothing, because wheelies and riding no hands continue to evade me. The yoof in the hoodie that cruises past on the creaking pile of crap mountainbike with a back wheel so buckled the rear brake has been unhooked, casually sitting up and texting his girlfriend? I’m quietly seethingly, deeply jealous of him. 

While I’m not a fan of the showing off wheelie the BMXer that wheelies up to a ledge and manuals along it before popping off, all the while with their jeans hanging off their arse and a loose shoelace, if I could do that just once I’d happily coast straight into my grave immediately afterwards. I would love to be able to wheelie for long enough for it to be a genuinely useful skill when I’m riding my bike, and be a precursor to the still elusive bunny hop. I would love to be able to ride hands-free with enough skill and longevity to unwrap and eat a snack bar or slip on a rain jacket with a recalcitrant flappy arm. Both have these have eluded me across the two thirds of my life I’ve spent rolling around on a bike. I could practice, I should practice, but I am an old dog, and I’d rather just be riding my bike.

I’ve never been able to wheelie. I’ve never been able to ride hands free with any conviction for any length of time. I’m quite shit at bikes.