A bloke I never met properly, who I was in a fierce rivalry with on Strava, died a while back. I only found out about a year after it happened, and it’s taken me a while to be able to write this.
His name was Alan. Double my age. We’d been going back and forth for ages over a few local segments, the kind of rivalry where a notification he’d taken one off you could genuinely wind you up for the rest of the day. Never met him properly. Just knew him through the numbers, and through this one moment I keep coming back to.
I actually saw him once, in person. There’s a level crossing on one of the routes we both rode, and I’d just gone over it and was getting back on my bike on the other side. He was coming the other way, dismounting to walk his bike over. I think he recognised me, or knew who I was from the app, because he tried to say hello. I heard him. I pretended I hadn’t. He’d nicked a KOM off me not long before and I was still annoyed about it, so I just clipped in and rode off.
That’s it. That’s the only time our paths actually crossed in real life, and I blanked him over a segment time.
He had this habit on the bike that I properly loved, if I’m honest. He’d plod along at a pretty average pace most of the ride, then absolutely hammer the segments, like he’d been saving it all up. You’d see his name pop up top of a leaderboard and just know exactly what had happened. Made me smile every time, even when it was mine he’d taken.
I’d had a break from riding for a while. Got back into it recently, noticed he’d gone quiet, checked his page, and there it was in the comments. “RIP bro.” Posted a year ago. That’s how I found out, over a year late, no warning, just scrolling back to a page I used to check all the time and getting hit with that instead.
Turned out he’d been going through chemo the whole time I’d known him online. The whole time we were racing each other up climbs he had no real business hammering like that. He never said a word about it. Just kept riding, kept taking my times, kept being the bloke who was quietly better than me on every segment that mattered.
And the one time he tried to actually be a person to me, not a rival, not a name on a leaderboard, just a bloke at a crossing saying hello, I ignored him because I was sulking about a KOM.
I think about that more than anything else. Pathetic, looking back. He had no idea I’d blanked him over something so small, and I had no idea what he was actually carrying at the time. We were both just riding around each other, neither of us seeing the other one properly. And for a year after he died, I didn’t even know to grieve him. He’d just been quiet, as far as I knew, and I never thought to check why.
His death, a year late as I came to it, cracked open a lot of stuff in me I’d been carrying for years anyway, if I’m honest. People I did know, and hadn’t let myself grieve. Funny, that it took a bloke I barely knew, found out about a year too late, to get the door open. Maybe that’s because there was no history with him to complicate it. Just the plain fact he isn’t there anymore, and one moment I wish I could have back.
I went out a last week and rode properly for him, the kind of effort he’d have respected, not a potter. Been thinking about him more than I expected since.
If you’ve got a rival like that on your feed, someone you’ve never really met but somehow know completely through nothing but numbers and effort, check in on them sometime. You don’t want to find out a year late like I did.
RIP Alan. Sorry I didn’t say it back at the crossing. Ride on, mate.