This article is part of a series called ‘A love letter to…’, where Cycling Weekly writers pour praise on their favourite aspects of cycling. The below content is unfiltered, authentic and has not been paid for.
I winced as I put my card in the reader. I couldn’t remember ever seeing a number that big looking back at me. £600. Enter pin. I half hoped I’d get the code wrong.
Sensing a customer with cold feet, the man behind the till asked if everything was ok. I insisted it was, but my slow number-punching told a different story. It was the summer of 2018, and I was standing in an out-of-town bike shop, about to spend the most money I had ever spent on anything in my life.
I had found the worthy item online earlier that afternoon: a matte black Specialized Allez, in a 61cm frame. Excited and impatient, I forced my dad to drive me to the shop, where I wobbled for 30 seconds around the car park on a ‘test ride’ before I made up my mind. This bike would be my bike. It’s only when money got involved that I started to backpedal.
Hindsight, of course, tells me now that it was the best £600 I ever spent. Like your first car, pet, or teacher at school, there ends up being something mythical about your first road bike. It’s the machine that introduced you to freedom, a sacred memory, the shoes that could never be filled.
My Allez was made of aluminium. It had skinny handlebars, rim brakes, and a gaggle of ugly wires splayed out in front. It was the cheapest entry-level road bike on the market, and it came with clunky cages around the pedals. To me, it was treasure.
I remember spending more time taking photos of it than I did riding it at first. Soon, though, we were together in the French Alps, weaving up the hairpins of Alpe d’Huez, basking in the sunshine.
I almost lost my Allez on that trip, victim to a rusty roof rack, which snapped and sent the bike tumbling down the side of the car. I clung so tightly to the frame through the open window that my arm throbbed in pain. Afterwards, scratches slashed through the ‘S’ on ‘Specialized’ written on the downtube. The injuries were only superficial.
From there, we spent holidays exploring new mountain ranges, from the Pyrenees to the Yokshire Dales. I upgraded the flat pedals to cleats, thanks to a second-hand pair of Shimano shoes I bought on eBay. I still remember the advert now. “Selling because I fell down the stairs wearing them.” I paid £7, and they arrived in a sellotaped plastic bag.
The love affair with my Allez lasted an intense two years. At the end of that term, I was eager for a better set of gears, and lured by a world of infinite upgrades, I hopped aboard a new Trek and rode away into the sunset. My new Emonda was the Buzz Lightyear action figure, the scratched Allez the Woody doll that was left home in the toy box. Off I pedalled, to infinity and beyond.
It wasn’t until years later that I came to really appreciate my Allez. As Joni Mitchell once sang: “You don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone.” She was, albeit, lamenting the destruction of nature in her song ‘Big Yellow Taxi’, but the sentiment rings true of having your bike nicked from London park.
By that time, I’d put the flat pedals back on my Allez, and was running it into the ground as a city workhorse. The back wheel was buckled, the chain black with dirt, but I knew we had many more miles left in us. Now, my first road bike lives on as a crime reference number.
I try not to think about what might have become of it. Given the lousy state it was in, I doubt it was sold for parts. But I was reminded of it the other day, when a friend of mine told me he'd just taken the plunge on his first road bike. What did he go for? I asked, hoping he'd found the same treasure as I had. "Um," he began. "Specialized something... Allez?" Bingo. He seemed confused when I returned a warm, nostalgic smile.
