Somewhere Around Mile Forty

"I think consistency is probably the most important thing in everything."

That's what Hamish said somewhere around mile forty of a fifty-mile bike ride.

A few miles earlier he'd been convinced he was dying.

The ride was his birthday present to me.

He isn't really a cyclist, but he knew I'd love the idea of spending a day together on our bikes. He'd entered us both into a sportive in Norfolk and packed a picnic with thick egg mayonnaise sandwiches on fresh bread and homemade lemon bars. If you're going to spend several hours pedalling into a headwind, that's about as good as life gets.

The first half was exactly what we'd hoped for. We chatted, admired the countryside and congratulated ourselves on having had such a brilliant idea.

By the second half, the mood had shifted.

There were long silences.

Regular updates on the condition of his legs.

Several announcements that he wasn't going to make it.

I found myself having to slow down.

He's eighteen.

I'm fifty-six.

I don't think he'd ever imagined I'd be waiting for him.

Eventually the road flattened, his breathing settled, and we rode side by side for a while without saying very much.

Then he broke the silence.

"I think consistency is probably the most important thing in everything."

It was such an interesting thing to say.

Fitness hadn't come from that morning. It had come from years of ordinary mornings. Rides that weren't especially memorable. Yoga classes. Walks. None of them remarkable on their own. Together they'd quietly become fifty comfortable miles.

He hadn't read that in a book.

Nobody had sat him down and explained it.

He'd arrived there himself.

As parents, we spend years watching our children discover the world.

We teach them to ride a bike.

To cross the road.

To tie their shoelaces.

To remember to take a coat.

Then, almost without noticing, the relationship begins to change.

They start noticing things you hadn't expected them to notice.

They make connections that are entirely their own.

Sometimes they say something so simple and so true that you find yourself quietly thinking about it for days afterwards.

We eventually crossed the finish line, unpacked the picnic and agreed that carrying the lemon bars for fifty miles had been an excellent decision.

Driving home, I realised I'd been thinking less about the ride than the conversation.

One day your children need you to explain the world.

Then, almost without you noticing, they begin explaining little bits of it back to you.