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On the fifth Sunday we went to the Montferland. On the way, Kees Nales told me that he had climbed Mont Ventoux. Mont Ventoux! I knew the mountain from the stories about Tommy Simpson, the Jesus of cycling, who suffered for all doping sinners and died on the Bare Mountain.

But Kees Nales had survived. I was deeply impressed and resolved there and then, as our wheels whooshed towards Montferland, that I must also climb Mont Ventoux.

‘How was it,’ I asked, ‘Mont Ventoux?’

‘Tough.’

‘Had you trained a lot for it?’

‘Nah.’ I didn’t yet know that cyclists always say that they’ve done scarcely any training.

‘Do you think I could do it?’

Kees looked at my legs, which still weren’t shaven. ‘You don’t look like a climber. More of a sprinter, if you ask me.’

We got to Beek. Just outside the village, in the Peeskesweg, was a steep length of asphalt. The lads immediately stood out of their saddles and started sprinting up. Only Kees Nales looked around one more time to see whether I wasn’t perhaps a sprinter, after all. But I knew after the first hundred metres. I felt the strength draining out of my legs.