Wednesday, June 18, 2008

while i am hardly qualified to really talk about riding, having only ridden for less than a year, after getting on the bike and seriously going into training, i guess i'm beginning to find a certain curious pleasure in the act of riding.

the act of riding is like a roller coaster. some times your legs are good and the pedals are light as a feather and you go, the wind rushing into your face, into the space between your ears and your sideburns, whistling its sad tune.

other times your legs are heavy, your lungs burn, everywhere hurts; your fingers, your back, your nose even. for me, the suffering somehow always outweighs the pleasurable moments. i am still waiting for the day when the good times outweigh the bad times but somehow i also think that that day will probably never come. and so it shouldn't, because if there was no suffering, then there likewise is no meaning in riding a bicycle.

i mean, sure, you can ride nicely and slowly and leisurely and enjoy that too. but think back to all the times when you felt like a demigod on the bike. and invariably, it will be the times that you were gasping like a fish out of water, the searing accelerations putting an equivalent inferno into your thighs; the curses you scream at the others in front.

take climbing on a bike for example. i cannot think of another aspect of the sport that is as painful. if you do not hurt on a climb, then you are probably on flat ground but you just don't know it. there is only one way, revel in the pain. what else can you do?

marco pantani, one of the best climbers in the world in his heydey (before his death from cocaine overdose) was once asked why he climbed so fast. he was known to attack at the base of climbs, where others were just getting warmed up. his reply: so the pain will end faster.

we look for pain but when it comes we want it to end fast, so we ride faster. i wonder, sometimes, if we are schizophrenics at heart.

maybe we ride because riding is like life itself. maybe we ride because we seek perfection. the ups and downs in a ride are like the ups and downs in a life. you hang on and cling to a person's wheel when the going gets tough. and sometimes, during a ride, for just a second, or a millisecond, you pedal the perfect stroke. it feels totally natural and effortless. or you fly up a climb, the bike gently but powerfully rocking underneath you, the distant, insistent humming of the chain in contrast with the silent, hollow space you left behind in your wake. perfect.

and so we try, again and again, for those tiny moments of perfection. sometimes they come after 100 miles, sometimes after 1000. they are there, teasing, watching us, sometimes even taunting us for we must invariably suffer before we can touch them ever so briefly.

and that is why we ride, ever so softly, ever so despairingly, ever so persistently, ever so ...

human.

Posted by Anonymous at 1:12 AM