They See Me Rollin'

The other day, we got our first copy of Bicycling Magazine, along with another piece of “real mail.” It's the first time in ages that I haven't opened the mailbox to find only ads or insurance information, so I was a bit excited. I went into the house and sat down at the kitchen table, thinking I'd peruse the magazine and then get back to whatever “productive” thing I'd been doing before. And by peruse, I mean I was going to look only at the bike ads and pretty pictures. I ended up reading the thing front to back, interested not just in the photography but the great writing on topics that I could relate to and understand. I am not an advanced biker—I think I would classify myself as more of an “accidental biker,” since I really only got into the sport to spend more time with Bern, and I'm only now beginning to learn about the mechanics of cycling and the strategies of racing—so the fact that I found the writing engaging and thought-provoking was something completely unexpected.

One particular article got at me. Evelyn Spence, an outdoorswoman and prolific writer/editor/blogger (check out her website; she is quite accomplished), wrote an article about climbing Pikes Peak in Colorado. This peak is incredibly beautiful but insanely hard to climb. Just the thought of gaining 7,710 feet in 24.5 miles at an elevation high of over 14,000 feet makes my stomach turn. Spence has been climbing, skiing, driving, kayaking, running, hiking, and more; and yet she says bicycling was always more of a weakness for her. As I read her article, I found myself connecting with her feelings about hating hills and sandbagging her way through life as a way to avoid failure (if I fail on my own terms I don't have to be so scared about not winning, or something along those lines). I had a feeling growing, even if I didn't realize it at the time, that maybe I am more capable than I tell myself I am when it comes to cycling. Maybe I'm not weak of body but lazy of mind, I thought briefly.

However, as soon as I was done with the article, I put it out of my mind and moved on to the next thing. I enjoyed the remainder of the magazine, including a crazy article in which I learned that lots of schools don't let kids ride their bikes to campus and will turn them away if they do. Huh?

A little bit later, Bern came downstairs and said he was going for a bike ride. I encouraged him to go by himself, because when he goes with me I know he goes slower, and I like to think that it ups his concentration and performance when he's not constantly worrying if his wife is passed out in a ditch at the bottom of the last hill. Or (the truth), I don't like watching him work up a hill while I wheeze away and think about giving up and passing out in a ditch. One or the other. Anyway, Bern left on his ride, and I decided I ought to go out and do something myself. I thought about it and since I was riding my steel frame (an older 1970's Raleigh Capri that is a tad too big for me), I didn't want to do any crazy distance. I decided to just go ride around Pullman and see what would happen.

The minute I got on my bike I felt something abnormal, and quickly realized it was the feeling that I was going to have a good ride. I just scored some new Pearl Izumi gloves, so my hands felt nice and padded on my already-pretty-comfy bar tape. The reach to my handlebars, which is normally sort of uncomfortable, felt like a nice stretch, and my legs were telling me they were ready to push. I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth and started moving. I zipped out of my apartment complex and on to the road, getting up to the speed limit of 25 with relative ease. I hopped into the turn lane, waited a moment, and jumped onto Stadium Way, where I took a small hill at 18mph until I hit the light at Wilson Road. For those of us living in/keeping up with Pullman this summer, this was the day that a semi truck decided to go under a pedestrian bridge while obviously unaware that his rig was a little too high to make it, so Stadium Way was shut down in precisely the direction I wanted to go. Curiosity, however, drove me to be kind of a jerk and just ride the wrong way down the sidewalk so I wouldn't have to compromise on my pre-planned route. I saw the scene, had a giggle, and headed out towards Main Street. 

The way I was planning to go, there was one unavoidable hill, not too high of a grade but pretty long. I tried not to think about it until I got there, and when I did, I decided to just tackle it because it was realistically easier than going back the way I came. About halfway up the hill, the heat was getting to me, and I started in on my usual line of thinking, which is half trying to motivate myself and half complaining about my various—mostly exaggerated ailments—that (I think) are given to allow me an out should I decide to give up (my knees hurt, my hands are numb, my feet ache, I can't breathe, etc). To be clear, I do feel all of these things, but I haven't walked my bike up a hill in a year so clearly they are not debilitating, although I would like my riding partner to think so when I take forever to get up a hill. Then, in the middle of struggling up this hot, godawful hill, I thought of a passage from Spence's article:

“It's all but impossible to compare degrees of suffering. Was my worst moment today worse than the lows I experienced running my marathons? Hard to say. But somewhere on the steepest sections, when I wasn't sure I could spin the cranks one more time, I felt I tapped for the first time into some hidden reserve, something down where most people leave the lights off and excuses are as useless as counterfeit.”

Every time I have to really work at a hill, I begin to tap into that reserve. And I get uncomfortable as hell. It's hard to realize that everything you're saying, which you think is making your poor performance okay, just makes you sound like a pathetic whiner and a lazy underachiever. It's hard to tell yourself that you can do more, because it leaves you in a position of having to follow through on your promises. Following through on your promises could lead to failure. Failure at one thing means you're a failure at all things, so you should probably never try. Just stay in your comfort zone, fail on your own terms, and even though you never win, you don't have to worry about trying and losing anyway.

And in that moment of clarity, I realized how much I owe it to myself to start trying. And guess what I did? I went and climbed some more mother-flippin' hills, and it felt great.