Cycling - The Racing Post

Cycle Logic - Joy in Strange Places

By Diana North

A cyclist is a person who is able to find joy in some pretty strange places. Some find it in the wind, warm and balmy or prickly with cold, in sunshine on bared skin, and in the steady circles legs make while minds float away from everything but the road or path in front of them.

Others find it in self-inflicted or shared physical pain. For knobby-tire enthusiasts, rocks and dirt and water and mud and tree branches and all manner of leaves and vines complete with spider webs are the draw. Grinding or charging up hills can be a thrill when the only thing that makes it happen is your own physical efforts.

Then, of course, there’s the joy of coasting down those hills, which can be a whole lot more fun (and less painful) than the energy it took to reach the top. Speeding or slicing down a hill, taking a curve in one smooth motion and picture perfect days that just dare you to throw a leg over are all part of the cycling experience.

I am a cyclist. I can say that now, with years and thousands of miles behind me. I am not, and never will be, the fastest, strongest or bravest cyclist on earth but I would bet my carbon fiber Trek that I enjoy riding bikes at least as much as the average person. I speak from experience when I say that cycling has brought me much enjoyment, challenge and satisfaction. I can admit that even though I’ve asked myself a thousand times “why” the sport draws me back again and again and I still don’t know the answer.

On cold, clammy days with fierce headwinds I’ve wondered why. On scorching hot days with no wind at all, I’ve wondered why.

On days when I am literally inhaling my own sweat up my nose, as my legs churn madly, and it basically hurts all over, I still silently ask myself, “why?”

I may never know.

But on days when tailwinds turn me into Superwoman or when my legs reassure me that I am at least related to her, I don’t wonder and the answer doesn’t matter anymore.

Because in grief, the bike has supported me as I cried and pedaled, pedaled and cried until finally the effort sucked away the energy better spent pedaling anyway.

For joy there are solo sojourns with only the wind for company or those sinuous, beautiful lines of a perfect paceline where nobody speaks. Then I’m transported. Taking my turn to pull, to be pulled, I am in moving meditation. The paceline itself, like some living beast that takes on a life of its own powered by people who wordlessly agree to work together using nothing more than simple machines powered by miraculously complex bodies, creates communion. That kind of cooperation provides some small measure of hope in a world too often filled with hopelessness.

For some of us, the joy of competition adds yet another dimension to what can seem like an otherwise predictable life. The satisfaction of improving skills over time, working to become stronger, faster and smoother keeps many cyclists coming back for more. The chance to push bodies and minds to new limits can be joyous at times. The choice to use those skills in the company of others, to work toward a common or individual goal or throw down a challenge is a thrill. And the camaraderie that teamwork builds over time makes those challenges even more satisfying.

In my own life during times of stress, overwhelmed with the burdens and the work and the endless to-dos, the bike has taken me far, far away. On those rides new perspective awaits and by the time I unclip from the pedals nothing has changed but my mental vantage point. Which, in essence, is everything that really needed changing.

In times of excess, holiday binging, too much work and not enough play, a bike ride reminds me that balance is something I need to keep relearning. And relearning. “Balance on the bike--balance in my life,” begins to sound like a mantra. I guess I could keep on pretending that the only reason I ride is to stay fit. That riding lets me eat all the chocolate cake I want. That it’s an excuse to avoid housework. That cycling is easy and convenient and fun. And some of that would actually be true. But who would believe that, really, when every dedicated cyclist alive knows there is so much more to it.

Because cycling is also about sniffing sweat, snarling and grinding into crosswinds and being okay with bouts of misery where I learn about patience. It’s about wearing what amounts to sausage casing on my thighs, a ventilated bucket on my head and shoes that on hard floors make me sound like a tap dancer wanna-be. So, I learn to have a sense of humor, too.

Cycling is also about sucking in car exhaust while wishing my lungs would hold just a little bit more oxygen. And sitting on a saddle, the same saddle, for hours and hours during a century ride I will later describe as “a blast.” Cycling is about having courage to ride far or fast, mixing it up with cars, and even being misunderstood by people who can’t grasp why the heck I would spend almost every weekend morning riding my bike and still search for time to ride during the week.

Some days it makes even me wonder whose idea it was to ride in that rain/heat/headwind anyway. Sometimes it’s hating, really hating, the guy at the front of a paceline who is obviously compelled to cause me as much physical pain as possible, and then later learning to appreciate that same guy for making me stronger. Which makes my personal quest to find joy pretty strange in ways that only my fellow cyclists would understand.