Over the last few months I’ve been melting into a sort of crisis of conviction. When I first got back into cycling a few summers ago, I wanted to reconnect with an activity that I had always enjoyed and in the process jump start my aging metabolism. As a teenager I used to cruise around a large network of fire trails up near my house but I had no interest in the sport.
It wasn’t until mid-life began to loom ahead of me and the sports media caught on to a young whipper-snapper named Lance Armstrong that I began to take an interest in the sport of road racing. Floyd Landis’ heroic effort in the 2006 Tour de France inspired me to take up training for real, but at this point I didn’t know what I was training for.
Then, while climbing up the Torrey Pines hill, I saw “San Diego Century Riders” scribbled in chalk in the bike lane. I had no idea what a century was, but knew I had to find out.
The idea of 100 miles in a single day was surely daunting but I knew that I had it in me. And then one day, I did it. Since then, I’ve participated in several organized rides and I’ve really enjoyed them, especially the SAG support. But while organized century rides are inherently challenging, they have almost become routine.
Last weekend’s event made me face a part of my personality that isn’t compatible with organized events: I ride alone. I didn’t much care for peloton riding during the Bulldog bike race or the Alpine Challenge, and while riding in a paceline is preferable to a peloton, I don’t have much heart for that either. I don’t want to worry about crossing wheels or etiquette; I prefer solitude.
Besides, any paceline is only as strong as its weakest link. I don’t want to weigh anyone down and conversely I don’t want to be weighed down by anyone else.
During all this training, I was driven to prove to myself that I’m competitive, and I think I’ve done that. I bet I can compete with the top 10% of cyclists out there. But I’m not getting any younger and I don’t have the conviction, discipline, or incentive to truly compete at that level. In other words, I have no heart for organized road racing.
But I do have heart for something else, and I feel it runs much deeper than the testosterone-charged thrill of dropping other cyclists on the hills. I was in a pretty messed up mental state on last weekend’s ride and I think that deep down I use the physical exertion of endurance cycling in an attempt to exorcise the negative energy of my life.
Those who know me know that I’m not what you’d typically call a happy person, nor am I particularly religious in the traditional sense. I periodically cycle through some pretty intensely negative emotion: anger, fear, hate… you know, all that stuff that leads to the dark side. I don’t know if I’m running away from or running toward something but I feel that pushing my physical limits is a sort of crucible for me: I don’t feel that spiritual growth can occur without breaking down the physical body. This is a pretty gross analogy but this is much the same as the mythology surrounding Christ’s crucifixion.
So I find myself wondering what to do. I think I’m done with organized events, but I need to set some goals or I will continue to feel lost. Maybe I need to take up randonneuring. Maybe I need to start planning my own self-supported long-distance rides. My first century was completely unsupported, and maybe it’s time to return to those roots. There are a lot of mountains to be climbed.