A lot of cyclists look to the sport for some hardship. To understand this is to understand that the sport is in many ways a preserve of the at least somewhat privileged. Certainly it is in countries like this one where half the bikes you see ridden in areas like London are worth the best part of five grand. I’m sure some might want to push back on this, so for clarity I am not saying it’s uniform but certainly a strong enough trend to want to interrogate.
Have a look through this link on cycling statistics for some harder evidence backing my assertion.
https://www.cyclinguk.org/statistics
So, if you accept, at least in an area like the South East, that your keen cyclists probably have a few bob you will accept, on a sliding scale, that their current lives probably verge towards the comfortable. Which is why I want to talk about the pursuit of suffering.
Road cyclists in particular seem to idolise suffering. I think they can be split into two rough groups with plenty of cross over. Those that suffer because they want to get faster to win at racing and those that suffer so that they might go out and suffer even harder and longer on monumental rides and adventures. I myself lean more towards the second group with interested toe dipping into the first. I’ve written about it here but one of the best things I’ve done on my bike was the Mallorca 312. During which my stomach tried to eject itself through my spine in the midst of an 11-hour timed Gran Fondo. Loved it! Going back this year if, inshallah, the crisis ends before October. The racers however suffer for something that might be far more understandable to the non-cyclist. It’s glory! If you win something you experience glory and there’s no two ways about it. The racers and the for sufferings sake riders do have something in common though, and with road cyclists I think it’s a certain communion with nature made possible only by the easy way your bike can propel you far out into the world. There’s a quote, that links the communion of suffering and nature so perfectly I’m going to post it here and it’s from the kind of rider I’m talking about above. A perhaps somewhat cossetted man whose discovered what it means to be rewarded for giving everything to the ride:
“Because after the finish all the suffering turns to memories of pleasure, and the greater the suffering, the greater the pleasure. That is Nature’s payback to riders for the homage they pay her by suffering.
Velvet pillows, safari parks, sunglasses: people have become wolly mice. They still have bodies that can walk for five days and four nights though a desert of snow, without food, but they accept praise for having taken a one hour bicycle ride. ‘Good for you.’ Instead of expressing their gratitude to the rain by getting wet, people walk around with umbrellas. Nature is an old lady with few suitors these days, and those who wish to make use of her charms she rewards passionately.
That’s why there are riders.” – Tim Krabbe in The Rider.
There is a backlash experienced after this is all over. Sometimes I do think the kind of cycling I and my peers engage in is like a particularly wholesome drug. After a ride where I’ve really pushed the next day I sometimes feel remarkably similar to if I’d been drinking, recovery steps taken and all. Nonetheless, I’m planning my next ride, I’m healing and working on my body so it’s ready and I can enjoy it. Because it will be worth it! Nature will make it so, the wind whipping past your ears, the view over that crest, I’m happy to suffer to see it, and to know that I went and saw it.
Peace!
Z
Zackonnabike 