One of the most magnificent things about Cycling is that not only does it represent different things to different people, it represents different things on different days. Some days, it’s training – a means to an end. Other days, it’s the culmination of a body of work; rather than a means to an end, it represents that end itself, whether that end is exhilarating or devastating. But these two facets represent Cycling only as Sport, the complex simplicity of the balance between dedication and results.
Cycling stands apart, however, in its many dimensions beyond Sport. For me, Cycling is meditation, a time to clear my mind of ancillary concerns and contemplate on those that require my focus. It is thoughtlessness, a time to eliminate everything through the simplicity of pain. It is simultaneously medication and therapy; even a short ride can shake a heavy lethargy from my bones and rejuvenate aching muscles and joints. It is simultaneously tension and release; Cycling can fill my being with effort, an effort that overflows my legs and lungs and spills over to fill every fiber of my being, flushing from me all those things I wish not to keep.
Cycling is penance for my mistakes; a few hours at the mercy of the Man with the Hammer can help me understand the error of my ways. It is cleansing of other’s mistakes – here the Man with the Hammer helps pound out the ripples in the surface of Life they cause me.
I am by no means a great man and never will be. But I am a better man for my bike, and for that I am eternally grateful to it.
Vive la Vie Velominatus.
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@Frank
OR, in other words, Cycling Effing RULES!!!!
As someone who hasn't been able to ride for three weeks due to travel obligations, this post really hits home for me. I am really missing the meditative aspects of cycling, that time of being alone with one's thoughts and one's own effort. I'm eager to get home and go for a ride with not an eye for training or power numbers or anything else but the pure and simple thrill of being on my bike, escaping.
Thanks for this post, Frank.
Frank, I need you to come and sit beside me at work - I just don't seem to sell this whole thing as well as you can, to my patients who are struggling though their lives, but don't actually have anything physically wrong with themselves (happy to excuse the genuinely ill) - that said, I can't refer them to this website, for all the obvious reasons!
@all
try sticking that picture on your desktop background - it's amazing how often your fingers go to the windows/D keystroke, and you are drawn into your screen and up that path - wierdly mesmerizing....
@drsoul
I was going to go home tonight to lie on the sofa after a hard day's work, but I am not now - the hill beckons
@Cyclops
Well said.
the eyes, the eyes
Frank - Finely composed!
I feel a similar attachment to cycling in many ways, especially the duality you describe, how you can exert maximum effort and yet experience a calming of your inner turbulence. This is a magical benefit of swinging the leg over the top tube. As long as I ride, my body feels better & my mind calmer.
That, and I get to ride cool bikes & wear Colours That Don't Run!
A-Merckx Frank, poetically penned bro.
My passion reaches back into my childhood. The bike, was for me a portal of entry into the world around me. I lived in rural Missouri and would daily hop on the bike and ride dirt roads all over, to town, to friends houses, to school...it was the bike.
Then, as a teenager, I saw something that changed my life, it started w/seeing the TdF riders effortlessly and w/souplesse ride....then Lemond WON!
I wanted to do the same, ride w/souplesse and panache and as I entered college, it was the bike that took me to class and there were 'more of likeminded me out there'.
And cycling fits my personality so well, because not many others around here ride, so cycling is counter-culture in this part of the world, which simply convinces me it must be right. At 41 now, I AM A CYCLIST, its me, everyone knows it.
And it represents so much, how do you put it into words, really....
It started so long ago
And I have never looked back
@Dr C
those eyes...w/laser pinpoint focus...is in the V-loci
Cycling, like climbing (mountaineering in particular), is a sport of the love of suffering. You clear your mind of everything but the task at hand. I'm not a religious guy by any stretch, but the mountain (roads or glaciers) is my temple. Very nicely done Frank.