The Cave

Rober Millar goes deep into the Pain Cave.

No words survive here, only echoes. Echoes of our hopes, of our plans, of our failures. What we thought we might do when we came here is little more than a shadow; it flickers on the walls for a moment and when we turn to look, it is gone. Doubts swell up and bounce off the walls until they become so loud they can no longer be heard.

Once we’ve entered, we can not return the way we came; the only way out is to descend into the darkness and through to the other side. When we emerge, we will breathe a new life, one where we are able to push a bit harder, and suffer a bit more. It is a better world, one with opportunity. One where we can make things happen because we have discovered a new limit of our will.

Pushing deeper into The Cave is learned over time. When we first enter, we will find ourselves in a small cavern with no apparent exit. As we train and explore its darkest corners, we discover a passage. We gather our courage and slip into a larger, darker cavern to explore. Beyond that, there lies another. Each holds its own unique strain of suffering, but with it comes also a degree of control; the choice to enter is ours and ours alone.

When I’m strong, my mind yearns for the cleansing qualities of The Cave. I feel almost the master of my pain, that I command its ebbs and flows. Even on days that don’t require it, I will hurt myself just to prove I can. When I’m chasing my fitness, however, I approach it with the same reluctance I had as a child when made to eat my vegetables. The suffering flows over me in waves and I am at the mercy of its current.

My training this summer has been erratic and unstructured. I’ve had some great periods, and just as I’ve neared a goal, either illness or travel unexpectedly reared up before me and interrupted my progress. A week away from the bike means another two weeks before I find myself back to where I was. Two weeks of drifting like a leaf in the current. Two weeks of knowing what lies beyond, unable to reach it.

Then the breakthrough, and into the next cavern. It is only through contemplating the darkest corners of The Cave that we discover its deepest passages and it is within the deepest passages that we may discover our purest selves.

Have courage and follow the path into The Cave. Vive la Vie Velominatus.

frank

The founder of Velominati and curator of The Rules, Frank was born in the Dutch colonies of Minnesota. His boundless physical talents are carefully canceled out by his equally boundless enthusiasm for drinking. Coffee, beer, wine, if it’s in a container, he will enjoy it, a lot of it. He currently lives in Seattle. He loves riding in the rain and scheduling visits with the Man with the Hammer just to be reminded of the privilege it is to feel completely depleted. He holds down a technology job the description of which no-one really understands and his interests outside of Cycling and drinking are Cycling and drinking. As devoted aesthete, the only thing more important to him than riding a bike well is looking good doing it. Frank is co-author along with the other Keepers of the Cog of the popular book, The Rules, The Way of the Cycling Disciple and also writes a monthly column for the magazine, Cyclist. He is also currently working on the first follow-up to The Rules, tentatively entitled The Hardmen. Email him directly at rouleur@velominati.com.

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View Comments

frank says:

Sep 9 2013 at 12:11 pm

@meursault

They don't get we want to look pro, because of how the icons of the sport ride or rode.

Case in point.
DeKerr says:

Sep 9 2013 at 12:22 pm

@meursault

Words of the highest quality as always.

Occasionally, a troll stumbles across this place, and doesn't get it. They tell us to ride more and type less, they think we care more about how we look than how we ride, they do make me laugh. They don't get we want to look pro, because of how the icons of the sport ride or rode. If just a drop of that V could touch us and inspire us, how much more ecstatic we would be. The rule that transcends all rules, is of course Rule V

"If you have everything under control, you're not moving fast enough."

Mario Andretti

Seconded.

I think... no, strongly feel a big reason I've been able to latch on to cycling so quickly is the journey I took through the cave on my mountain bike back in third weekend on June. Half way through the Test of Metal (67k 1.2k climbing), just after Bonk hill I cramped, hard, and continued to cramp for the remaining 27k of the race.

The man with the hammer (I did not know his name at the time, how quickly i've learned) did not just bop me on the head but shattered me from the waist down with the full force of his hammer at my hubris for thinking I had prepared properly. I tripped, and stumbled (it was a mountain bike race so Rule #69 does not apply as stricltly, but it should), and screamed alone, silently, to myself until I passed through to the light.

So with that knowledge of just how much I can hurt, and suffer, and still keep moving forward I was able to rip 122 km with 1.7 km of climbing this weekend in just over 4hrs.

Go into the cave. What's in there? Only what you take with you.

VLVV
Mike_P says:

Sep 9 2013 at 12:25 pm

I realised this year that the mental fight with myself, my pain cave, is one of the big reasons why I have come to love riding Europe's high mountains. I'm not a climber; not built like one at all, but they have come to occupy the focus of pretty much all my goals. I've discovered more about my ability to suffer, to go to a place I didn't know I could, on mountains in two weeks over the last two years than in any riding I've done. The realisation is a glorious thing, almost a sense of not knowing oneself at all, of being able to overrule my body. I'm not kidding myself; days spent in 39x27 are nothing to brag about, but getting home knowing that I've conquered myself; that's special. Pain is our raisin d'Ãªtre. It's what we are here for.

VLVV
Chris says:

Sep 9 2013 at 12:26 pm

Doubts swell up and bounce off the walls until they become so loud they can no longer be heard.

The question, quiet and infrequent at first but louder and incessant as you go deeper.

Do you really think you can hold this pace? Faster? Who you?

For me the surefire and fastest route into the cave is on the rollers but there's nothing like a headwind on a cold grey day in flat open countryside, the North Cambridgeshire Fens or the Nord-Pas de Calais, to bring home the realisation that despite riding in a group, you are alone on the bike.

Is this what the entrance to the cave looks like?
Buck Rogers says:

Sep 9 2013 at 12:30 pm

@Chris

Doubts swell up and bounce off the walls until they become so loud they can no longer be heard.

The question, quiet and infrequent at first but louder and incessant as you go deeper.

Do you really think you can hold this pace? Faster? Who you?

For me the surefire and fastest route into the cave is on the rollers but there's nothing like a headwind on a cold grey day in flat open countryside, the North Cambridgeshire Fens or the Nord-Pas de Calais, to bring home the realisation that despite riding in a group, you are alone on the bike.

Is this what the entrance to the cave looks like?

Fuck'in spot on post!
Buck Rogers says:

Sep 9 2013 at 12:33 pm

@meursault

Words of the highest quality as always.

Occasionally, a troll stumbles across this place, and doesn't get it. They tell us to ride more and type less, they think we care more about how we look than how we ride, they do make me laugh. They don't get we want to look pro, because of how the icons of the sport ride or rode. If just a drop of that V could touch us and inspire us, how much more ecstatic we would be. The rule that transcends all rules, is of course Rule V

"If you have everything under control, you're not moving fast enough."

Mario Andretti

Wow! Great posts. Well said! This is a great article and really hitting home around here.
Buck Rogers says:

Sep 9 2013 at 12:35 pm

@Gianni

@john

And that looks like Lemond behind him with Frank's drop-in Scott bars. And yes, he does appear to be channeling Kelly.

Yup! Has to be LeMan in the background with the WCRR stripes and jersey. Must be 1990 then, huh? Or I suppose it could be late 1989.
Chris says:

Sep 9 2013 at 12:35 pm

@Mike_P

I realised this year that the mental fight with myself, my pain cave, is one of the big reasons why I have come to love riding Europe's high mountains. I'm not a climber; not built like one at all, but they have come to occupy the focus of pretty much all my goals. I've discovered more about my ability to suffer, to go to a place I didn't know I could, on mountains in two weeks over the last two years than in any riding I've done. The realisation is a glorious thing, almost a sense of not knowing oneself at all, of being able to overrule my body. I'm not kidding myself; days spent in 39Ã—27 are nothing to brag about, but getting home knowing that I've conquered myself; that's special. Pain is our raisin d'Ãªtre. It's what we are here for.

VLVV

This. To a T. Two years ago I would never have dreamed of taking off on my bike with the intention of riding 225km over two iconic TDF Cols. Fuck, at that point my idea of a day on my bike in the mountains started on the chairlift and finished with a beer and a fag.

VLVV indeed!

On a slightly different note but, to me, equally inspiring, a fiend of mine set off at 0500 yesterday on her motor bike to ride to Monaco. She's always dreamed of doing it but never quite got round to learning to ride a bike. She passed her test in April this year, brought a bigger bike and set off yesterday by herself. She's meeting her husband on Wednesday in casino Square - they honeymooned there.
Cyclops says:

Sep 9 2013 at 12:36 pm

Pain Cave, pain cave, O' how I hate thee. 'Ceptin', of course, when there is a wheel dangling in front of me. It's funny how I've been a "half-stepper" at everything all of my life. Except when I get on a road bike. Core exercises? Blow me. Post ride stretching? Blow me. Off-season weight training? Blow me, blow me, blow me.*

Ride at or above threshold for 90 minutes trying to hold that guy's wheel who is always faster than you? I'm in.

*Yeah, yeah, I know, all that stuff will make me stronger and prevent injury (which I'm suffering from right now) but Homey don't play dat shit. I just wanna ride!
wiscot says:

Sep 9 2013 at 12:42 pm

Yup, that's Millar, with the sleeve belonging to Greg Lemond. It's the Tour de France in 1990 as Lemond won the Worlds in the fall of 1989 and would still be wearing the rainbow bands in July of 1990. In the background is Claude Criquelion who won the Belgian RR championship in the early summer of 1990 before the Tour.