Strength can be a fickle thing this time of year, when the training isn’t as consistent as it should be; it comes and goes, sometimes several times in the span of a single ride or even a climb. Like a rosy-eyed dreamer I keep awakening as I train, thrown like a rag doll between a state nearing euphoria and one resembling purgatory.
My mind is what drives me as a Cyclist, it is what allows my to keep going despite the burning in my legs and lungs. It is what pushes me to leave the comfort of my home to climb aboard my bike when it is dark, cold, and rainy. But there are times when the legs won’t go or the body fails in some anomalous way when we are struck by the reality that we are but puppets, pushed and pulled by forces that exist outside outside the jurisdiction of our will.
Whether or not the body fails, the mind can still resist. It can resist easing back. It can resist turning around. It can resist turning the bars to steer away from the extra climbing loop. Giving in is the worst kind of weakness we have in Cycling. With time all the acute reasons why we want to quit will pass; the acid will flush from our muscles, the gasps for air will give way to steady breathing, the cold will leave our bodies. But quitting, and the doubt it cultivates can last much, much longer.
Quitting begets quitting. It wears down your confidence and makes you question yourself. It asks questions of you that you will struggle to answer when the 2am Ghosts of Lost Opportunities come calling. Worst of all, quitting gets easier the more you do it.
Before my rides, I will decide if it is to be a hard day or an easy day; whether I will do the extra loop with the big climbs or look for the flatter roads. Once on the ride, I will shut off the part of my mind that asks those questions and simply shut off the part of my mind that processes those considerations. I will not stop until I am done.
Our strength may be fickle, but our minds are steady.
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@frank
I've learned a trick so that I don't stop/decide it's a good opportunity to quit. If I drop a chain (outside on the bigdog) I don't stop to fix it. Put the deraillure back to the small ring, unclip the left shoe and use the rear wing of the (SPD) cleat to lift the chain back over and hold whilst the left leg turns the crank over slowly. It'll drop straight back on, clip back in, get moving, change back to the big dog and you're off.
@Puffy
I fixed that problem my never shifting out of my big ring.
@Gianni
Luxury!
@Mike_P
@Mike_P all in one piece thanks. Off again 21st for another couple of weeks, been dumping white stuff in Colorado since we came back. Trying to fit in a FRB between the rain/gales/floods. Trying to avoid confronting Rule #9 in the mirror.
@souleur yup, it's amazing the fight people have in them when they need to draw on it. SA (and our cycling community) unfortunately lost an amazing individual this week. Ashleigh Moore (OAM) had managed to fight off cancer 3 times in the last 9 years before it took his life on Monday. During that time he worked tirelessly to set up & promote Cancer Voices SA as an advocacy group for cancer fighters here in SA along with running a cycling team/club under the same name.
I first met him around October 2011 & have done a few different rides with him & the other CVSA riders over the past couple of years, during that time I watched him complete 100k rides basically on one lung & if there was ever a consideration of not finishing any ride he went on, it was never made apparent to those around him.
As poor as the reputations of Lance Armstrong & Livestrong are at the moment, I know that the amount of support that Ashleigh & anyone linked to CVSA have received over the last few years from them has been amazing & it's one of the reasons he was able to see multiple versions of the horrible disease off as many times as he did.
Makes it kinda tough to justify any type of excuse for pulling the pin on a ride cos you're not quite feeling it...
@xyxax
I see what you did there. Nice.
Wait a second, is Gitane, like the bikes Le Badger rode for awhile, a cigarette company?
*I'm probably many years late in realizing this, but I was reading yesterday and this seemed to be the case.
@andrew
A bog? You were lucky. Our house was on a frozen lake and would sink in the spring. Rollers? Our rollers were made of tin cans glued together and stuck to branches with plaited hair for bands.
@Ron
Ron, FYI from the interwebs:
Gitane is a French manufacturer of bicycles based in Machecoul, France; the name "Gitane" means gypsy woman. The brand was synonymous with French bicycle racing from the 1960s through the mid-1980s, sponsoring riders such as Jacques Anquetil (1963-1965), Lucien Van Impe (1974-1976), Bernard Hinault (1975-1983), Laurent Fignon (1982-1988), and Greg LeMond (1981-1984). It is owned by Grimaldi Industri AB.
Gitanes (pronounced: [Ê’i.tan], "gypsy women") is a brand of French cigarettes, sold in many varieties of strengths and packages. It is currently owned by Imperial Tobacco following their acquisition of Altadis in January 2008, having been owned by SEITA before that. Originally rolled with darker or brun (brown) tobacco, in contrast to 'blondes'. In honour of the name, the cover sports a silhouette of a Spanish gypsy woman playing the tambourine. The boxes have always featured the colours black, blue and white.
Interestingly, Roger deVlaeminck never rode a Gitane bike, which would have been logical given his nickname of "The Gypsy."
@Ron Cycles Gitane et Gitanes