Shame-faced

It happens every year.

I love riding fast. I love feeling strong. Crushing a 30- or 40-miler is just pure joy. So, when I get on a bike alone, I find it very hard not to push. And when I push, I get stronger. (So far, so good.) And when I get stronger, I set racing-type goals. (Uh-huh…) Then I push more. (Uh, wait…) Somewhere around there, a major stressor (or two, or three) pops up in my life. Still I push. (Yes, I do include recovery weeks.) Slowly, subtly, I start losing sleep. Start feeling dead in the legs. Start not wanting to ride, and feeling cranky all the time.

Still I push – because I set a goal, and reaching goals is noble, right? It makes us feel good, right? Onward!

But is that really why I push so hard? No.

I push because I hate myself. Or some part of me does.

The part of me that wants to prove that bully from summer camp wrong by ripping the legs off of his stand-in on the latest group ride – but at the same time, agrees with him that I’m a worthless lump. It’s shame, pure and simple.

It’s sometimes said (a little simplistically) that strong competitors either love to win or hate to lose. I’d have to put myself in the second category. If I can ride faster than someone, I often feel an unhealthy high, which comes more from relief than joy. “Phew!! I'm okay. I beat someone, so I must be okay!” How far is that from the pure joy of crushing a solo 40-miler? It’s measurable only in light-years.

This stuff feeds off shame like a cancer. After decades of working on myself, I like to think there isn’t any self-hatred left; then I start to feel strong on the bike, and Voila! Mr. Kill-or-be-Worthless comes crashing through the locked door to the basement of my psyche, and starts setting off M-80s and stink bombs.

I’ve basically never known the bright joy of healthy competition. I have friends who compete that way; the rush, the effort, the jostling for position… it’s all goodness to them. If they win, great! If not, oh, well – they have a killer story. I would really like to know what that feels like.

Until that day, I may have to steer clear of most competition -- or find a way to sneak up on it and take it by surprise. All suggesions are welcome.

Welcome to the Rat's Nest

"My knee hurts a lot. I'm going to set up the Vaya with 23 mm tires and do the big Memorial Day charity ride with lower gears."

"Yeah! I'll be nice and comfy all the way and I can spin up the hills!"

"But then I'll be slow as molasses and won't be able to keep up with my friends!"

“Right, but I promised myself I wouldn't try to keep up with them; if it happens, it happens. I'm supposed to be riding for fun and stewarding my health!"

"Maybe I should set up the old Giant again -- yeah, triple in the front, lighter than the Vaya, still comfy."

"But I haven't ridden that bike more than an hour in nearly two years! Maybe the setup will be all wrong!"

"My knee hurts. Maybe I should just skip the ride altogether; I don't want to screw it up totally. I'd sacrifice a month of riding just to have one fun day..."

"Maybe the eleventh time I stretch my glutes 'til they're like overcooked noodles will cure the knee problem... but Mrs. V. is getting awfully tired of trying to talk to me while my face is buried in the rug..."


Above is a sampling of what makes me periodically think I should just give up doing events of any kind. Yes, sadly, all those thoughts come from one mind. My mind.

Believe it or not, almost every day, I get up and feed myself and manage reasonably well the multiple, demanding tasks of a professional job and a rewarding marriage. And then I set a cycling goal for myself, and the wheels start coming right off the wagon.

I know you have this same syndrome. It's these moments (hours?) that lead us to wonder yet one more time, "Why do I do this again? Cycling is supposed to be fun! If I want deadlines and drudgery, I can just go to work!"

I want to know what you do to cope, to make it better. Two days 'til roll-out.

In a word: Help!

"Just" an Enthusiast?

Second week in a row of recovery from the big early June push. Loooong story short, I got greedy.

I thought I was still coming back from the missed months of training (due to illness and injury this winter) but I surprised myself with my good progress. Did two unexpectedly big rides; got psyched. Did a really epic ride. Felt good. Hey! I must have had some kind of miracle healing! Let’s go do some intervals and yet more killer hills! Yeah… that’s about the time I burned out. And the nagging ache in my knees became real pain. Not sure when I’ll be 100% again.

Yet, I’m not as discouraged as I’ve been in the past.

The 20 months since I’ve gotten back into cycling have been characterized by this yo-yo pattern. I ride too hard; I start to feel bad; I ease off and loudly commit to more reasonable ways; start to feel better, ride too hard; feel bad. Rinse & repeat.

So this week, I’ve done some navel-gazing in an attempt to get my hands on the psychological crossed wire that’s causing this self-destructive behavior. Turns out it’s the same pattern I’ve lived out in other parts of my life. When I was in college, having taught myself guitar for a total of two years, I decided I was going to be a “serious” jazz guitarist. Like, for a living. I talked the dean of the highly respected conservatory connected to my school into giving me a locker for my instrument and signing me up for theory classes, jazz improv classes, and, most laughable of all, a small combo seminar. I had no business being in that audition room, and the instructor told me so in no uncertain terms. Didn’t stop me, of course.

Since I was a kid, I couldn’t love doing something without trying to be a hotshot at it. It was never okay to be just okay. To do something just because I liked doing it. To be mediocre, just another enthusiast, a hacker, a duffer. I've missed out on a lot of healthy enjoyment because of this.

There are some first causes for it, events and relationships in my childhood, but this isn’t People magazine, and you don’t come here for tell-all confessions. Suffice it to say I’m 45 now, and it’s time to take yet one more step in that life-long process we call growing up. Basically, to accept that my body has limits. That it’s genetically destined for only a teaspoon of athletic talent. That it’s getting older (and I’m getting busier) and it won’t let me go off and act like a hero for a while without long-term repercussions. Most importantly, it’s time to find a way to ride within myself – something I’ve been writing about since the day I started this blog.

Shoot, staying within myself is something I’ve been trying to learn since I was old enough to think. Here’s to another step: Enjoying my time on the bike for what it is. Being neither hero nor zero, but rather that thing I just could not swallow before: One more enthusiast. I think allowing myself that luxury will open up a world of cycling enjoyment I haven't even touched yet.

As always, I'll keep you posted.

Mastery Validates Itself

Mastery is this wonderful, exciting feeling: I'm better at it today than I was last week. It doesn't mean I'm the best in the world; it doesn't mean I won the Nobel Prize; it means simply: I'm getting better. I can do it better now than I could before--that is the root of motivation and self-esteem, and it's really magical.

~ Edward Hallowell, M.D., psychiatrist and author

The part I love about my field is reading stuff like this, stuff that captures an essential particle of the inner life, holds it up to a bright light, and makes three dimensional for me what happens inside people every day (or what can, if things are going right).

The experience Hallowell is describing here applies 100% to the oneI had on the bike Sunday. (Well, one of the experiences-- there were others, like, "WOW, what a beautiful day," or "CRAP, this hill is harder after 40 miles than it is after 20.")

I rode a pretty long ways on Sunday. It wasn't an epic by many people's standards. It certainly wasn't epic by the standards of my accomplishments last season, or by the standards of where I had originally intended to be at this time of year, a plan I hatched before months of pneumonia and injury befell me. But that's not the point. Hallowell's point is that knowing that I rode further and faster than I have so far this year, further and faster than I did last week and the week before that, was a wonderful tonic for my confidence, my sense of adventure, and my need to get out of the daily rut of overwhelm and drudgery.

One more lesson well-learned in the school of self-referential assessment. I might not get to race this season; I might not reach the peak I would have reached had I remained healthy all the way through. But the fun and upliftment of a long, hard solo ride on a beautiful day stand alone. They don't need to trump anyone else's experience in order to sparkle in my memory. In order to make me smile when recalled as I'm falling asleep after a bruising day.

Don't worry. I still hope to rip some legs off at some point this season, just for the sake of trying. But if it never happens, perhaps I can continue to make the best of what I do have -- sunny days, long hours in the saddle, and a gorgeous region to explore. And the opportunity -- the certainty, really -- of growing in mastery. May you see the same bright prospect before you.

Bad Head Day

Okay. Enough.

I've been sick off and on with sort of the same cold/bronchial infection for four weeks. It's been one-step-forward-one-step-back, over and over again. Put this on top of my four weeks of overtrained/overstressed exhaustion in October, and you get someone who is extremely ready to stronger and healthier. Who doesn't have to think three times before he does anything, like get on a bike, eat a certain food, go outside.

So, I'm asking for your help. How can you help, you ask? Simple. You can inspire me. I know four weeks (plus however many more) is not the most people can be sidelined, not by a longshot. I need to put this in perspective, and I need to be inspired.

Post up your favorite stories of long lay-ups due to illness, injury, or other unavoidable annoyance. Times when, even though you knew better, it felt like you might never ride again like you used to. How did you get through it psychologically, fitness-wise, etc.?

Also feel free to post links to others' blog posts, videos, books, etc. Heck, I'll even take songs.

I had a really bad day. It's time to turn this attitude around.

A Private, Absolutely Rigorous World

There is an interesting distinction to be made between individual play and team play; the former involves a complex psychological and physical encounter between a person and time obstacle or competitor. It is a defined encounter with epic implications. (Such athletes are) perhaps the quintesential heroes, because they operate in a private, absolutely rigorous world, where there are no excuses, and a person's triumph or loss is his or her own, not his team's.... The outcome is total--one man won, the other man lost.

~ Lionel Tiger, Men in Groups

"That Which Does Not Kill Me, Makes Me Stranger"

Sifting through an excellent site on sports psychology (Marvin Zauderer's personal site has a wonderfully long page filled with a broad array of articles on that topic), I tripped over a fascinating New York Times article on Jure Robic, one of the most successful ultracyclists out there. These are guys who ride as far they can in 24 hours, or ride across the continental United States in just a few days. Many days and thousands of continuous miles on the bike, with very little sleep interspersed. In other words, they're a little crazy to start with. (As well as physiologically different from you and me).

But Robic goes beyond the usual "embrace the pain" banalities. Far beyond.

As the race progresses, he literally descends into a swamp of mental illness. And the article is a wonderful, fresh lens on the very tenuous difference between the "mentally ill" and "the rest of us."

All endurance athletes have reached that certain point in a ride or race when our demons bash down the locked door to the cellar in the back of our minds and emerge to taunt us. The difference is, Robic's demons come all the way out; they do the macarena on the dining room table. He doesn't have -- or chooses to deactivate -- the mental security gate that most of us would never mess with, the one that keeps those demons at a certain distance, no matter how close. You and I might enjoy facing down pain, fear, harsh memories of the past (see Suitcase of Courage's recent post on Bill Strickland's fine book, Ten Points, for a perfect example of the latter), low self-esteem -- all kinds of worthy adversaries -- as part of the challenge and reward of riding. Hate to say it, but your very harshest day on the bike makes Robic's happiest day look like a Hieronymous Bosch painting. He is John Howard and August Strindberg rolled into one.

Now, I'm not romanticizing this idea. For all his talent, I don't envy Robic. I'm a mental health counselor, and even at this early stage in my career (thanks to a mid-life job switch), I have seen enough of demons and the destruction they inspire to last a lifetime. But there's a difference: When Robic's not on the bike, he's at least in balance enough to be socially acceptable. He's more or less sane, in control.

So it's okay that the article is funny. I found myself wishing I'd thought of the title first: "That Which Does Not Kill Me, Makes Me Stranger."

There's also some super-cool stuff in there about the psychological nature of endurance-related pain. This is the kind of stuff I really dig. (Guess it's not surprising, since I'm a therapist and an endurance athlete.) Turns out it may be closer in nature to an emotion (i.e., a way of perceiving reality) than to an actual, biological reality.

See, there seems to be a "governor" built in to the brain/mind that keeps us from pushing past a certain level of endurance, because our evolutionary genetic makeup "believes" that we might need the last bit of reserves for something important -- say, running from a sabertooth tiger. So the brain/mind actually creates a sensation of pain when it's not there (or amplifies it, at least), to get us to back off.

Thing is, when you're on the bike, there are no sabertooths (except for that joker in the green jersey who's been on your wheel the entire break). And there appears to be only "trivial" consequences to turning off that governor and pushing beyond -- way beyond. It might feel like our body's on fire, and of course, there's always the danger of overtraining, but we won't die, which, at a certain point, is what the ultracyclist's body is stridently trying to tell him will happen. The theory goes that Robic's "unique" psychological make-up -- his mental illness -- disengages that governor. It just bypasses it altogether.

What lies beyond is strange country, indeed. And beyond that? Podiums.