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.

Wheels within Wheels

Pardon the involuted, post-modern self-referentialism ("The what?"), but I just have to refer any recent converts to Velophoria over to a post I wrote almost two months ago, because a really interesting conversation has developed lately in the comments section, and I don't want you to miss all the goodness. It really embodies the kind of marriage between doing and thinking-about-doing that I envisioned for Velophoria when I launched it.

Scroll down for the great comments. And thanks to Suitcase of Courage, No One Line and new reader De.corday for their great contributions.

Running Towards What We Don't Want

For one reason and another, I haven’t been able to go on a “spirited group ride” (as the journalists like to call them) in about nine months. Extreme busy-ness colluded with nagging injuries to keep me away. I spent much of this time very, very frustrated, obsessed with how I could get back to that experience. It was my main goal when I started getting back into cycling seriously last fall.

For one reason and another, I finally felt ready to go on that particular weekly ride this morning.

I was really nervous as I was getting ready this morning. Last season, I managed to join this group only five or so times. I was just back on the bike for the first time in many years, and only in decent shape. I got dropped, badly, time after time. I would ride home alone, nagging myself again and again about the question of my fitness and ability, as if picking at a scab. I bored my poor wife with these involutions for weeks.

I went on to spend much of the winter and spring sticking rigidly to a training schedule and trying to heal from that recurring injury. I fantasized about going back and showing them – uh, I mean, showing myself (yeah... right) – that I could pass the test. That, at 44, I still had a little of the spark of youth in me. Granted, a spirited group ride is not a race – but the front half of this one is pretty close to a race. And I wanted to be indisputably IN it – not off the back. I worried. I trained. I researched. I trained. I upgraded my bike. I trained. I lost weight. I trained. Through snow and sleet and hail. Literally.

Today was the day to put all that obsessing and research and training and healing and money and time to the test. Was I right to think I could do it?

As it turned out, I did well today. I exceeded the goals I’d set for my return ride with this group, goals dreamed up during countless dreary winter training sessions in my basement.

Now, here’s the interesting part: The experience didn’t mean all that much to me.

Don’t get me wrong; I enjoyed it. It was exciting to ride hard and fast, to be in the chase, and, certainly, to be the one being chased. To feel the utter exhaustion and happiness at the end of the road, and the camaraderie with the other riders, the full kinship I couldn’t feel during the rides last year, because I wasn’t really one of them, couldn’t stick with them. I earned those things today, and they were nice.

But they didn’t thrill me like I thought they would. I mean, I poured myself into this goal, folks. I could not have done any more to make it real. Along the way, this nagging knee injury kept making me slow down, enjoy the scenery, ride like I rode when I was last really into cycling, as a teen. I rode in those days for the love of it, now didn't I? I seem to remember...

This year I kept moaning and groaning about how the injury was keeping me from what I really wanted. Turns out, what I wanted so badly? Not so much. It doesn’t do much for me to “rip someone’s legs off,” as the saying so tellingly goes in our sport. I thought it would really give me a frisson, make me walk taller. Nope. Fact is, I had at least as much fun last week exploring the Metrowest area on roads I’d never tried before, getting lost, intimately experiencing new places in my own backyard. Funny – Just like the stuff I loved when I was a punk teen. Huh.

I’ll probably go back to the group ride, and I’ll probably try to beat a few guys in a sprint here and there. It’s human nature to compete sometimes, and I like the buzz. But I’ve been healthily reminded that, if I ride for the love of riding, I will be happier both during and after. Whether that means meandering around new roads, or doing sprints that leave a long streak of melted rubber down my standard training route.

I have a stockpile of adages I’ve coined over the years to remind myself of the important stuff I’ve learned. One of them is: We run fastest from that which we really want. Today, I discovered a corollary: Sometimes, we run fastest towards that which we don't really want.

Let that be a lesson to me.