Another Reason Bicycling Matters

     

I recently wrote a blog post describing why I’m less interested in participating in organized races (Why I Am Losing Interest in Organized Races).  Suffice it to say that awareness of this has been somewhat disorienting to me, resulting in quite a bit of quiet (and not so quiet) introspection and wondering.

My brother George.  And recent pleasant dreams.

George was four years older than me.  My childhood memories of him are that he played `rough’.  He never beat me up, though he was tough as steel, athletic and powerful.  I remember, once, when I was about 12 years old, whining to him that I wanted to see a movie playing at a drive-in he and his girlfriend were going to. Never did I imagine that they had no intention of `watching’ the movie.  Nevertheless, he relented and took me.  What a party crasher I must have been.

At times he would push me around so that I’d get on my back and fend him off with my legs and feet. We would both be laughing in this playful contest. 

When I tried to run away (to the back yard) he suggested I use our father’s ties as a rope to descend to the ground from our second-floor bedroom.  I’m sure he knew what he was doing.

In his adolescence and early adulthood, he became a physical and athletic phenomenon.  As a high school freshman, he played varsity football.  I once saw him empty a carful of noisy teenagers, reaching in and throwing them out, one by one. 

He was ferocious and fierce.  And he was a no-nonsense delinquent.  His buddies were local teenage hoodlums.  He was arrested for fights several times by the local police.  Our parents once had to collect him from the village jail, discovering that he was bruised and bloody after resisting arrest by four cops. 

He dropped out of high school.  Somehow he enlisted in the Air Force, only to be discharged for misconduct after a year.

We drifted apart as we grew up.  I was anything BUT a gifted physical and athletic person. 

One day, at 24, I got a phone call from my father (a shocking rarity) telling me that George was in a serious motorcycle accident in California and that he wanted me to join him on a flight to his hospital.  He had `T-boned’ a vehicle while on his motorcycle and had broken his back on a curb.  He was paralyzed from the waist down. 

After a full year in VA hospitals, he was discharged in a wheelchair. 

He spent the next four years struggling to adjust to being an ill-educated, temperamentally intolerant cripple.

Again, I got that phone call from our father.  My big brother George had been found dead at 33 in his apartment.  He had taken all his leg tranquilizers, put them in a McDonald’s milkshake, pulled the bedsheet over his head and taken his own life.

Not a bike ride goes by that I don’t think of him when I’m pushing and pushing and pushing with my powerful legs on the bike pedals.

WHY I AM LOSING INTEREST...

 ... in organized races.  

I registered for only two organized ultra events this year.  And I only participated in one.  

This weekend the World Time Trial Championship races took place in Borrego Springs, CA.  The WTTC is a remarkable, well-run and exceptionally popular world event.  I think I registered for and/or participated in at least twelve (12) WTTCs over the past fourteen years.  This year something changed ... in me.

So ... back in April I signed up for both the 24- and 6-hour WTTC races.  I carefully structured my training around the mostly flat 18-mile course.  I prepared two bikes, made motel reservations, purchased both equipment and clothing to manage night and day racing.  I drove the 300 miles from my Arizona home to arrive two days before the races.  And then ... struggled with an intense disinterest in actually showing up at the start line.  

I didn't race.  

I am in decent shape to do fairly well in the races.  I've done this race so often there is no mystery to the course, the need for careful preparation, the calculation that if there were a problem during the race I'd be prepared to handle it. 

But I just didn't want to race.  

I wrote about this in an earlier post Stinkin' Thinkin'.

So how do I understand this otherwise contradictory behavior?

First, at this age (78) I am more committed to listening to my `feelings'.  I've learned to give them more credence than when younger and more `head down and just push on'.  You could say I trust myself more.  Even though all weekend I felt/thought confused at this decision.  

Second, to be honest with myself I anticipated boredom at just repeating the same course I've completed dozens and dozens and dozens of times.  In fact, in recent years past I'd drive to Borrego Springs several times a year just to train on the course.  

Third, back in 2010 I was interviewed by Tom Hovan in advance of my participation in the Race Across The West.  In that interview I was asked if I were confident I could successfully complete the 860 mile event.  Both the question and my response was curious: "If I knew I could do it I wouldn't." 

I've never considered myself a competitive person.  I am `sort of' persistent.  And I have a history of getting up off the floor and plodding on.  But the training, expense and neglect of other things of my life were so demanding made it clear to me that the Race Across the West wasn't a casual jaunt.  As it turned out I DNF'd after 415 miles in Congress, AZ.  (So much for training for an ultrarace in my Chicago basement).  

In retrospect I've allowed my ego to have more say-so than my rational calculation.  It's been an absurdly long and clumsy process but I think I'm putting more balance to things.  

I'm reminded of this saying.  The definition of a fanatic is that s/he redoubles his/her effort as soon as s/he loses sight of the objective.

-----------

Finally, I live in a bicyclist's heaven: the central highlands of Arizona.  There are profoundly beautiful and challenging roads to cover.  The terrain is varied; from dizzying ascents going on for triple digit miles, to virtually empty good quality roads into the Arizona brush desert.  Boredom is not a factor.  

So ... there.