A tale of two bicycle races — or maybe a tale about doing hard things.

This probably has nothing to do about anything or possibly something to do about everything; we shall see.

The first race of the season was the last week in April and turned out to be a wet and cold and very muddy ordeal. I probably should mention my cycling of choice at the moment is gravel biking so some days can get a little messy. The off-road sections of the race ranged from a soupy mud that you could ride through to mud that was six inches deep and would stick to everything. There was a great sense of accomplishment as I made my way up the final hill and crossed the finish line. It was a nice way to start the cycling season and a great foundation to build on for a much more challenging race to come in two and a half months.

Then three days after the race, around midnight, my knee woke me up as it figurative screamed in pain and my left kinetic chain was cramped up from my hip down through my ankle. The first week had me getting around on crutches and for the next four weeks I hobbling around as the kinetic chain slowly loosened up. In effect, because I didn’t rest the ol’ body well enough, three hours of riding cost me five weeks of being side lined; by anyone’s measure, not a good trade-off.

Not wanting to give up cycling just yet, and with the next race six weeks away, I cleared everything from my calendar except for sleeping, eating, working and training — and went to work. I trained hard and I progressed. My training rides became longer than the upcoming race and I was feeling good. Then five days before my ride, I was jarred wide awake with a very painful knee; not as bad as the first time, but crippling enough that I was cursing the cycling gods and disheartened by the likelihood I would not be racing — all that work for not. Although I had resigned myself to not doing the race, part of me took on a wait and see attitude, and by Friday morning there was no knee pain; even after an early morning ride, there was no pain. The decision was made that unless I woke up with pain, I was going to ride. I did ride, and did finish the race, and my knee made it. Although I could feel both my knee and ankle acting up afterwards, I don’t seem to be following the arc of the first race and am slowly back to training for the next race.

Is this a particularly unique story or something that people don’t wrestle with every day? No it is not. Countless people work through challenging situations all the time without feeling the need to write a blog and post it. So why am I?

I have been riding a bike most of my life and always finish. With full disclosure though, I find myself on the back end of races when it comes to ride times and placement in the standings — sadly, I am not nearly as fast as I think I am and reality has me saying WTF every so often. I don’t do this for the glory of saying I was in the top 3, or the top 100 but rather 198th (in 4 hours, 2 minutes and 30 seconds). I love riding my bike. I love the atmosphere that comes with rides and races. I cherish being able to ride with good friends as I point out I am slowly closing the gap. I love the give-aways that are always handy. I love it all, but when I boil it down, particularly after the last two months, I love it and do it because it’s hard.

These races offer a relatively safe opportunity to see how I can handle something that is hard, and no matter what, work to manage through, and finish. I don’t finish for anyone but myself — I want to know what I can do, what I can’t do, and what I need to get better at. I will argue that the lessons are transferable to other things, although you might suggest this is really only about cycling and what I’m learning is how to handle hard bicycle races. I suppose that is fair, but I’ll go onto suggest that if you know how to do one hard thing, it will help you do another hard thing — and if you can work through hard things, then you will be able to tackle harder and harder things.

And then one day, when you least expected, you will be faced with the hardest thing. Best to have some experience to help make the way a little easier. But if you don’t think there is value here, continue tackling the easy things. At the very least, I hope this was an enjoyable read.

iamgpe

PS — neither of the above races compare to last year’s race. I got lost and had nothing left in the tank and had figuratively hit the wall physically and emotionally when I crossed the finish line — I learned so much in that race.