Were not attained by sudden flight;
They whilst their companions slept,
Were toiling upwards in the night.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
It's been a little more than 5 years since I last had the privilege of playing a competitive sport regularly. And while I am tempted to delve into my Championship Glory Days(TM), you'll be spared it's mentioning.
Last year I picked up cycling and dabbled a little into cyclocross. I was fortunate to have a friend who is a far more experienced cyclist than I, be my riding partner and pseudo-coach. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of being on my bike in a different contexts: punishing mountain climbs, clandestine back roads in the heart of panoramic landscapes, the tense poise of being surrounded by the peloton during a criterium race adn the unique feeling that happens when agony gives way to a combination of masochism and long-lost boyish joy during the muddy 3rd lap of a sleeting cyclocross race through trees and rocks and sand.
It was like a whole new world opened up to me last year, and I loved every frightening surprise of doing something new and realizing that, with a little practice, I might be decent at this stuff.
And practice I have: skate skiing at altitude in Park City, hours upon hours on the stationary trainer at Gold's Gym or my apartment and recently I've been incorporating leg strength and speed exercises borrowed from the Glory Days(TM). For my second season I have put myself into action, pursing some aggressive goals: move from Category D to Category C in RMR crit series (April-May), complete LOTOJA (September) and start slaughtering people during cyclocross season (October) with a stretch goal of placing top 10 at the state championships in November.
I have happily rediscovered the experience of being physically disciplined. There is something about preparing for battle that annunciates some transcendent principles that seem elementary: the value of preparation, the virtue of discipline, that you reap only what you sow and never in the same season.
I love the rhythmic pace of life that occurs when I am training constantly. But like any other human being, I waver. I question why I put myself in pain and agony during the dark of mid-January. And without fail, the answer presents itself as clearly as the cortisol surging through my brain: I'm doing it precisely because a majority of the peloton I'll be racing against in March ISN'T doing what I'm doing.
But some are.
I begin to wonder if they are doing more than me right now or are churning out better performance metrics than me. And I as I think about them, I wonder if they are in the middle of their workout, thinking about me. Thinking about me in the way that I think about them. Right now. Wondering if they will have prepared well enough to put me in the hurt locker in the final laps of a criterium race.
And it's this combination of respect for your opponents in a way that only gladiators have for each other before they meet in battle. I think that the bond you have with your competition is special in that it is twofold: you are the only ones who know the reality of what you do and you want to kill each other.
The feeling that you are living beyond yourself, that there is something transcendent, something larger than yourself at play is a catalytic byproduct of being devoted to constantly preparing for and engaging in competition.
And then there's the battle itself.
The tenuous release of a wound-up spring. The "gallows-focus" of being inches away from 30 other nervous, motivated riders in a peloton moving at 50 kilometers/hour. Understanding the danger and potential for substantial bodily harm if someone crashes at this speed. Yet despite my nervousness, my adrenaline, the heightened sense of nano-changes in my environment, there is a faint seed of hope.
Hope, that in the midst of the chaos, I get a chance to know what it's like to attack the field. The hope that I get to feel the benefit of off-season preparation when I drop a gear to pass someone in the agonizing last third of the race. The terrified excitement at the possibility of putting my competition in the hurt locker in the service of being the first across the finish line. That feeling of being able to push through the suffering with 3 laps to go, to suffer harder and longer than the rest of the field. This is what I look forward to when I am putting time on the trainer in December, January and February.
It's an odd combination of masochism and curiosity of "how far can I push this?", "how far can my opponent push this?". And of course, the uncertainty. I don't know which people in the field have been preparing like I have, who are thinking the same thoughts I am. I don't know if someone else is going to put me in the hurt locker or if I'm are going to be the one doling out the punishment.
It's no longer about how many squats, sprints or hours, but simply how much I have prepared to suffer. Aside from the technique and the strength, the emotional and mental conditioning to have fortitude in the face of my legs being on fire and battery acid pumping through my veins. How much have I trained your psyche to respond to these conditions is something that's only evident when you are launching your attack on the peloton.
Training, for me is nothing more than suffering sessions. I work to have perfect form and manage my fight-or-flight response in the face of every part of me screaming "stop". When I am practicing well, my competitions are a step down. There's a huge difference between playing to *not lose* and playing to win -I aim to be in latter category.
By the way there's 24 days left to crit season :)
