This is what tired feels like.
Before I make this about me, as I always do, I want to give credit to Roberto Ballini, who is pictured here sunning himself against nothing less morbid than a gravestone during the 1971 Tour de France, presumably in protest to how much of a shitshow The Prophet was making of the race.
But let’s be honest: being tired is the best part of Cycling. To begin with, going for a ride and not coming back at least a little bit tired is entirely unrewarding, unless you happen to be a Recovery Ride Specialist. I do enjoy a recovery ride and the satisfaction of coming home feeling light and loose and not at all tired, but anything representing a real ride needs to leave something behind in the body, something tangible that reminds us of the work we put in. It doesn’t have to be devastating by any means, but we should feel the ride somewhere in our being.
I struggle with depression a bit. I’m an introvert in an extroverted world who writes publicly (here, in Cyclist, and now also for Rouleur) about his love for Cycling. The shock for me is that Cycling and writing are my greatest passions, and they have miraculously come together to lay the foundation for this incredible worldwide community in the Cycling world – something I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams.
The irony is that when either the writing or the Cycling doesn’t come, I start to come apart at the seams. When they fall apart, I fall apart as well.
I suppose I’ve been an athlete and an artist my whole life, but it takes some time for you to find your specific medium in both these areas. It may well be a “calling”, but life can throw its voice like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I found Cycling by way of Nordic Skiing, and I found writing by way of Cycling. Which is another way of saying I have been using Cycling to aide my ills much longer than I have been using Writing to do so.
I don’t know much about fixing Writers Block, but I have learned a thing or two about using the bike to fix almost anything else: Sometimes you just have to ride until you can’t ride anymore. Run it until the mind has nothing left to think about but getting home. When I had been off the bike (Holidays?) and stopped writing (Holidays?), I fell back into that familiar darkness (Holidays?). So after (too many days) I realized what I needed to do: get on the bike and pedal. So I did. I rode through a terrible cold I didn’t expect; the kind of cold that freezes your fingers and toes to the point you don’t feel them properly for weeks.
It worked. I felt alive again. Facing the prospect of riding home through those conditions reminded me that I could face anything. Getting home reminded me that I can not only face but conquer anything. It didn’t cure me of my dragons, they will be back, but it turned the tide on the emotional experience I was having and that is one of the things Cycling has come to mean for me over the years.
Every day when I go out on my bike, I risk my life. But I risk more by not going out on my bike. The bike has saved my life so many times that I’m forever in its debt.
Vive la Vie Velominatus.
I know as well as any of you that I've been checked out lately, kind…
Peter Sagan has undergone quite the transformation over the years; starting as a brash and…
The Women's road race has to be my favorite one-day road race after Paris-Roubaix and…
Holy fuckballs. I've never been this late ever on a VSP. I mean, I've missed…
This week we are currently in is the most boring week of the year. After…
I have memories of my life before Cycling, but as the years wear slowly on…
View Comments
Righteous.
Good to see you back, it's been a while.
Time off the bike can be a dangerous thing. Work is a bit stressful at the moment with a seemingly impossible amount to achieve in a very limited time. The information we need is flowing slowly from external parties whilst internally there are resourcing pressures that threaten to take people out of my team.
I've been lucky never to have suffered from depression but I certainly find it harder to maintain a focus on it all and not to get snappy at home if I don't get on my bike every few days under these conditions even if it's only an hour on the turbo.
Or a kilometer or boundary marker near the town of Malesherbes being a former commune in the Loiret department in north-central France. Did the 1971 route go that way?
Loved this article Frank
Perfectly written and a glaring insight as to why I ride .
Without my bikes me and a straightjacket would the norm .
So maybe on Stage 7 Rungis to Nevers 4th July, stage winner Eric Leman.
Well said, Frank.
"A vigorous five-mile walk (or a vigorous 50 mile ride--my insert) will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world" Paul Dudley White.
I have loved this quote ever since I first read it in Med School.
Depression is a dangerous and real animal that lives around the edges of some people's lives and gnaws at their psyche like a rat. I know a lot of athletes that have it and when training, they liken it to "feeding the rat" which keeps the rat at bay.
Five years ago I was hit with my first ever episode of anxiety and man it fucked me up. I had never experienced anything like it. For me (now making this all about me, eh?), anxiety can be crippling and it was for a couple of years. But I learned that I could keep my "rat" at bay with the bike, as well.
Like you, I can still feel it around the edges and I am always trying to keep it fed but fear that it will come back full bore.
Glad to have you back and "keep on keeping on" because that is all that we can do sometimes.
When I saw the word writers' block, I immediately thought about riders' block. Which is what I am facing now. I do not like turbo in the cold garage nor the slippery and wet roads outside (oh, and it's freezing here too, maybe that plays a role as well). When in one of my first English tests, we had to conjugate "to write". I heard "to ride". So I wrote "to ride, rode, ridden" which was wrong but still correct.
Fortunately I have next week a 5 hour indoor spinning sponsor event after work, so look forward to be dead tired then. Only problem is these sessions go up to x%'s of HRM and I do not have a heart rate measure so am just gonne give it all.
Cheers Frank - sums up why I ride after work in the freezing cold, dark winter evenings. I know that the tingling in my face from the cold air just brings me back from the murk & makes me feel alive.
The black dog/dragon is always there but with a bike ride we can keep him at bay.
Good to see you back
Thanks for this Frank, keep on fighting the dark side! I was first diagnosed with depression 5 years ago, but it then became apparent that I had been suffering on and off since childhood. My medication helps, as does meditation and the love and support of the VMW but ultimately it is the bike that makes carrying on possible. In the summer (such as we have in Lincolnshire!) it is the sunshine and the deserted (if flat and potholed) roads that do the trick, this time of year it is the artificial pain cave of twice weekly spin classes. Not so much the man with the hammer as a blonde lady in lycra, but the effect is the same! VLVV