Orny's Cycling Journal

In March, when I was in Kuala Lumpur (heheh!) I scoped out a local bookstore’s manga, Buddhism, and cycling sections. In the latter, I discovered the intriguingly-titled “Into the Suffersphere: Cycling and the Art of Pain”. Which I set aside because it was pricey in Malaysian ringits. However, I later requested it from Amazon.

The book covers three predominant topics. The first is professional bike racing and cycling culture. The second—which derives from cycling—is suffering: its manifestation and methods of coping, and the doping that pervades the sport. That gives way to the third topic: the philosophical relationship between man and his suffering, seen through the lens of (of all things) Theravada Buddhism.

You might think “Orny, this is the perfect book for you!” And to some degree you’re right, although I’ve long since become disgusted and given up following the perpetual circus of lying and cheating that calls itself “competitive cycling”. So the book gets a cool review from me in that respect.

Then there’s the theme, or lack thereof. Taken one way, the book is a series of anecdotes and observations related to those three main topics; however, it never supplies the reader with an overall thesis, argument, or conclusion. OTOH, from a less goal-oriented point of view, it’s a wildly eclectic and engaging jaunt through a storehouse of seemingly random and improbable connections and associations.

The only way I can communicate this breadth is by listing out some of the people the author cites and things he refers to. I’ll start with the most pertinent to the topic, and proceed to the more eclectic.

Addressing cycling, the author references the Strava social network whose name is the Swedish word for “striving”, and its infamous Suffer Score metric (which was recently replaced by the completely useless “Relative Effort”, as I mentioned toward the end of my previous blogpost). He mentions Team Sky’s focus on “marginal gains” and Chris Froome’s perpetual glassy-eyed stare at the power data on his bike computer. He mentions Graeme Obree’s singleminded attempts at the hour record, and Jens Voigt’s famous “Shut up legs!” quote. Cycling’s most infamous drug busts, including Operacion Puerto. Tim Krabbe’s semi-autobiographical novel “The Rider”, and a short piece by Alfred Jarry with the stunning title: “The Crucifixion Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race”. Consideration is given to concepts as contemporary as MAMILs and “The Rules” according to the ludicrously pretentious Velominati.

In terms of Buddhism, the author’s knowledge is broad and detailed, but that’s not surprising given that he is a longtime resident of Chiang Mai, Thailand. He describes the phenomenon of “monkey mind” and the modern preoccupation with mindfulness, from Thich Nhat Hanh to Jon Kabat-Zinn’s completely secular MBSR. He mentions Theravada, dhamma, the Four Divine Messengers, the Middle Way, the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, Right Effort and Right Concentration, dukkha and sukha, the Wheel of the Dharma, samsara and nirvana, jhana, impermanence, non-attachment, and the Buddha’s final instruction upon his parinirvana to strive diligently.

Moving gradually further afield, he cites several philosophers, ranging from Nietzsche to John Stuart Mill, the Dalai Lama, Malcolm Gladwell, the Roman stoics, Alan Watts, Karl Marx, Albert Camus, Terry Pratchett, and the Black Knight’s “It’s only a scratch” sketch from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Also of interest to me were his geographical references, which included his homeland of Thailand, Malaysia’s Tour de Langkawi race, Cambodia, Phuket, Singapore, and the classic Thai phrases “farang” and “mai ben rai”.

Being an English expat, he must also enjoy his football, because he also references superstar Lionel Messi and makes fun of the soccer world’s most infamous ear-biting racist asshole, Luis Suarez.

In terms of random tidbits that struck a chord with me, he uses “klicks” as shorthand for “kilometers”. Mentions “postural hypotension”: fainting upon getting up too fast. Finds women in yoga pants a distraction from meditation. As a jew, he goes to great lengths to relate how uncommon cycling is amongst his tribe. And he rails a bit against society’s ridicule of anything undertaken by middle-aged men (I’ll have more to say about that soon in a post on my main blog).

As you can see, he covers an awful lot of ground, and much of it does resonate with me. I guess I’d be more enthusiastic about it if I didn’t take pervasive doping in sport as seriously as I do; instead, focusing on something I find so pathetic evokes a sense of depression in me.

Still, it’s an entertaining read and a good enough book overall. For most people, it’d be better to request from a library than purchase outright… but few libraries will stock something this specialized and esoteric.

While there’s a lot more that the author could have said about it, I’m glad to see anything that covers the interface between cycling, suffering, and philosophy (and specifically Buddhism).

This is the time of year when cyclists go batshit crazy. When you’ve been locked indoors for five months since your last decent ride and realize that—despite the piles of snow on the ground—your first century of the year is less than 12 weeks away.

In the summer, when long, beautiful rides are plentiful, it’s harder to see, but during the endless New England winters, the parallels between cycling and addiction are painfully obvious.

For me, the symptoms of withdrawal start benignly enough, with occasional visits to ride websites to find the dates of next year’s events. The only clues that something might be out of place are that these visits begin in November, they’re compulsive and increasingly frequent, and they’re followed by angry outbursts when I learn that the new dates *still* haven’t been published yet!!! How am I supposed to make meticulous detailed plans with my buddies if they don’t publish the dates, even though the rides might still be ten months away!?!?

My other symptom is a desperate quest for a substitute for my regular cycling fix. However, as every cyclist knows, the bliss of a long ride has to be experienced directly; it’s not something you can capture in written or spoken words.

Yet trapped indoors by the ice and snow, that’s the best substitute I can think of. So I spend long hours online, trying to find a blog or writer who has been able to distill and eloquently communicate the essence of the ride.

But it’s a futile search that always ends in disappointment; there is simply no substitute for the fusion of man and machine, feeling the wind of one’s passage, and the sense of gliding through life’s amazing skies, rivers, woods, and mountains.

As the cruel weeks and months pass, the quest becomes ever more desperate.

You anxiously await the arrival of your monthly cycling magazines, but many of them also go into hibernation, at best printing a single combined January/February issue at the point when hope is most desperately needed.

You start looking over old YouTube videos of you and your buddies’ rides. Even the really horrible, low-res ones from 2005.

Then you start doing really crazy things, like digging one of your favorite cycling caps out of the closet and wearing it around the house in vain. If you’re lucky, you have enough shame to prevent you from wearing it outside the house…

Or watching cycling-related anime series. For those of you who find yourselves in such desperate straits, there’s Over Drive and Yowamushi Pedal.

And your legs start getting really itchy. That might be because they haven’t been used since September, or it might be because you haven’t shaved them since then. You now have regular-Joe leg hair, and you have to really look to find last year’s tan lines. Is February too early to start shaving them again?

And then comes the final, humiliating, ultimate admission of your addiction: you find yourself thinking longingly about working out on the indoor trainer.

Heaven forbid any of us should ever reach such abject depths of despair!

This time of year, five weeks before my annual PMC ride, my reading habits usually turn to cycling titles. Many deal with training, technique, and nutrition—more on that in a subsequent post—but a few address the indescribable essential nature of cycling. Paul Fournel’s “Need for the Bike” and Tim Krabbé’s “The Rider” are two outstanding, enduring classics of that genre. There aren’t many others.

So I was very excited to come across a book called “Open Your Heart with Bicycling” at the BPL the other day. The volume was subtitled “Mastering Life through Love of the Road”, and a pull quote offered the definition, “To become aware of the inspiration that a sport or hobby, such as bicycling, brings to your entire life”. The back cover talked about the author’s years as a Benedictine monk and further time spent at a Buddhist college.

With that kind of a lead-in, I suspected I’d found another example of that rare breed of book that manages to capture that essential experience of cycling, full of the elusive insights that are almost impossible to relate to anyone but another cyclist.

I was misled. “Open Your Heart” would be more appropriately named, “A Very Basic Beginners Overview of Cycling”. It’s really a book for the neophyte, save for the nonsequitorial chapter on how to open your own bike shop. Sadly, there’s more philosophy in a single chapter of Fournel or Krabbé than can be found in the entirety of “Open Your Heart”.

So why am I writing about it? Well, there are three points I want to make/save/share from the exercise.

The first is confirmation of my theory that the “runner’s high” is extreme glycogen depletion and the resulting impaired brain function. I first articulated this idea six years ago in this post on my regular blog. Here’s the relevant quote from OYHwB (bolds are mine):

I have to eat; there is no question that I must eat after a long ride. […] I am perfectly content eating alone, particularly when my blood sugar is low as a result of very strenuous exercise. I am a grouch when I have not eaten properly. I eat what is necessary to stabilize and improve my disposition and only then am I allowed to be with other people! I have made more verbal blunders in this condition than I have ever made while drinking.

I think that illustrates my point very nicely.

The second item of note is the one bit of philosophy that I was able to glean from the book. It derives from the following passage:

But that’s how my real spiritual journey begins: with a world-class bicycle, a dream, and the haunting realization that no matter what the hucksters on television say, not every dream comes true. You can’t have it all, but you *can* have what you truly desire. I needed to learn this lesson, and I discovered the simpler pursuits like cycling gave me exactly what I desired. Not achieving boyhood dreams has been the least of my worries, and the joy that I experience on a daily basis began when I understood that as a young adult.

While the author doesn’t say it, he’s dancing around an interesting truth: that real happiness doesn’t come from fleeting experiences, but from simple things that one can derive joy from every day of one’s life. That could be something simple that is available every day, such as enjoying the sun in a clear blue sky, or the wind in the trees, or one’s favorite companions, or it could be satisfaction derived from a memory one can always revisit, such as helping a friend or donating time or money to humanitarian causes. But the idea is to base one’s sense of joy on things that aren’t transient, that don’t need to be reinforced every few days, weeks, or months.

Finally, the book caused me to reflect on what happens during a long ride. If you asked me what my mind was up to during those six- or eight-hour jaunts, I’d have to admit that it’s not doing much! While some of it might be off pondering things, most of the time I’m fully occupied making the moment-by-moment observations and actions that are required to operate a bike on a public way.

In that sense, it’s very zen: there is no “me” there, there’s just the riding: when riding, just ride. It’s a time when the joys and demands of the road supersede the usual preoccupation with one’s personal storyline; for a while, you forget yourself. Which thought, in turn, got me thinking about a famous passage from Sōtō Zen founder Master Dōgen’s “Genjōkōan”:

To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things of the universe. To be enlightened by all things of the universe is to cast off the body and mind of the self as well as those of others. Even the traces of enlightenment are wiped out, and life with traceless enlightenment goes on forever and ever.

Such is the ride.

When people effuse about cycling, one of the things they mention quite often is the pace. While drivers careen through towns and view the space between destinations as little more than time spent “in-between”, cyclists have the time and leisure to fully appreciate the landscape they pass through.

While drivers stay safely isolated within their steel and glass cages as they fight one another for space on their main roads, cyclists eschew the automobile’s grey strip mall hell, often finding hidden gems that the rest of the world has passed by.

For the cyclist, the journey is a rare opportunity to spend precious time fully immersed in the natural environment. How many of the drivers who passed me last week registered the lilac-saturated sweetness of the air their sealed contraptions sped through?

One could of course walk, but it’s difficult to cover very much ground at a walking pace, and the scenery doesn’t change very much for the pedestrian. A runner’s pace would be better, but it’s arduous to maintain for any length of time. Yes, the pace of a cyclist seems about right.

Perhaps for me some of that has to do with my hobby as a writer. Whether I’m writing fiction or a travelogue, I try to immerse my reader in the sensory experience of a setting. That requires spending enough time there to not just observe a place, but also to contemplate and ruminate on it, as well, to activate the imagination.

At the same time, too much description and not enough action bogs a story down, so after one has built up an image of a place in the reader’s mind, it’s important to show what happens there and then move on to the next setting. In both fiction and travel writing, there’s a natural rhythm and sense of movement.

I enjoy that same sensation of rhythm and movement on the bike. As I pass any given landmark, I have the time to see its details, hear its sounds, and smell its smells. Enough time to build a vivid, lasting, multidimensional image of it in my mind, then the next scene comes into view. The bicycle permits an ongoing, dynamic collaboration between the world and the appreciative cyclist that would be difficult to achieve in any other way.

It is life unfolding and revealing its splendor, as the road unwinds itself effortlessly mile after mile. It is—if you can excuse the cliche—poetry in motion. Which is a perfect segue for my closing quotation.

He might well have been talking about a bike ride when one wise old man wrote:

Congratulations! Today is your day.
You’re off to great places! You’re off and away!

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.

You’re on your own, and you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

You’ll look up and down streets. Look ’em over with care.
About some you will say, “I don’t choose to go there.”

With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet,
You’re too smart to go down any not-so-good street.

And you may not find any you’ll want to go down.
In that case, of course, you’ll head straight out of town.

It’s opener there
In the wide open air.

Out there things can happen and frequently do
To people as brainy and footsy as you.

And when things start to happen, don’t worry, don’t stew.
Just go right along. You’ll start happening too.

OH! THE PLACES YOU’LL GO!

I was laid off on Wednesday the 17th. On Thursday the 18th I had my first bike ride in two months. The weather was nice, although I had to root around to find my cold-weather gear.

Good thing I did, too, because the next day it snowed all day long, the first real snowstorm of the year piling up nine inches of white stuff. While all my riding buddies were at work, I of course was out in the snow on the hybrid. I went when there were about 3-4 inches on the ground, and the riding was fine. Well, except for the return trip going right into 20 mph driven snow…

Although I may have more time to ride through the winter now that I’m unemployed, I have also recently borrowed a resistance trainer from one of my buddies. I haven’t gone very “far” on it as yet, so more details to follow. But so far it seems like it might give me a bit of a training advantage this spring.

I’m nearly done reading Jamie Smith’s new book “Roadie: The Misunderstood World of a Bike Racer”. Despite my complete distaste for the pro cycling circuit (mostly due to perpetual doping scandals), I found it an entertaining read. I’ll also be using notes I took from it as the basis for next year’s Pan-Mass Challenge ride report, since it makes a number of good observations that would help explain cycling events to non-cyclists.

This year’s Pan-Mass Challenge yearbook is now available online. As always, it’s a good read. Also, this year my name appears twice: once as a $11,000-level fundraiser, and once for contributing over $2,000 myself. The latter was the result of my charitable match challenge to my (now former) employer. Check the yearbook out here.

Finally, registration for next year’s PMC ride opens a week from now for alumni Heavy Hitters, a week later for alumni, and a week after that for all riders. If you’re thinking about riding, now’s the time to firm up that decision.