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 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.

Pain. The bicycle is a pain machine.

I really didn’t know much about pain before I climbed back onto a bike in 2000 and started training for my first Pan-Mass Challenge. But the endurance athlete’s mantra of “no pain, no gain” quickly proved its verity beyond question.

It’s a strange thing: training. The whole idea is to push yourself, to stress your body so much that it triggers short-term adaptations to handle the ever-larger challenges you give it.

That is the proverbial house of pain where the athlete lives, learning to value, even to relish it. There’s a very real reason the training videos I spin to are marketed as “The Sufferfest”: riders come to identify pain with improvement.

Group rides are especially notorious, where everyone tries to push everyone else to work harder, go farther and faster. Tim Krabbé sums it up nicely in “The Rider”, his novelization of a typical bike race: “Pain, commonly seen in my circles as a signal to stop doing something, has ceased being that to me ever since [I bought my first bike].” I relate to that like some hard-won, hidden truth. And maybe it is.

From a Buddhist standpoint, I think the bike is a great place to practice with pain, to play with separating the physical experience of pain from the mental reaction that demands that we make it stop. Unless it kills you or does permanent damage, all pain is endurable. Every steep hill you climb, every time you take a pull at the front, every time you go long: those are all opportunities to see just how far you can push your pain threshold, as well as how long you can sustain it.

On my PMC rider page, I wrote, “On the road, riding 200 miles takes stamina, strength of will, and the ability to overcome pain. Those attributes are demanded in much greater quantities from cancer victims and their families.”

Cancer victims are suddenly thrust into this same arena of having to deal with pain, both physical and emotional. It’s something I wouldn’t wish upon anyone.

But in a strange parallel to the training cycle, going through the pain of cancer treatment can make an individual immensely strong, especially emotionally. If you’ve been through chemo, radiation, and a life-threatening disease, your sense of the scale of what you can endure increases exponentially, and the other little trials of daily life seem downright trivial in comparison.

In that sense, cancer is a crucible that teaches people the true value of life and every moment that comprises it. I’ve heard such stories again and again; I just wish that they didn’t come at such a terrible cost.

Yes, cycling can be painful. I have ridden over 26,000 miles, many of them at or near the limit of my endurance. I’ve biked 150 miles in a single 12-hour day in the saddle, climbed the slopes of Mt. Hood, pushed myself to reach 47 miles per hour, and done more hard and/or long training rides than I could count.

But I am truly in awe of the strength, stamina, and resistance to pain that cancer patients young and old demonstrate every day. The temporary “good pain” of cycling seems silly in comparison. Theirs is the true “Sufferfest”, and I can only do this one small thing to bring about a future where such heroics are no longer necessary.

My PMC mantra is this: Through this little pain, hopefully everyone will gain.