of mind and body.

An interesting conversation has been taking place about competition between mattio through No One Line, and the curator of Velophoria, a very well written blog about bikes. The latter writes:

My worst self sometimes comes out in competition. I tend to become very “all or nothing,” and to take losing -- and winning -- much too personally. Which is why I’ve stayed away from racing so far. If I trained for racing, I would likely take the whole thing ridiculously seriously, all out of proportion to my low level of experience and talent. And all because I can’t stand to perform one iota less than my ultimate. And – to give the full confession -- because I hate losing more than I love winning.

To which M chimes in,

For me, competing is still me with-and-against my body, and "against other people" is just the context... I view it as being more about controlling/stewarding/applying my body. I also take consolation in combining two facts. One is that compared to nonriders that I know, I am in amazing shape. God-like. I can ride a bike all day, climb hills, and sprint a bicycle over 35mph. The other is that I am the weakest of sauces compared to professionals, who are freakish in their physiology and ability. In a spectrum that broad I simply must conclude that a victory of mine, no matter how well executed, is in a large part due to the random or at least haphazard combination of other riders present.

This conversation (to which my contribution has just been little practical advices of likewise little consequence) has started me thinking the question that so often becomes my mantra: Why do this?

When I graduated from school, I was still recovering from a bad bout of pneumonia that had followed me home one day. In the hospital, the doctors had said the X-ray looked like the lungs of a long time smoker (22 year old me who had never had a cigarette), and three months after being cured, I was still winded after running up a flight or two of stairs. I decided to take advantage of my youth and whip my lungs back into shape by force. I started running, which has always been a low-level hobby of mine, and I slowly became more and more enamored with the thought of a bicycle.

See, I grew up in urban New Jersey, where the main afterschool activity was bumming around on hardtail mountain bikes, starting trouble by stringing out across side streets to slow passing traffic, drag racing at slow speeds up the shoulders of highways, and using every kind of incline as every kind of jump.

Meanwhile, down in my grandfather's basement, and later in the stairwell of my apartment building, lived a thing of beauty: my father's mid-70's Bridgestone Kabuki. That bike was a thing of legend. If my father was Moses, it was his staff. If my father was King Arthur, that bike had been pulled from a stone. I knew every story: about how he had changed a flat tire at the starting line of the five-borough bike tour, about his tours up to Martha's Vineyard with my uncle John, drafting semi trucks the whole way... I knew about how he would drag race messengers in Central Park, and I knew that the proper name for 42 x 28 was "alpine gearing", before I knew there was a 42 or a 28. The bike exuded speed. As I grew, it began to fit me, and taking it our for a spin was like borrowing the keys to a Ford Mustang... It was scary and I wanted one.

So there I was, graduating, running on half a bank of cylinders, wanting a bike. Needing a bike. Fast on a bike was my birthright, was in my blood. And if I was going to make my lungs work again, what better way than a glowing, legendary machine that I couldn't resist? I started looking at modern bicycles, with their ergonomic drivetrains, exotic blends of material, thousands of gears and stealth fighter paint jobs. But then I found the perfect bike, a Raleigh just a few years younger than my Dad's Kabuki, exuding speed in all the same ways right down to the archaic shifters. This bike would do no work for me save amplify my legs and test my lungs. And I liked that about it. We became friends.

So how does this fit in? Well I started riding literally in competition with my own body. For-keeps style. And my first night out on the Raleigh, hammering away in the least graceful manner on a 52x13 top gear, I became so giddy with speed that I thought to myself, "well I simply must race." Competition was ancillary to the thrill of speed and the desire (in fact the need) to massively improve my body. I took my bike everywhere. Rode it to work, rode it out to play, rode it to gigs; I was slow, and my lungs felt like a limiter-screw turned too tight, but that was the point. Every day at the edge of my envelope was a day my envelope got larger. That was my only motivation. That and the pure joy of traveling at car-speed but still being able to hear, smell, taste the world around me. The only thing better than a convertible is a bike. I wanted to race, but only as a means of getting faster and healthier.

About six months later, I had a terrible breakup. Regular readers will know, my partner of many years left on a whim to marry someone else, and everything suddenly got very dark. In such a situation, everything either goes away or gets ugly. My riding got ugly. The man she left me for was (and I imagine still is) a triathlete, apparently a fairly successful one. Me, with the paper-thin frame and bum lungs, atop the 1979 steel clunker of a racing bicycle, I got ANGRY. I had a chip on my shoulder and something to prove. My legs were strong, my lungs were on their way, and I was going to train until I was razor sharp, and chase down everyone who could stand in as a proxy for that homewrecker. I, who had never seen my body as much more than a six-foot brain-stand, was going to become As Fast As Possible (all caps). It was silly. But the all or nothing instinct had been awakened.

In the course of a year, I gained about 20lbs of muscle, and got my lungs in what is most likely the best condition they've ever had. I started outrunning all of the casual cyclists I knew, and I started staying on the wheels of the racers I knew. I was fast. I was a good climber. I even got offered a spot on a team. But I was terrified to race, even when I finally did.

And it took reading the postings above to realize why... it wasn't about me and my body anymore. It wasn't about building and encouraging a holistic machine. The purity of it was gone, replaced by a drive to be the best, because I erroneously thought I had something to prove.

Malcom, and old racer and my bike-wrenching mentor once said to me something that an old guitar mentor once said to me: "It's supposed to be fun. If it's not fun, stop doing it, come back when it's fun again."

Racing is fun, last place or first.

I think I have a Criterium to register for.