Meditations on the Art of Enjoying Obligations
I'm a nearly 44 year old rider with more race starts behind him than in front of him. For me the Holidays are about family, and my bike is how I get to work. This season my dad flew all the way to Virginia from California to be with our family of four, and my kids are still young enough to believe in Santa. When I pondered the idea of doing 500k that was what was in my face, I have to spend time with my family, and I didn't think I could commit about 20 hours to riding over that week. But riding is fun I thought, it will be a nice distraction. And I do want to line up in 2014 and the kilos couldn't hurt. Of course, once I took on the challenge it quickly started to feel like a job. I had to plan out what I had to do and when, and I did what many of us do when faced with fulfilling on commitments, I began to resist. This quickly got worse. I pulled 75k on the first day but found no time on Christmas as I spent it playing with the slot car set I bought for my nine year old boy. I'm used to doing about 225k a week, so this challenge was double my normal mileage, and I was already behind. I decided to be creative. On day three my dad was due at the airport at 4 p.m., and I had my father-in-law drop me off north of Dulles, on the bike trail, to knock out 50k. I got back well after dark with one of my feet frozen as it was in the 20s. The pressure of the obligation to ride, as I was behind on the distance curve/time left, grew and weighed on me. A ride out to Cyclelife in DC on day 4 to buy some booties and glove shells gave me some time to think. I was going to finish day four at 200k. Rain was forecast for one of the last days, and I began to resist the idea of completing the challenge very strongly. I was doing fine physically as I had been riding rather easily. I began to ponder what I was really resisting, and I noticed for the first time that I was relating to the challenge like it was a job, and that was sucking the joy out of something I love. I realized that in 2006, the last year I raced a full season, I had done the same thing, and that that was actually what made me quit. In the ensuing years though, I gained a lot of experience learning to love my obligations, because of my kids mainly. I do a lot of things I'm obligated to do for them with a great deal of joy, which was what made this Christmas so much fun. On my way home from the shop I figured this out, and shifted my focus on the challenge to loving it in that same way. The kilometers changed from dull to interesting. The next day I was getting ready to go pull 100k and my 5 year old daughter started begging me to ride with her. It was already 12:30 p.m. and I need all the daylight left to do my ride. So I put lights on my bike and spent an hour riding with her and playing at the playground, then went and had a great ride. On the way home I saw an owl. I saw a four point buck. A guy in a Colavita pro kit caught me and I rode with him for a bit, even pulled through. I've always loved the outdoors as the setting for riding and it was never more present than on this challenge. It was epic. I had more great experiences to finish the week. I rode in the rain on Sunday on my fixie, and enjoyed it very much. I rode to work and back on Monday and Tuesday, and made a friend, a fellow San Diego Chargers fan (what are the odds, in the DC area?). Shifting the focus to enjoying my obligations changed my experience from freezing in the dark, to the warmth of new friends, and the joy of discovery, both of my surroundings, and myself, my higher, truest self. Transcendence is what has always drawn me to cycling, and it was a true gift to receive that once again.
posted by Mark @ 4:29 PM
<< Home