CULTURE
Motivating as meeting your old form might be, the gap it reveals between then and now isn't always welcome, as Regroup writer Peter Harrington found when he met a shadow of his former self on the road.
WORDS & PHOTOS
Regroup
At the top of the climb, the road turned to sky. 17% straight down. No brakes to the bottom and a curve that could stand a good line, the momentum firing sensations like sparks from flint, and for a moment, I felt the flutter of form, the gulf between now, next and the promise of the past. Metrics and the memory of speed, it seems, are forever.
It’s cruel to get a glimpse of the rider up the road. All the more because you know what it will cost to catch up. Not money, but time. There are no shortcuts to finding form. Or, to use an unpalatable word: fitness. But that’s something for the runners. Riding a bike is neither exercise nor fitness. It’s riding, riding more to ride faster. Before that, merely ridden.
Bikes may have been different in the past, when there was more elasticity, when thinner steel tubes could compensate and give you a spring in your step and a feeling of speed. But a modern carbon or steel race bike provides no such quarter. Without a certain level of power to hustle it along, to wind it up and wring its neck, there’s nowhere to hide. It will suffer you and go through the motions, but you are not in control.
The wait, though, is the reward. To paraphrase the Ancient Greek poet Hesiod, “Long is the road and rough that leads to it; and at first it is hard, but when you reach the top, then it is easy, though hard.” And he didn’t have the benefit of energy gels or zesty bidons. But Hesiod knew an eternal truth: You pay your dues, but you pay yourself. And, it never gets easier, only faster. I just wish it took less miles. Putting in this much effort to go slow is slow torture.
After the fast turn, I came upon a switchback left. Close to, I could see it dropped away from the apex, and I knew I’d have to pull up or risk going wide into traffic. I braked late and deep and heard the tires squelch as they dug into the asphalt. Chancing a slip, I trailed the rear in, an old habit inherited from my dad, who raced cars and could slide a car on four wheels like you wouldn’t believe. But a bike has two wheels and the risk is terrible, not of the slide but the catch, when the tires inevitably grip against the grain and chuck you off. Almost to the apex, a car appeared and pulled up to the road I’d just departed. I caught the driver’s blank gaze and knew easing the angle was out. Then the cockpit lurched and I knew I’d forgotten the drop, and I held my breath as the turn wound faster and steeper. There was no way I could stay upright this tight. Except I wasn’t in form and I’d forgotten how much latitude a clean bike tire on a good grade will give you. I leaned, and they protested, but stuck like glue, holding the line and jacking my adrenaline. I rode the next rolling miles possessed—more flint for the fire.
Thinking about that turn reminds me of another thing my dad taught me: the benefit of looking ahead, not to the turn but beyond to the next. Trusting your peripheral and the power of your brain to see the short while you look to the long is not instinctive. It takes effort to raise your eyes, but when you do, you flow. Give the mind time, and it can handle anything the road or trail can throw at you. Hesiod probably had something to say about that. Every time I mess up on a corner, I take myself to task for not looking up. But the cockpit and the computer have a bad habit of catching your eye, and ditching a habit is even harder than riding into form.
Too soon, my ride comes to an end. My wife and kids are at home, waiting for me to return so we can start the day. Three good reasons I haven’t been riding as much as I should. I hand my bike computer to our littlest, who’s not yet two but is a whizz with buttons and starts her own ride and sends it to Strava before I can stop her. Still, it’s safer than giving her my camera.
The rest of the day is all to play for, but even now, not-so-fresh from a ride, I can’t wait to go again. There’s no other way to beat the rider ahead.
