Bike riding is all about suffering. I don’t care if you ride your bike slow, ride it fast, ride it long, ride it short (insert “that’s what she said” comments here). At one point or another anyone who has ridden a bike has suffered. But WHY?!?! For most of us this is just a hobby. Something that we are suppose to ENJOY! But we go out there day in and day out and ride our bikes and suffer. It downright hurts at times. No we are not getting paid for this so called HOBBY. In fact we take a huge loss. Time and money spent on equipment to make us go .0001 MPH faster, time tweaking our bikes to shift just right, time traveling to rides and races. And why do we do this you ask? It is so we can suffer! I wonder if I can make my hobby a tax write off? Hmmm than again maybe I don’t want to keep track of such an expenses. It might be depressing to see how much money I have spent only to realize that I still suck at riding a bike.
Recently there have been a few references to suffering on the bike. Bicycling magazine has a multi page article talking about suffering. Basically all I got out of this article is that suffering is in the mind. You can tell yourself it doesn’t hurt and you can go faster and harder. I call bullshit on that! Than again maybe I need some extra motivation … $$$$. Than maybe, just maybe I can suffer a bit more.
Recently during the USA Pro Challange. Garmin superhero DZ rode so hard that he puked! AND this was while he was still riding! Now that is suffering done right. His boss at the end of race had this to say about it …
“I knew that he’d just ridden so hard that he just threw up,” Vaughters said. “I mean good for him. That’s what I pay him for. He definitely put in a pretty solid effort the last couple of days. He’ll be tired tomorrow, there’s no doubt about that.”
Bottom line is that I guess we all like to suffer. We do it day and and day out. We work our “normal” office jobs, hurry home, change into our spandex, and out the door we go for a few hours of suffering. We come home and complain how hard it was, or how bad the ride was, or how we could of done this or that differently. We upload our Garmin data and analyze it, look at our numbers, see how bad we were suffering and see how bad we still suck at riding a bike. But you know what?….
I will be out there tomorrow doing it again!
Crossing the the yellow line. A way bad cool blog name,
but really Shirley, Sally or Sue. Let’s stop chewing the cud and get to
heart of the matter. Why must everything this day in age involve
suffering and analyzing and over anything. What happened to just doing something because one loves to do the activity. Yup the bike and being in the saddle is sheer pain, but sheer joy. Is it the rush, the burn, the pain ?!? Who knows who cares. Ya just gotta do it or you would not be who you are without doing it.
All the woulda, coulda BS sucks the joy and fun out right out of. Like pink says why so serious so raise up your glass..and get out the lube so its not so dry from behind. now that is suffering Shirley Sally or Sue
You have some valid points .. but … I think the woulda, coulda (minus the BS) adds to the fun and makes onesself (is that a word?) push themselves all that much more next time. And what kind of lube do you recommend? I find triflow works well for most circumstances but I do carry some KY in my race tool bag just in case I need something more heavy duty!
Yes ones self is a word according to the urban dictionary. Skipping the technical grammar BS is cool here since texting lingo has changed grammar and spelling dramatically. Ok, for sure can see the suffering use constructively to improve and push harder. Yes triflow is preferred choice here, but coconut oil for some instances and well other times just MacGuyver it with whats available. Pedal on Shirley Sally or Sue