Racers gotta race.
My body thinks in kilometers. My mind only knows how to comprehend miles, and my bike computer certainly does too, but my body? It wants kilometers.
When we rode to Santa Cruz, there was one awful breaking point where I really thought we weren’t going to make it. Where I thought I wasn’t going to make it. I couldn’t imagine one more goddamn hill. We were 25 miles from the end of the ride. I took out my cell phone to call someone to pick me up because I was giving up. It didn’t get reception, so we were just going to have to ride until it did. We sat on the side of the road for a good ten minutes, being silent and staring at one another. “62 miles,” I said. “Huh. I just rode my first metric century.” And we got on the bikes, and we started spinning, and before we knew it we had completed our first 87 mile day.
I was standing in the middle of my friend Vince’s garage after the MS ride, still hurt and angry that I had only made it 125 miles out of our intended 155. “Hey, that’s 200K!” he exclaimed. “That’s awesome!”
I like Vince.
My body and I are starting to get along in new and different ways. In the last six months I’ve mainly struggled with my brain; my body gets me. I’m learning to push through pain, to breathe a little harder, to understand the difference between a real breaking point and just wanting to give up. I’m learning to scream and yell my way through it but keep moving the pedals. I am lighter and stronger than I’ve ever been in my life.
It’s a drug, this. It’s addictive. And it’s good. I don’t get those standard post-workout highs that everyone talks about. I’ve never completed a major bike ride and been euphoric about it; I’ve been sore and hurt and tired and that’s about it. But I can’t get it out of my head. All I can do is think of where I go next, of what I might be capable of.
“Capable” is one of the strongest words in the English language. “Having attributes required for performance or accomplishment.” I spent decades of my life feeling like anything physical was just not for me. I inherited my mother’s completely shot knees. I inherited the family’s midwestern hips and a little too much in all of the other areas, too. I don’t think I ever successfully ran a mile in grade school, preferring instead to not break a sweat and go inside to read a book. When I bought a bicycle at age 23, my friends and family thought I had lost my shit. Someone defined my urge to get on a bike as a “post-college crisis”, a fad that would pass once I accepted adulthood.
Can we be frank here? Fuck that. Everything about it. I made it to 23 years old feeling incapable, and now? Jesus, now everything’s just so possible. I’m unemployed, I have no money, I have exactly no reason to set an alarm or put my feet on the ground before noon, and I spend most of my time feeling like a superhero.
I wish I had known all this when I was younger. I wish I had any concept that I might be a late-20s athlete. I wonder what I would have said if someone told me at 15 that I was absolutely going to grow up into a person who rode their bicycle 125 miles in a weekend, that I would be a person who spent their afternoon looking at triathlons and scoping out climbing routes and rowing ten kilometers just to see how long it would take. I’m not even sure I believe it now.
This year has been manic. It continues to be so. I quit a job I loved to take a gamble on my own business; I was shocked when I didn’t turn out to be wildly successful. I registered for a bike ride and lost 25 pounds in the process. I started figuring out how to tell people I loved them and wanted them in my life. My best friend got married. I was employed, unemployed, employed too much, unemployed again. I acquired a legitimate San Francisco family and committed to loving this city with everything I’ve got.
The bad moments are awful. The good moments are great. Jen Rizzo, triathlete. It’s happening.
