I've never suffered on a bicycle, like I did today.
It was like quitting smoking. All you want to do is walk down to the liquor store and buy a pack of cigarettes and light up, and each minute that you choose not to do that is a small victory. You know that it will not be like that always, but it feels like that anyway. You know that all your pain, all your feelings, they can be solved by just giving in.
All I wanted to do today was turn around. Each and every time a pedal came over the top, it was a victory. It was that bad. I was suffering that much. Each and every pedal stroke should have been the last. At any moment, I could've said, "you know, this road points down too." But I didn't, and I'm not going to lie and pretend that pride had nothing to do with that, because my riding partner, Albert, was already up ahead. And this was my idea in the first place.
But I made it, and it felt good. It felt good like not being able to remember when I smoked my last cigarette.
It's funny, I wrote this in the haze of a hot shower, muscle creams, tacos and beers that following my arrival home that day. The cigarette comparison came to me as I spun my way home alone from the meet point, about another 15 miles. But just now, a few days later, my memory is coming back to me.
ReplyDeleteAlbert had found a pack a cigarettes on the climb that were almost full. He commented on how you never find a pack with any left, and he almost wanted to grab them, just because.
Strange.
I should have picked them up. Half a pack of pristine cigarettes. Ah, but smoking is not good for climbing.
ReplyDelete