Into the Wind
I went for what should have been a gentle spin on my road bike this evening. All was going smoothly until I spotted two guys riding tempo a few hundred metres in front of me. The next hour or so was a bit of a blur, but it involved quads awash with lactic acid, hills climbed out of the saddle at several mph more than my usual training pace, white-knuckle 40mph descents, a max heart rate of 187bpm (!) and the exquisite, burning pain that only pushing a big gear into the wind can produce.
I came home utterly knackered but with my faith in this crazy sport renewed.
And then I found out that yet another of my bike-racing heroes, Tyler Hamilton, appears to have failed two doping tests.
'To be a cyclist is to be a student of pain….at cycling's core lies pain, hard and bitter as the pit inside a juicy peach. It doesn't matter if you're sprinting for an Olympic medal, a town sign, a trailhead, or the rest stop with the homemade brownies. If you never confront pain, you're missing the essence of the sport. Without pain, there's no adversity. Without adversity, no challenge. Without challenge, no improvement. No improvement, no sense of accomplishment and no deep-down joy. Might as well be playing Tiddly-Winks.'
Scott Martin
— Filed under Cycling