Amnesia

Last fall I took the 'cross bike out for a traverse of the mountain. The road is rutted, covered in softball sized rocks, too steep up for my gearing, too steep down for my brakes. I get lost. The corporate sponsor finds a map and (via my cell phone) guides me in an appropriate direction. Four hours of torture later I arrive home and tell my wife that I don't need to do that ever again.

So what did I do yesterday? (Luckily there was still too much snow, so I turned around and rocked the 'cross bike on some singletrack instead).

Last night we took the monkey down to the school to ride his new bike. He's getting it down pretty well, but he hasn't quite figured out how to turn, and eventually he cuts it too tight and goes down, scraping his hands and bonking his helmeted head on the pavement. Not quite 30 seconds later, with tears still in his eyes, he's jumping back on and rolling again.

I don't know how many times I've been on a ride, or in a race, and wanted to cry, or get off my bike and lay down, or just throw the thing off a cliff. Riding hard hurts. Racing hurts. And the only way to do it well is to force yourself to suffer for hours on end, day after day. It never gets easier. No other sport requires the same kind of self-induced brutality.

And no matter how much it hurts, or how much skin you abandon on the pavement, you roll out again. I've never quite figured out if I simply can't remember how much it hurt, or if I'm too stupid to learn.

I think the only thing that's similar, and both better and worse, is having kids.