This one is not about running. It's about feeling like you're going to break. Literally. That feeling that you are going to blow a gasket, crack a manifold, fall to pieces, go up in flames...
The picture above shows the last quarter mile of a brutal climb called App Gap in Vermont. This summer I biked it with my brother-in-law. It is the same road one would take to ski at Mad River Glen. At some points, it is beyond a 10% grade.
I have a standard high end road bike. A Seven titanium cycle. With Shimano Ultegra components. It is for all intents and purposes what pros would ride. There are no granny gears.
That day on the gap was without a doubt an pure experiment in pain acceptance. My breathing could not have been deeper or more involuntary. I was desperate for oxygen. My lungs felt like they were lunging out of my body. I felt like I was going to break. I felt that this is too much for a man my age. I worried, a couple of times, that I just might have a cardiac arrest. Every children's story about "I think I can" was set to repeat in my head. I almost cried. I did not stop. I hammered to the top. And then kept rolling down the other side, this time at 50mph while I recovered.
All mountain passes fuck with you. Mentally, physically, emotionally. They are latent with pain. And they are totally indifferent to your success or failure. They just don't give a shit.
You control the experiment. You control the pain. You control your acceptance.
What are your experiments in pain acceptance?
2 comments:
Weird how a camera never actually catches the magnitude of the climb and everything looks fore-shortened. What is in fact a steep mountain looks like a gentle hillock!
I've cycled all over Europe- in France, Spain and Italy and none of my photographs ever express the gradiants the way your legs feel them.
I've got the same gear set as you on my Specialized road bike and good as they are they drag like an anchor when your on a hill climb. Heat, wind, road surface all seem to drag you back.
I trained this year for the Etape -the 200+km stage of the Tour de France. 7 hours cycling every other weekend and shorter 30 mile sprints on the off weekends. After one training session 3 weeks before the event the team captain said we weren't ready and had to pull out. You feel faint coming down a hill in 30 degree heat at 50+mph and youre fucking toast he said. He was right, weren't ready. neither was 2/3rds of the rest of the competitors who tried it this year as they all got swept up by the "collectors" on the route!
Have you got a good website to plan your cycle routes?
I'm not too sure this is really about cycling, or running, or even anything athletic for that matter. I truly believe that all of this comes down to testing ourselves and pushing ourselves further than we thought we could go.
This has probably happened multiple times in athletics, but the most predominant instance I can think of came while working on the ranch. Summer days in Texas are consistantly above 100 degrees F. Work needs to be done. No matter how hot it is.
We had a grains silo that held corn. every so ofter the bottom would get caked with the residual corn that had built up over the yaer, gotten wet, and dried (if you understand how a silo works, you know what I mean). When it was time to be cleaned, it had to be done immediately or the silo was rendered useless.
One summer I spent 2 full days with a shovel, a bucket, and a ladder shoveling the dried corn from the silo. it was probably 120 - 130 degrees. There were times when I literally thought I was going to die. Not only was it hot, but it was back breaking work.
I could probably think of runs, workouts, or some other athletic indeavor to answer this question. However, when I think about fighting through agaony and pain, this is what comes to mind. And the feeling when it was all over was just as satisfying as any run I have ever been on.
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