#6. Looking for (sport) love, even when it hurts
Bicycling takes up half a triathlete's time, in Ironman events and in training itself. Could I re-learn how to ride and even more, learn to love it?
In December, I rode up and down hills to our island ferry, eyes slitted against the wintry cold. Out of breath on arrival, I checked the distance. Two miles. Was the computer working? Yes, it was.
This was just the start of my husband’s normal work commute. From here, he usually took the ferry and biked into the city of Nanaimo on the main shore, another twenty minutes, perhaps. He did this in the cold, in the dark, in the rain—usually while I was at home, warm, in bed. He did this without claiming he was “into cycling” or using a bike computer to check his speed. He certainly did this without signing up for a triathlon.
For the next five months, I’d be the “athlete” in the family, while perfectly aware that in these earliest weeks, at least, I was doing no more than my husband did all the time, simply to save on gas money.
And yet, he never teased me! Boarding the ferry, standing outside on the deck with my nose running, I tried to channel a similar kind of self-compassion. This was just the beginning. My bike skills were rusty. Most of all, I was nervous about riding in traffic. As I rode through the city of Nanaimo, heading south, with cars and trucks blowing past me, I kept thinking, I hate this. So far. Not the muscular work of cycling—on my indoor bike, I’d logged 14 hours since late October, feeling proud when I could stay on the bike for an hour at a time. But I didn’t like the act of steering an unfamiliar two-wheeled vehicle through the real world, with all of its dust, wind, and broken glass.
I was too unstable to risk leaning down and pulling my water bottle out of its cage while riding. I wasn’t sure whether I should brake by squeezing more on the right, the left, or both. I had even forgotten how to shift gears. It’s just like riding a bike. Ha!
Picking up speed on a downhill, my eyes bugged as I searched the narrow shoulder ahead for the rock, rut or piece of highway jetsam that would send me crashing. Still not liking this. Trying. Not liking. Damn it! Even when the cadence and difficulty level felt right, my bike complained, the gear system clicking and whirring. Then again, this bike hadn’t had a tune-up in…fifteen years?
That’s how much time had passed since I’d stopped cycling with any regularity. Aside from a brief Italian vacation during which we rented hybrid bikes and rode them slowly, I hadn’t attempted to pedal long or hard since my thirties. And it showed.
I watched the new cycling computer and sensor I had managed—with pride!—to attach to my bike. My maximum speed was 16 miles per hour. But my average told a different story: 9.2 miles per hour. How could I be moving that slowly?
These were not the speeds I remembered from my two brief dalliances with cycling, as a teenager and again, fifteen years ago. Of course, I was stopping at red lights and to consult a map. But that didn’t account for all of it. Meanwhile, a red smudge of sunset spread across the bleak winter horizon. I left the main highway to ride on a smaller road, but there was still too much traffic. A trucker, annoyed with my indecision, gestured at me. When I stopped on another road shoulder, I felt the eyes of commuters, probably wondering why I was in their way, without proper bike lights. Good question.
Even gloved, my fingers felt numb. Soon, it would be too dark to pedal. I’d hoped to make it to a cute small town where my husband was substitute teaching for the day. (When he works further away, he brings the car.)
I wasn’t going to make it that far. I’d have to pick some store along the highway and call him from there. This was fine—plan B—but I would have felt more triumphant if I’d made it to the cute town.
Six miles. On an admittedly cold, short winter day, that’s all I’d managed to do. From a big-box home improvement store called RONA, I texted Brian, and then spent forty minutes wandering the store, pretending to be interested in sinks and cupboards when I was really just trying to warm my fingers and face.
I’d done better on a couple of test rides on our island with less traffic and no stoplights. But the real question wasn’t how I would somehow manage to ride long distances on big roads in all kinds of weather. The question was whether I liked it—or even loved it.
“A deep love of cycling is fundamental for successful long-distance racing,” write Joe Friehl and Gordon Byrn in Going Long: Training for Triathlon’s Ultimate Challenge.
While open-water swimming is the sport that intimidates most novice triathletes, cycling is the activity that requires the most time. Most Ironmen, whether in the 70.3 or full 140.6 race, will spend half of their time on the bike, not just in the event, but in the training. Could I do that? Did I want to do that?
In the outdoor bicycle sessions that followed—back on my island, away from traffic, working on my basic bike-handling skills—I paid attention to my feelings.
I noticed those moments when I was enjoying a bit of downhill speed, or finding new pride as I shifted correctly, then stood up and pedaled hard, clearing the summit of a hill. My lungs burned and blazed in a way they rarely did when I was running—because I simply don’t run that fast. But on a bike, I could push hard. On the hills, I had to push hard.
At times, I settled in comfortably, gripping the hoods, gazing at the scenery—and suddenly remembered why I’d loved cycling as a late teen, when it was a form of both fitness and freedom.
Further back to childhood I went, when I liked pretending that my bike was a horse. I enjoyed trying to make it go faster, head tucked and knees squeezed, like a jockey in the Kentucky Derby.
Forward in time again, I remembered the three months I’d tried women’s bicycle racing in my early thirties, as a journalistic assignment—and how it had become much more than an assignment. How, during a difficult year, it had improved my fitness and my mental state—my entire outlook. I’d even written an essay about how a certain sprint race up a “killer hill” in our city had saved my life. I wouldn’t remember the essay at all, except for the fact that a cycling anthology editor had recently asked to reprint it.
Yet I’d given up this transformative activity, moving on to other easier, safer, more family-shareable pursuits, because that’s how life is. The strange thing wasn’t that I abandoned cycling. The strange thing was that I forgot what it had done for me.
All over again, now, I focused on relearning the basics and finding my confidence. Cycling could be harder in some ways than running, but in its best moments, it could also be more thrilling. I still didn’t like adrenaline most of the time. But for a few seconds, as I tucked tight, hands on the drops, barreling down a hill? Maybe a little.
In late February, fourteen weeks into my training and six weeks after my unimpressive, six-mile ride, I went with Brian, on a Saturday, to a rural area far from home.
Together, for over an hour, we rode a 16-mile loop: farms and deep woods and brief coastal views and big hills and a few higher-traffic stretches, but I was no longer afraid of the cars. This is my road, too. I’d bought proper cycling shoes that clicked into my clipless pedals—and yes, I’d already fallen once, unable to unclick the shoe from the pedal, but that was okay. It wouldn’t be the last time. My lower back ached from the hills, and the winter wind was cold, but the sun warmed my black tights. My fleece jacket was actually too warm.
“You’ll be okay?” I asked Brian back at our starting point, as we prepared to go our own ways. He had no desire or energy to ride any further. He was happy to hang out in the warm car, making phone calls.
I still respected him intensely for bike-commuting about forty minutes a day. But I no longer considered a forty-minute bike ride adequate. Now, it was just a warm-up.
I planned do the loop again—for a full 33 miles. It would take me over two-and-a-half hours, mesmerized at times by the light streaming through the trees and basking in the rare joy of a 40-degree winter day that didn’t feel cold as long as I was pedaling hard.
Riding solo, I’d go faster—because yes, now I could go just a little faster—watching my max speed on the descents inch past thirty miles per hour, then calling on my inner reserves to make it up the next hill, feeling my quads growing with the effort.
I did love it sometimes. Not every second. Maybe not forever. But long enough to train for a half-Ironman.