IN THE (COMFORT) ZONE
One of the side effects of starting a life with your partner during his testosterone fueled teens/twenties is that you don’t realize that some key aspects of him may not be “just a phase”. While M isn’t exactly the Free Solo dude, he isn’t exactly NOT either. Certainly, his happy place involves a great deal of physical activity with an ample dash of thrill seeking. Add to this that M is an exceptional athlete, uber fit, highly coordinated, and completely fearless. I, on the other hand, am none of those things. This creates an ability gap (like, say, the Grand Canyon) between us that can make our shared leisure time, especially vacations, a bit tricky. For the decade or so before kids, our vacations were oriented around sport activities, at the time either skiing or windsurfing.[1] Now that the kids have left home, and we are no longer constructing travel around their interests & capabilities, we are once again embarking on adrenalin-oriented wanderlust. To ease the blow of our childless home, and because we never got the chance to travel when we were young, we are taking an “Empty Nesters’ Gap Year” (EN(er)GY). All of our EN(er)GY destinations revolve around sports that M is perfecting, and that I am trying to learn and/or play acting at.
And so it is that we find ourselves at one of the top road cycling destinations in the world. This place is a physical impossibility – no matter which direction you set out on you face an hour+ long ascent with grades in the double digits. This is a place where professionals come to train. The mountain is teeming with cyclists wearing team jerseys. Maybe one in fifty is even female. I have even seen pelotons with chase cars go by. These Tour de France-Olympian-Demi gods are not definitely my tribe. They are however M’s tribe, even when he is engaging in a sport that doesn’t even make his top five. As context, the last time we went to a cycling mecca, M rode to the top of the highest mountain on the Tour de France, an experience later described as being the equivalent of being punched in the stomach for two hours straight. I, meanwhile, went wine tasting. It is pertinent to this story that we both enjoyed our outings equally. Likewise, where M is bagging KOMs (King of the Mountain) on Strava, I mark an outing as a success if I complete 50% of a ride (road or MTB) without walking and give myself bonus points for not crying. Just the other day, M was waited on the side of a highway for a car to get a big head start, so it wouldn’t slow him down. I repeat: the car on the highway was going to slow him down.
It is in this world of marital disequilibrium, that I find myself sitting in a parking lot at an elevation of 1000+ meters. I am feeling car sick from the drive up a steep, tight road of switch backs, blind corners, and sheer drop offs. My stomach is also in a knot from dread because the plan is to cycle down the far side of the mountain (slightly slick from rain) for the express purpose of then grinding our way back up. This an imperfect plan for me for many reasons. I was able to tackle the first two days of biking because I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I simply followed M up. And up. And up. And up. Basically, he tricked me. But today we are starting from the top and the psychology is reversed. I am hyper aware of my deficiencies.
First, I am way outside of my physical comfort zone. My riding routes at home are artfully crafted to ensure that I will never encounter a single hill. My primary concern is lining up the perfect podcast to listen to. Some might call these leisure rides. I prefer the term “endurance conditioning”. While I am admittedly strong, I am not sure I can be described as fit. On the first few hill-climbs I did here quite a few of the cyclists (who passed me as though I were stationary) asked if I was okay. Never a good sign. I must have looked like I was about to have a heart attack. I probably was. Also, as I have noted before, I am incurably slow.[1] This is a case where the tortoise is MUCH slower than the Hare and isn’t going to be first across the finish line in any scenario. Clearly, Aesop didn’t know M. Or me. Given that I don’t even have proper cycling gear (everyone else is wearing unitards), it was easy to accept my reality as “other”.
I cried “uncle”: “I need an e-bike.”
It is the best thing ever. Outside of the giveaway whirling sound of the motor, the e-bike looks like a normal road bike and allows me to maintain the fiction that I could blithely keep pace with M. I cannot understate how miraculous the e-assist is for bridging the gap between us. Normally I only see M on the intermittent occasions where he waits for me to catch up, taking off the moment I arrive like we are doing legs of a relay. With the e-bike I was able to stay right on his tail, offering helpful unsolicited coaching, and, as an unforeseen draw back, finding myself in the “spit zone” where he would never expect me to be.[3][4]
The second issue is that I am also way outside my psychological comfort zone. The (blessed, blessed) e-bike only solves part of the problem because I am not only a tortoise, I am also a chicken. While a power assist can help me stay within line of sight of M on the way up, it does nothing to balance my wearing out the brakes on the way down. The problem is that when I am on a bike, I am playing a never-ending game of WHAT IF. Each wheel rotation comes with a continual checklist of possible hazards. A non-inclusive list of fears that are continually cycling (through my mind) while cycling:
I am scared of ice patches, wet patches, slippery leaf patches, loose gravel, baby heads, storm grates, potholes, and debris.
I am scared of falling off ledges and boardwalks, crashing into trees, falling onto sharp rocks, getting stopped cold by root walls and being blown over by the wind.
I am scared of being taken out by a car door, being pushed off the road by a car, going over the hood of a car, and (not surprisingly) being hit by a car.
I am scared off leash dogs, toddling toddlers, clueless tourists, bears on the trail, attacking Canada geese and being t-boned by deer.
Let me pause here a moment while you roll your eyes. Go ahead. I don’t blame you. In my defense, every one of these things has happened to me or someone I know, generally resulting in injuries. Now, I am all about facing one’s fears. I am basically a lesson in immersion therapy. I just choose to do so very cautiously, with lots of brake application, and occasionally pulling off the side of the road to let the build-up of frustrated cars go by. Or when mountain biking, resorting to Hike-a-Bike mode. I have no biking pride…which leads me to issues #3.
The third issue is that I really have no idea what I am doing. I am not only a tortoise and a chicken. I am ALSO a yeti.[5] With most of these activities, I am outside of comfort zone in parking lot. This is especially true of Mountain Biking. After two years learning to mountain bike, I counted up where I was at in my 10,000 hours…I hadn’t broken 50. M on the other has many thousands. Initially, I could only deal with a single trail consideration, be it roots, rocks, turns, hill, etc. Now I might be up to two at once. Progress, but given that any stretch of a MTB trail usually has between 10 and seemingly 100 things in the mix that could trip me up at any given moment, I still have a long way to go.
Which begs the question…why do it?
SUCH a good question!
I have asked myself that very question many, many, many times.
Certainly 50 is a highly questionable time to take up a new sport that isn’t golf or pickleball. At one point, while mountain biking on a downhill flow trail I had no business being on, I tried to take a video to show our girls what my version of a mid-life crisis looks like. Maybe that’s what’s going on here – but I don’t buy it. It is also certainly a factor that M lives to bike (and ski and surf), and I rather prefer a world where we get to spend time together. But that is more of a side benefit than a motivating factor. I have given this a lot of thought (especially while I am pushing an oversized mountain bike through the woods). There are many answers that to the apparent insanity:
It is FUN. Truly. At this stage of our lives if something isn’t fun or contributes positively to the world, we are unlikely to voluntarily do it.
I like learning new things (and I hear from those science people that it helps keep you young).
I want/need to be outdoors as much as possible.
But mostly, I want to follow the life lessons I try to impart to the girls. Leading by example and walking the talk and all that. I was asked the other day what my number one piece of advice for the girls has been. In response I put my hand in the air: Participate in life. Say yes to the opportunities and experiences life sends your way.[6]
I am also showing them that it is okay to be a work in progress, and to value improving at improving. This view has application in all aspects of life.
Especially, if you are me, on a bike.
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[1] Vacation destinations were selected based on hurricane season (as in hurricanes are a PLUS) and the existence of a Neil Pride rental outlet.
[2] See Frequent Flier.
[3] Now I just need some e-shoes.
[4] If we hadn’t gotten the e-bike, we may have had to resort to a bungee system. Like a group ride on Zwift, but IRL, or like we are a toddler and parent in Quebec. I asked M at one point if we should get matching jerseys. He said, “not going to happen”. I figured the tandem bike option was probably a “no”.
[5] See Life as a Yeti.
[6] See Unsolicited Advice.