The Dance of Endurance
As the sun sets behind Twin Peaks, I carry my bike up the stairs, my legs jelly and aching after more than 200 kilometres (126.65 miles). Collapse is imminent, and I welcome it, sinking into the couch, enjoying the familiar company of joyful pain. The last time I rode this hard was in 2023. Since then, I’ve stayed on familiar roads—honing skills, losing them to injuries, and reconnecting on San Francisco streets. Returning to this level felt like homecoming, a palimpsest of my past rides.
For years, I have chased these wild flashes of joy. On the well-trodden routes, pelotons sweep by in a blur of color and camaraderie—waves, nods, quick hellos, all part of a rolling celebration. But as I push further north, the world grows quieter and lonelier. There are no bike shops to bail me out, not even a tree to cast a sliver of shade. Every twenty minutes, a car appears and vanishes in a heartbeat, leaving only the hush of the empty road. The cyclists out here are a rare breed, drawn to the long, grinding challenge. Speed is not the prize; Out here, it is all about the journey — slow, relentless, and deeply enduring.
The Why
On a Saturday after a long, hard week, nothing tops waking up early and riding hard. It’s a meditative experience, bringing deep solitude to a frenzied mind. The warm embrace of the mountain I am trying to conquer offers a unique mental space that seems to open up only after going the distance. Despite the challenge, this state comes naturally – a flow state is reached.
A natural breakdown of the ride into milestones of climbs and checkpoints aligns very well with my affinity to plan everything to the dot. Rarely do the rides go according to plan. The flow state then begets patience and a mindset to look at the next climb and only think of that segment. Okay, I got this one small climb. Done… ooh boy, the next one’s hard with 8% gradient. Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream… yep. Done.
These rides offer plenty of opportunities to persist and to embrace discomfort. It’s not a race; there’s no reward waiting at the end of it. What matters is enduring it all—the blazing sun, the stubborn mountains, the endless flats. The journey itself is the only prize.
Mind breaks before the body
But beneath this meditative flow lies the real battle: not against the body, but against the mind. With every step forward, as the heat slaps you in the face, I find the going tough. The mind withers at the thought of having to do yet another climb. Gosh, why couldn’t they bore a tunnel here? Why are the roads designed for cars and not road bikes? (I laugh incredulously at my own silliness.) 50+ miles in, the body is less fresh. The breathing is heavy. The mind starts looking for shortcuts to end this onslaught. Every baby hill becomes taxing. The smiles of hikers are unbecoming (how dare they!). The speeding cars are annoying, and the tiny bumps on the road are like a torture chamber. The mind has suddenly returned to its infancy state - in its most primitive form - being a baby.
When overcast skies press down on lonely climbs in the middle of nowhere, unease quickens its pace. The world drains of color and motion, save for the steady spin of my wheels, and a sharper awareness flickers to life. My inner child stirs, desperate to flee. In these moments, my mind shatters like a glass door caught in a sudden gust.
Over the years, I have learned to shatter the iron chains of doubt. I speak out loud: I can do it. I have been here before. I can conquer this. Hearing my own voice cuts through the runaway train of thoughts threatening to derail me.
There are days though when nothing feels enough. The train has crashed. The going feels impossible. On one of those days in the past, I was ready to abandon and hitchhike. A fellow rider gave me company for the last 40+ miles of the ride. We conversed about living in the city (again, a welcome distraction from the ride). I matched their slow and steady pace, brought my heart rate down, and pushed mile by mile to conquer my mental birdcage.
The Joy of Discovery
The kickstart to my rides was discovering places I would not see otherwise - backroads, valleys, and coastlines - at a much slower pace compared to cars. I am in my element, soaking in everything that these places have to offer. In the rhythmic movement of the pedaling, I lose myself on rolling hills and winding roads, utterly entranced.
On a recent ride through Chileno Valley Road, the summer heat was incredibly unforgiving. The 10-mile ride in hot headwinds and sun-baked asphalt with barely a tree for shade felt nothing like a torture chamber, though. I was in the present, discovering these new lands - the black, brown cows grazing in the meadows, the dairy and cheese farms with their rustic entrance signs, the quintessential wooden fences meandering along the road, the horses running in square paddocks - exhilarating joy to witness all of it in slow motion.
The Unexpected Gift
The sunrise starts, the coffee stops, and the water refill stations along the way, post-ride feasts - these little rituals born out of necessity have made my rides so much more meaningful. I carry wild memories of plans going awry, riding in the dark, witnessing changing seasons on the same routes, eating dirt on sharp descents, being one with the fog, taking risks on long, fun descents - all a grand adventure.
So, jelly legs and a heart on a workout - why does anyone willingly push themself for hours on the bike? I think I am ready for another adventure - it is the simplest answer from each one of my rides. As the sun sets and I collapse, weak, but smiling, I know: this isn’t escape. It’s arrival. And it’s a joy worth chasing.
