Beyond And Back

My Gripe With Gravel

There was a point out there when I said to myself, I’m done with travel events. You’ve been there. You train for months, take time off work, spend more than you planned on last-minute tune-ups and accouterments, and you get to your destination with all the associated stress and sleep deprivation that goes along with all of the above. So, it’s no surprise that out on course the sun is beginning to set, you’re still hours from finishing, and just then and there—out in the abyss of some picturesque but absolutely alien landscape—you’re hit with the realization that you could be home, spending this lovely day with your family. Or your dog, or both.

You could be with beings that love you. Instead, you’re sucking down your last gel, hoping that’ll get you to the Finish before dark. And after dredging solo for several hours along a lonely unpaved road, seeing another human being would be nice.

It’s a wonder we do it—that it even seemed like a good idea in the first place. How alluring is the fantasy that we’ll finally break the sub-ten-hour threshold, even when we know it’s going to be another twelve-hour day? But hope is a powerful drug. It gets us out there, makes us train week after week, putting in the effort on our local routes, just for the chance of success on event day. Success, of course, is whatever we make it. Yet, how often does our ambition exceed us? How often do we fail to clear even our own low bar?

And yet we persist. Perhaps that’s because, once in a blue moon, the planets do align and we manage to meet that measure of success. And it inspires us, and we cast our lingering doubt aside (though never very far), and we imagine how great the next big event is going to be. Maybe this is my year for Unbound!

It’s not. If you’re not crushing your 100-miler, you’ve no chance at 200. But the fantasy is seductive. And it haunts us day and night, as we scour the Internet for the latest carbon do-dad that’ll make all the difference. But on this day, the one that finds you dozens of miles from anywhere, there is no illusion. There’s just the silence of the wilderness, interrupted by the gravel scattering beneath your tires and the metronomic whine of your bottom bracket. Maybe that knee-deep creek you crossed 40 miles ago had something to do with it.

You feel so stupid. This is fun? This is how you seek adventure? This is what fitness feels like? Well, it’s not your job, and it doesn’t qualify as a social event when you’re alone for ten hours—basically since the neutral roll out. Your family misses you, or at least you hope they do. Because, right now, you miss them more than ever. And it’s your fault: your fault you’re not at home; your fault you’re lonely; your fault you couldn’t keep up with the group, who might have at least kept your mind off of your failings as a spouse, a father, a dog parent and—clearly—a cyclist.

These are the moments that test you. The measure of your venerable mettle. But what do you do? Stop? Quit? Not out here you don’t. No, the only option is to push on (however slowly) to the destination you set out for early that morning, which ironically is the very place you started from. Now that you’ve flung yourself so far out, you have to get back, and no one’s going to do it for you.

Alone, out on the range, you have time to think. You learn things: you learn about your limits, you learn about your (lack of) ability to prepare, you learn about what’s important to you. In those moments, when you’re stripped down to your bare essence, when you’re at both your physical limit and your wits’ end, you either hold it together or completely fall apart.

It’s no longer about winning or achieving your goal or accomplishing literally anything. It’s about surviving, surviving the pain and the doubt that creep in with every bump in the road—the very pain and doubt that dissipate with each turn of the pedals. One after the other. Slow. Forward. Progress. But progress, nonetheless.

At the Finish, in the dark, you’re shaken from your delirium by an outburst of cheers from those who arrived hours before and are now elated to see you upright and alive. It’s the destination that seemed increasingly improbable, and just a short time earlier—absolutely impossible. And now it’s night, and the lights at the Finish line are blinding, the congratulations deafening, and the pats on your back excruciating. You just want to sit down, or lie down, or just be anywhere but on your bike. Then someone hands you a beer, and another brings you a chair, and you suddenly regret not being able to keep up with the group all day, because here they are. They’re happy to see you, and their joy is infectious. At this point, you can’t help but smile and laugh.

This actually feels good.

This is Bikes. Riding bikes is cycling, but Bikes is the people you ride with (even when they drop you). It’s the community who understands your stories of the day’s struggle, and intuitively gets what you learned out there. It’s the mountain across the valley that echoes what you say right back at you, and it’s the training you do for something that seems far beyond your capacity, but you do it anyway. It’s about learning and growing and sharing and pushing. And it’s what brings us back to the Start, year after year, to straddle our bikes and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with complete strangers we somehow know intuitively. We’re all there to outdo what we’ve done before. At least we convince ourselves that we will (even though we probably won’t).

That elusive goal—a targeted time, or average speed, or X distance—it always nags at us until we achieve it. And with every success, we just push the target farther out. But more than anything, what brings us back to events—especially the ones that require lots of planning and training and bike modifications and (of course) travel—is that feeling at the Start, when everyone is fresh and eager to go, and you know (you just know) that this time you did everything right. That this is your day to shine and smash all your records. And even, at the Finish, when you realize you’ve accomplished none of that, that same crew of adventure seekers is there again to remind you that you’ve achieved so much more. You’ve ridden your bike through Hell and back, endured a great deal more than you anticipated, and you’ve arrived.

In other words, you’ve won.

And even then, the pain still fresh and your lungs still heaving, you wonder what your family are doing and how long it’ll take to get home, and realize there’s nowhere else you’d rather be. Your mind replays the day—the choices, the mistakes, the luck, the mishaps, the joy, the pain. Every emotion you’ve ever known, coursing through you in the span of just twelve hours—an excruciating and exhilarating day. And as you try to convince yourself that it’s selfish, superfluous, and silly, you know that in the days to come, your inbox will ping to announce the next big event. One that’s longer, and even farther away. Which is to say, it makes even less sense than this one. So no, you’re not going. You’ve made up your mind. You’re done with this nonsense.

Until you go. Because with every passing day, the misery of the long and lonely road fades. And all those delusions of grandeur creep back in. These ideas infect you and condemn you to a rematch with the wilderness. And besides, it’s a really popular event and it fills up fast. So, when registration opens, your response is almost subconscious.

Click.

It’s really too bad dogs can’t walk themselves.

Miki Vuckovich is an age-group cyclocrosser and recipient of the DFL/RUFF Award at this year’s Mammoth Tuff event, an honor bestowed upon the rider who finishes dead fucking last.

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