Statement

There are times when it’s not fun; times when you can’t feel your hands, your legs are screaming and you’re nowhere near finished. There are moments when saliva mixes with vomit and you try, try not to lose the wheel in front of you. Sometimes people ask me what I think about when I’m on the bike for that long and the truth is, I don’t know. I guess it depends. Most days you think about pain, you think about your heroes and imagine them tempering themselves in your current condition. You think about love, you think about the past, and indulge in the prospects of the future. Anything to take your mind away from the insufferable fatigue you are currently living in.

Sometimes though, even on the darkest of days, you look down and you think about how beautiful it is. So you shake out your hands to get the blood back in them, get back into the drops and back onto that fucking wheel. Your knuckles turn white as you choke the bar and let the suffering of the day continue to knock against you like waves. You keep your head down, lick your lips, and grit the dirt between your teeth as you attack just one more time, because when you think about this ride in ten years (and you will) you want to remember that you didn’t let the darkness win, if only for a moment.