Despite the angst in this post, I don’t give up easy. In fact, I’m doing another – albeit shorter – bike tour next weekend.
If you follow this blog, you might remember the post where I wondered whether I could possibly do a 55km weekend bike trip. What I didn’t know at the time is that the trip would’ve been 55km one way, meaning that I would have netted 110 km/68 mi in the saddle that weekend. That trip ended up not happening (thank goodness). Instead, some friends and I decided to bike the Lochside Trail on Vancouver Island from Sidney to Victoria and back again, a total of 66 km/41 mi.
It’s been a week since the trip and in that time I’ve been trying to write about the experience but haven’t really been able to. I’m not really sure I can find the words to describe what this ride meant to me, and how it’s changed my view of myself.
For the most part, I enjoyed myself. I’m still shocked that I managed to do a ride like this with absolutely no prior training and lived to tell about it. I think I deserve to feel proud of that, of pushing myself beyond what was comfortable or even sensible just so I could say “I did this amazing thing!”
But this ride… this ride was not easy. This ride was — pardon the expletive — fucking hard. That’s not something you read about on cycle chic blogs, or on many of the other bike blogs I follow.The bloggers I read rarely talk about how hard and frustrating riding can be sometimes, or about how, when you’ve reached your breaking point on the return trip, even the idea of pushing your 50 pound, fully kitted bike up yet another hill will make you break down and cry.
Nobody really talks about how, as a fat cyclist, being on a trip like this will dredge up every ounce of fat hatred you thought you’d successfully suppressed. I felt huge, I felt slow, I felt unfit, and I felt out of place. I was ashamed to ask people to wait for me to catch up because of how I was feeling about my body and my abilities (or lack thereof). It wasn’t until I lost sight of the rest of the pack once too often that I finally asked someone who had circled back to check on me to catch up with the rest of the group and ask them to slow their pace somewhat.
This ride certainly changed me, but I’m not certain that all of the changes were for the better. I learned where my limits were, and I learned that I could push past them, but I also learned that I still have a very, very long way to go before the chorus of self-hatred is silenced for good.
I’d very much like to do another ride like this again, but I think I’d like to do with a group of people whose fitness levels are closer to my own. I kept thinking that if I had a faster, lighter bike I would have been able to keep up with everyone else, but that’s just an excuse to talk myself out of going back to the gym and getting back into a fitness routine. *groan*
When I was younger, my mom would regularly tell me “Cecily, everybody ain’t able” whenever I’d start spouting judgmental nonsense about someone who had made different choices than my own. Deep inside I know that about myself. There will be some things in life that I just won’t be able to do, but something inside me keeps saying “You should be able to do this”, completely disregarding that — hello — I just did it. It might not have been easy, and sure as shooting wasn’t elegant, but I did it. That should be enough, that should give me the self-confidence I need to tackle another ride, maybe even a longer ride.
That hasn’t really happened. Instead, I’m sitting here thinking that even with a faster bike, I’ll never be able to keep up with other people, that I’ll never be able to make this look easy, that I’ll never, I’ll never, I’ll never… ad infinitum. This drumbeat of negativity, of ineptitude, this push toward perfection is making me want to give up, to discount all that I’ve done this year to make cycling a regular part of my every day life, and to pack my bike away in my basement for good.
And feeling like that breaks my heart.