We are now in the final weeks of our training. I promised our PR man that I would contribute to our blog. I said that I would leave the writing of this article for after one great ride. So Sunday morning at around 60 kilometres I started considering how to tackle this article. Two titles came to mind. It was either ‘Key to the Highway' or ‘Refuge of the Roads'. I chose the latter as my riding colleague Tony Vella liked that title.
In a ten kilometre stretch I had decided what to write and how to write it. By the end of the training session (around 160km) I had forgotten all the mental points. The thoughts seemed to have been forged a century ago.
But such is long distance cycling and such is the experience of this great challenge. It's a challenge that does not start with our arrival in Turkey. It is a challenge which starts much before. It starts on the day you submit the application from. Everything changes. I had been looking forward to the possibility of cycling the way I used to in my student days - from dawn till dusk. Here I am, cycling those great distances again.
This takes me back five years back when I first flirted with the Lifecycle concept. A temptation which was pushed aside then. I happened to be proofreading a thesis for a friend of mine. One hell of a cyclist . It was at the end of his third Lifecycle challenge that Edward Mazzachano D'Amato decided to write his B.SC. Psychology thesis on the ‘lived experience of the life cycle challenge'. Before I started my brief I pondered on whether there was enough material to write a thesis on the subject matter. This is my third month of intensive training for the event, and I think I could write volumes.
Volumes: why?
This event (I can only speak about its training for now) has a lots of facets. Philanthropic, physical, emotional - a bit of all I guess. My contribution partly deals with the emotional and physical parts of it. I hope to tackle the philanthropic part of it in another contribution.
Even though my participation is at an early stage, so much can be written. This event changed the way I tackled things. Trying to keep up with the training, and remaining healthy is a struggle. But this is the trick of the event. Once you are determined to see it through then you start working towards achieving that goal. It is more than just cycling. Many of us have families and work. After a tough day we have to get to work. After work we have to train (that's my timetable). I for one do not like slackening in any aspect of my day. Recovery has to be done well and fast to ensure that we can focus in all other aspects of our life. But the change has been great.
It is a sacrifice, but it's a unique sensation to test one's limits, to reach and surpass them. What I realised is that what really seemed impossible to handle suddenly becomes possible.
There is no way to understand it. You have to be in it and to see it for yourself. Sometimes you are smashed after three days of tough non-stop training, a battered weekend, then you are recovering for one whole week tackling aches and pains from any corner of your body. Then suddenly you take refuge in the road again and things start getting into place. The volume of last weeks ride seems much less, what was though is not easier but is definitely lighter.
If one manages to get these attitudes and lessons reflected in everyday life the benefits are all the more evident. This event gives you courage. You take refuge in the road, then you've got the key to the high way!
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