A Dance to the Shuffle Gods

Today was a sunny winter’s day. The air was crisp yet inviting and the ground was dry enough to bring out the slick wheeler. Following a freak bout of overtraining, Coach has set me a recovery plan to follow. Today is an hour’s spin on the road bike. Perfect.

I dragged my shoes out of the cupboard still baring the scars and mud ornaments from the last mtb ride. They look out of place on the road bike (I pictured angry roadies chasing me down the streets with pitch forks) so I cover them up with some wind-stopping booties. I suspected the air would be a little crisper once cycling anyway, so these tackled two issues in one. I brushed the single-track dust off my helmet, popped it on over the iPod headphones and ear-warmers and headed off on my journey.

As the training was a leisurely jaunt for an hour, I decided that an “out and back” route would suffice and that the iPod Shuffle Gods could decide the theme tunes to said route. Spinning through the town centre on a busy Saturday always gives me a little thrillat the start of a ride – just the sight of angry drivers lined up doing 2pmh while I blitz through makes me smile. The iPod skips to something serene like Air and I find myself spinning towards a more picturesque scene in the distance. Heading towards countryside usually gives you quiet roads, and today I certainly found that. I had to keep checking behind me to see if there was a queue of traffic forming because hardly any had passed.

Twenty minutes in and I’m swooping through country roads with the sun on my back and birds darting in and out of the bushes alongside me as if they wanted to play. I chase them down a little, but not enough to raise my breathing. The trees are bare, but look warm in their fields against a blue sky and dimming light. The afternoon is fading and I realize I might be honoured to roll though my home street as the sun is setting behind a cloud. I try to imagine the colours.

Thirty minutes pass and it’s time to turn around at the next junction and head home. The iPod Gods realize this and shuffle one of my favourite “going out songs” on, and everything suddenly feels very up-beat. The street is quite so I steer the bike from left to right as if I was warming up for a formula one race, and the next thing I know I’m bike dancing and singing aloud in a strange village. Folk will talk, so I tone it down to a hum.

Fifty minutes later and the iPod Gods are well and truly on a roll with their choices. I wonder if it will find that Smiths album and ruin everything, but it doesn’t. I’m close to hone now and light is fading. Recalling the sunsets I had imagined I turn my final corner and glance at the delights in the sky – ah, gold. I hadn’t thought of that colour. Two minutes to home and Closing Time by Semisonic comes on as if were in a quirky romcom that has to have a song to match every eventually, mine being the end of the ride, but in a cheesy way it was just right; the victory song for the end of a perfect ride. I dismount and stretch out in the golden sun, close my eyes and thank the Shuffle Gods for a wonderful playlist. I’m not sure what dance I did to deserve it, but here’s hoping our relationship will prosper.

Happy Zen Year Everybody!

So Christmas is over and I don’t know about you, but it’s left a stale taste of mince pies and assorted chocolates in my mouth. Training dipped due to lack of routine and my waist resembles the mass of turkeys I’ve been eating for the last month. Multiple families to visit across the country meant I ate multiple roast dinners like I was in some kind of national eating competition. Still, I should be grateful my intake of vegetables has increase, even if 60% of those were brussel sprouts. I should also be grateful I managed to resist the urge to grapple at spirits like a teenager at their first house party. If you meet my mother and see that her idea of a good Christmas breakfast starts with a shot of Pernot with a Baileys chaser, you’ll understand this analogy.

I jest really, it’s not all bad. Driving home from the other side of the country on “January Sale Day” wasn’t my best idea, but the lengthy queues ahead did get me thinking about the races to come. The lines of cars slotting together like a giant game of Tetris reminded me of those familiar mass starts. The blocks of cyclists squeezing into every inch of space at the start line like their life depended on it. Focusing on the middle distance like an angry Next catalogue model. Best foot forward, slight tension in the arms from fear and excitement, and a brain drastically trying to throw images of a group crash on the start line out the head like a stubborn captain with a bucket and a sinking ship. She’s developed some calf muscles since the last race, has she been training more than me? That’s a new bike, is it going to slingshot her up the hills past me? She has nice new shoes, are they going to make her faster? As you can see, I haven’t quite mastered the art of achieving perfect start line arousal yet, but I’m working on it.

The rigid suspension on my classic Mini bumps over a pothole and my memory skips to a sunny summer race back in my days of attending local XC races in the Sport category. A time when I knew I was in with a good chance of picking up a medal. No matter how many bad thoughts crossed my mind as I rolled up to the start, something funny happened when that final call was made; “the gun will go off in the next 30 seconds” someone will shout, and everything goes quite. My ears feel like they’ve been muffled by cotton wool and my eyes are blinkered to the red and white taped up trail ahead. Then, bang! Or sometimes, hoot! And as if by magic my mind is reset. No thoughts cross my mind except for what’s coming up and what my body is doing. Trees fly past my face like a dog digging up the garden looking for his bone. The bike rolls over roots and rock like a boat on water. Everything feels fluid and natural. The racer in front of me is matching my speed, but I can hear them panting a lot harder. Every corner has me closer and closer to their wheel until I see that straight open bit of single-track ahead. In seconds she to my left, then before I can think, she’s behind me and I’m making progress through the winding trees. Past experience tells me that that racer will try and hang on, but I tell myself that if you can make it passed that easily, you’re a quicker rider and you don’t need to worry about them anymore. Let them strain themselves trying to keep up with you.

It dawned on me at the end of that race (just before I picked up my gold trophy, ahem) that, alas, it was a “Zen race”!  You know where everything is just right; the ground feels smooth even if it’s not, you feel strong and fluid, the bike appears to be doing the work for you and trees appear to be dodging out of your way like the bike was fixed to a track. The Buddhist would describe Zen as the deep silence of a peaceful mind.  I certainly felt peaceful during the race (and in the car on the way home snoozing in the passenger seat with my trophy in my arms). Many have searched for this state on the bike. It’s a time when skills pop out the bag that you didn’t even request. A time when the bike just moves underneath you in one seamless action without thinking about it. A time when the sun seems to shine, even if it’s cloudy. It’s a feeling you expect professional mountain bike racers to experience every day, but as good as they are, I’m sure they don’t. This is a state of cycling enlightenment where everything falls in to place like a self-completing puzzle.

I zone back into reality in my car amidst the festive queues of red and white lights on the M4 and wonder to myself how often this happens to riders. Am I the only one that feels like the monk that’s got the cream when it happens, or are there others meditating on turbo-trainers in order to feel it? This is something I must look into, but in the meantime, maybe reliving its power superimposed over my memory of a point-scoring national race will do wonders for my confidence. Who knows, maybe dreaming it enough times will make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. I hope that you all experience it in your sport at least once this year as it truly is magical and stays with you for a long time.

Happy Zen-year everybody.