At the beginning, there is time to talk, time to brag about your last ride, time to catch up on the news. You pass ___ and he accelerates a bit to match your pace. ___ is riding injured and knows that you will make sympathetic noises. You really do feel bad about the injury and his sleepless nights spent worrying about how hard it will be to come back up to speed, and you are genuinely sympathetic. But you can’t be too sympathetic. It is a hard sport. So, you reach out, but only for a moment. You don’t want to embarrass him. You suggest that he will be crushing it soon, even though you both know that he will struggle for a while. You share a laugh and with a gentle shove from you he moves up in the peloton. You let him go.
The funny thing is that there is no reason to pretend that you are tough, even if you are. I mean sure, you don’t get cold, crashing doesn’t make you nervous, and you spend more time at the front than you should, but you don’t race much. Racing is no joke even if you do it for fun. But you like being fast so when you feel good and go hard you want the other fast riders to respect you the same way you revere them. The respect is the result of the bond of common suffering – and of putting your life in someone else’s hands and having others in yours. It is jazz, pure and simple.
Strong and fast is a strange addiction and after the beginning of the ride, you feel the tension in the group rise - it is clear as the click of a shifter that the ride is about to ramp up to redline. This is the only time you feel your stomach flutter. Yet, you love this part, you think about it all week as you do your intervals, dodge cars, inspect your tires. You think of ___, but only for a moment. It’s time to relax and focus and make sure that you are where you want to be. Move onto a good wheel, check the legs, drop the chain to a bigger gear, drop your hands to the hooks, look down the road to the front of the pack. Today you will not be dropped. Today you are the fat part of the double-tapered seatstay.
The end of the ride ends as it started. You ride in the middle of the pack through the middle of town. Little ring, hands on the tops of the bar. You are already glowing from the endorphins. Laughing a little too loudly, riding through intersections, waving your thanks to the cars that patiently wait for the group to pass. You don’t see ___, but he will be back next week. He will be stronger and his smile will flash more easily. He is a cyclist, looks great on a bike. Always has. He will be back. What else is there?
