Dear readers, this post contains a LOT of my personal opinions on where I am currently at with cycling. I do not intend to talk trash about the sport, make you feel bad for loving it, or any such thing. I have dedicated a huge part of my life to cycling, and I love it. It’s a classic case of “it’s not you, it’s me.”
— Management
I could write volumes and possibly have on my relationship with cycling. How it saved me from being a 300-pound 20-year-old, the friends I made, the places I traveled, the creativity it spawned, and the mental and physical limits I pushed myself to, despite an obvious lack of natural talent. Cycling has been a blessing from the Dogs, and there is no way I will ever forget that.
However, I could also write extensive volumes about what it’s like to compete in bike races when you’re really not a competitive person, how I believe the cycling industry got it wrong with their message of being all-inclusive while pushing $12,000 bikes, and why electronic shifting is fucking stupid and no bicycle’s drivetrain should EVER need a software update.
How dropper posts are NEVER needed on a Gravel™ bike, how mail-order “e-bikes” are stressing bike shops by having every lazy/D.U.I. doofus that buys a battery-operated motorcycle from Amazon wanting repairs done with parts that the shops do not and should not carry, and the mechanics, rightfully don’t know how to fix cost-effectively and timely enough for the customer to be happy or for the shop to turn a profit, all the while customers with “real” bikes are getting pissed and taking their business elsewhere.
I could write about what it’s like to produce a cycling publication and receive complaints from readers about the cost sent from their $1,200 iPhones as they post photos on Instagram of their fleet of carbon bikes in the garage of their $900,000 homes (these are usually the same tool bags that want their race bikes tuned up and finished less than 24 hours before they leave to finish DFL at the Leadville 100).
Getting soiled circa 2005-ish.
I could write about the harassment and dangers cyclists experience from unattentive, angry, or drunk motorists. And I could write more about what it’s like to lose a good friend to one of those motorists and how it’s impossible for me to even go to the store for a loaf of bread without passing by the very spot where he was killed.
I have paragraphs formulated in my head about my hatred of e-bikes, my dislike of “trail features,” wood-berms, berms in general, and monopolizing Corporate Race© promoters who can afford full-page spreads in VeloNews (if the print version still exists), but charge hundreds of dollars for the honor of being in their races and can’t even offer up a shitty event t-shirt for the hundreds/thousands of racers who have NO chance of standing on the podium.
Getting my blood nice and thick during a 24 hour Solo race.
And, of course, I could write about what it’s like to ride your bike knowing that a crash, even a modest one, could result in painful, severe bruising, trauma, or internal bleeding due to the anticoagulant I take for a history of DVTs.
Finally, I could write and have written all too extensively about my battles with depression (unrelated to cycling) and the times I laid in The Bed of Torment all morning looking for a way out of my own head while the sun was shining brightly behind drawn curtains and my bikes remained dusty and untouched in the garage.
I could, and just did, write all that stuff. But if I am 100% honest, I simply fell out of love with cycling, and all those things mentioned above became glaring reminders every time I put my ass in the saddle. Cycling became an expensive joyless chore of a hobby that I expected myself to do several times a week because, “that’s what I do,” and I thought it could make me happy again.
It did not.
I thought a brief separation would inspire a return to riding, but it actually had the opposite effect. That brief separation turned into now almost two years off the bike. And the only tinge of regret I’ve had in that time was during a desperate Dirt Road Lumber back in March, and that was more about missing the dirt road photo ops rather than cycling, and that problem seemed to be solved in real time.
There is, of course, no reason to write any of this, but I did. If for no other reason than to let readers know (OK, me) why when they come to a website titled The Soiled Chamois, all they read about are hikes, lumbers, attempted trail runs, and shit photography in the woods rather than cycling.
I also write this to myself and others to say that you can come out of the other side of a mental shitstorm. You can crawl out from the fart-smelling blankets of your Bed of Torment or whatever location you choose to brood over your long list of perceived shortcomings and flaws instilled in your brain since birth and the treasure trove of childhood and adolescent traumas you unknowingly resurrected during your attempts to be the best spouse and parent you can be with the shitty, dull set of mental tools you have in the shed.
It can be done.
Mountain bike fun for me was destroying pushing myself, not hitting “sick” jumps or coming in first.
It took me a while to be happy and at peace with all this, but I am. I hike a minimum of 25 miles a week at pace in the woods and continue to regain the fitness I lost from recent years of not giving a fuck. I’m back to thinking about the week in terms of what days I push myself, which days I slow down, and which days I say, “fuck it, the footy is on, I’m sitting in my comfy chair with a remote control and a beer.”
I’m watching my nutrition, dropping a couple of pounds, enjoying nature, loving photography, and of course, working on my brain with continued visits to the O.G. Mindbender and Mindbender III, A New Hope. In other words, I feel myself again; I’m just not into riding my bike right now.
From saddle sores to battling calluses; it’s all good.
If you are a cyclist and are deeply in love with the sport, ride on! You’ll always have my support. Well, as long as you’re not healthy and riding an e-bike for anything other than commuting and calling it cycling because that would be like me riding a Segway and saying I’m hiking, or as the e-propagandists would say, “assisted hiking.”
Keep doing what you love, enjoy the ride, and watch for the signs of burnout or falling out of love. I don’t want you to have a list of things you could write someday.
It would be stupid to say I’ll never get back to riding, and when my mind and body think it looks fun again, I surely will. But for now, I’m content with what I’m doing and happily finding new ways to punish myself. See you on the trails!
Later.