The Case Against: All work and no play…
In a recent conversation, a good friend made the following statement:
“Why does everything have to be rider development? Maybe I don’t want to be developed!”
My friend, a rider of moderate experience and well above average skill, makes a good point. We’re committed to the idea that cycling is many things, a sport, a pastime, a means of transportation, and above all a recreation. It is appropriate to say, “I am in this to relax and to enjoy myself. I don’t want to take it too seriously.” Cycling, like almost any other activity, can be made into another job, a source of stress and anxiety. That would be the last thing I would advocate.
In other words, once one has reached a certain level, it’s perfectly okay to relax, back off from the practice, and simply breath the free air from the saddle.
The Case For: Be Prepared
A bike that is not maintained will soon stop working well. This is true, even if the bike is not ridden. The same is true of skills or fitness. Any level of expertise must be practiced to be maintained. There is no such thing as perfect. Everyone has room for improvement.
There are certain basic and fundamental skills. These must first be learned and mastered. But more, they require recurrent training. Failure to constantly repair and polish these skills will ultimately lead to problems, injury, and possibly death.
This is especially true if one is planning to ride a bike on the road! (For that matter, unless one wishes to become a real tree hugger, there are some fairly important skills to be acquired for mountain biking too.)
To be a truly accomplished (and somewhat self-sufficient) cyclist, one must learn (and practice) a wide variety of disciplines. The rewards are available and tangible.
Why I care:
Virtually everything I do is about rider development. I do this for others, and for me. I am dedicated to the concept of improving cycling and helping cyclists improve. One might reasonably ask, “Why?”
The reasons are fairly simple. The overarching one is that I firmly believe that a world with more bike riders is a better world.
Personally, I am absolutely certain that cycling saved my life, and that it has done so many times over. I am also thrilled with the fact that the sport did not just enable me to persist in this existence. Living and breathing in this world of cycle-sport has given me an endlessly enriched and illuminated life.
Second, when I was actually making my entry into cycling, I had the extreme fortune to be around some incredible folks. They taught me the following: 1) There is no such thing as perfection. There is always room for improvement. 2) There is so much to cycling, so many dimensions, so many different sub-disciplines, that it is simply not possible for one person to exhaust them in a lifetime. But why not sample as much of the banquet as possible?
Third, I have been given so much, that I feel an obligation. There is an old (seldom heard now) expression, that one owes one’s profession. In short, I feel an obligation to pay forward for that which I have received.
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