“You say the hill’s to steep to climb”
“Climb it.”
“You say you’d like to see me try”
“Climbing.”
“You pick the place and I’ll choose the time”
“And I’ll climb”
“That hill in my own way.”
“Just wait for the right day.”
“And as I rise above the tree lines and the clouds”
“I look down, hearing the sound of the things you’ve said today.”
(Fearless Waters, Gilmour)
There are things one does on a bike, things that mean something to the individual. For me, each and every one of these meaningful things was something that didn’t work the first time, something that took effort, repeated attempts, and often a lot of false starts and failures along the way.
My first attempt at a hard climb wasn’t a mountain. It was a steep street in Staunton, Virginia. I didn’t make it. In fact, I barely made 20 feet before I stalled. Wrong bike. Wrong rider. Wrong day.
I eventually got it right. There is no way to relate the feeling I had as I crested that hill the first time. Today, I have no idea how many times I have climbed it. It always leaves me breathless and hurting. It’s always good.
The first attempt at climbing a mountain was similar. I started the thing. Soon the legs were on fire. The lungs followed. I’d barely gone a mile before I had to pull over and stop. I made two more stops, and two more starts on the way up. I did make it to the top, but it wasn’t pretty, and I walked the last half mile.
One of the best days I ever had was the day I rode, in one long unbroken effort, to the top of that mountain climb. At the top I knew that I could do this. It still wasn’t pretty, but it was a triumph.
It is not given to all of us to be fast, or to be great climbers, or to be super endurance riders. Sometimes the best yardsticks are not the accomplishments of others, but rather the testing of our own limits, and the surpassing of our own boundries.
We do not know what we are capable of. We will never learn without the risk of failure. We will never improve without the will to persist.
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