Notes Along the Way - Week 22

 

I'm half packed and will set off for Kansas in just a few days, ready or not.

Tapering is its own kind of hard. Last week I had a meltdown — the kind where everything you've worked for suddenly feels inadequate and the doubts pile on faster than you can reason with them. This week I tweaked my back, a disc irritation that has me easing gingerly out of chairs and being careful how I bend. It hurts, and I'd be lying if I said it hasn't added a new layer of anxiety to the whole thing.

But here's what the falling apart has done: it's made me think harder about why I'm here in the first place.

I could have set a cycling goal that was entirely my own — something self-contained, measurable, solitary. And I probably would have been fine with that. But I chose Unbound, and I think I chose it because I wanted to be part of something larger — to share a big, hard goal with a few thousand like-minded others.

I'm shy, and I'm introverted. Cycling has been one of the places in my life where that's been gently pushed — where people naturally come together to share rides and knowledge. I've had friends teach me things, and recommend people who could help me with my bike. It's been a learning process and when I look back, I can see it. There's a generosity in cycling culture that I've leaned into more than I expected. Even randonneuring, which can feel solitary on the surface, is still a community of people choosing the same strange, long roads.

Unbound is that, amplified. Thousands of people who love riding bikes, gathering to do something none of us fully knows how to prepare for. No one at that start line knows exactly how their day is going to go. Some will have the ride of their lives. Some will have spectacular failures. Most will have something in between. But we'll all be in it together — and I think that's what I've been after all along. The shared experience. The shared not-knowing.

I want to be open to whatever the day gives me. I want to let go of how I've imagined it going and just be there for it — for the people around me, for the miles as they come. That said, I can't pretend I don't want something for myself too. I want to find out what I'm made of when it gets hard. I've worked for this. I want to see what that work reveals.

But mostly, I want to get to that start line and feel what it feels like to be part of something big. I think that's kind of what everyone is looking for, really. To be in it together.