Learn a new skill

In the last 48 hrs I have learned a new skill, its utility may be debated, but nonetheless there must be some value in understanding what's happening in the Tour de France, especially as I'm in France right now. I read my dad's 2011 Tour de France magazine, and then I read the 60 page book that came with it "Tales from Le Tour: Memoirs of the men who made history in the world's most famous cycling race" which has a chapter from 3 different memoirs. I liked the first one a lot, by Laurent Fignon, who's always remembered as the guy that lost the Tour to Greg Lemond by 8 seconds in 1989. His book starts:

"Ah, I remember you, you're the guy who lost the Tour de France by 8 seconds!"
"No, monsieur, I'm the guy who won the tour twice."

I'm not sure I'd want to read the whole of each of these memoirs but these 3 chapters have definitely given me some insight into the trials and tribulations of the Tour. And today, I watched it for about 2 hours and started getting into it because it made more sense to me. Well, a bit more sense. I'm still skeptical: too much testosterone, too much lycra, too far, too many drugs to make it deeply meaningful. I get this feeling about many sports, whether it's football or cycling or wrestling, when I see the millions spent on it, the hours and hours of energy expended on it by participants and spectatators and sponsors alike - why are we doing this? Why not expend this energy saving the planet? Building houses for the homeless? Teaching orphans skills? That said, I do a fair amount of exercise myself so I'm not saying I've got it sorted. I could have done a lot of planet saving or litter collecting or orphan hugging in the 11 hours a week I spent training for the mountainbike race I did in May. But I do question it, that's all. I did wonder when I was spending so much time riding my bike in training for Sani2c whether it was really a good use of my time here on the planet. Sure it was beautiful out there in the forest with the eagles soaring over me and the smell of pine under my tyres, but is that enough to justify my doing it? I learned a lot about myself I think, and put myself in a position where I changed my understanding of what is possible for me. That I do believe is valuable. I think this understanding may help me, one day, make a greater contribution to the world. As always, I may be over-analysing this.

So when it comes to these cycling greats who have to take drugs to keep up as the pace gets ever faster, is this really a good thing? Why is there outrage when someone is simply unlucky enough to be caught doping? They all do it. Paul Kimmage wrote in his journal in 1986 about the Tour that LeMond had a bad bout of diarrhoea but kept riding, surrounded by his domestiques, with shit rolling down his legs. He carried on riding because he knew he could win. And he did, the first American to win le Tour. But it's kind of sad that we applaud and reward this behaviour. Society is a little nuts.

I loved this quote by Mark Cavendish, a British cyclist (from the Isle of Man) who's won a bunch of stages in this Tour de France already and is in the running to win it this year, talking about his self-belief:

"There's that little thing in your head that says 'if this happens now, I'm fucked'. Well I don't have that."

Well I do! When I ride down a mountain, every descent I'm thinking "I'm fucked!". Every time I lose my balance and feel the wheels slide out I think "I'm fucked" and every time I look at my speedo and realise I'm going over 60kms an hour with nothing between my precious body and some rocky terrain except a helmet covering only top of my head, I think "If I come off now, I'm fucked".

And I guess this thinking, along with the fact I believe dedicating one's life purely to riding up the highest mountains faster than anyone else is self-indulgent, is why I shall never be a professional cyclist. But I'm going to watch the Tour again tomorrow and think a bit more!

I think about my terror when I'm riding my mountainbike. This is just one of the many reasons that I will never be a professional