Commitment

The backstory to the story of my ride up Mount Washington continues. Hell, if Ted Mosby can take seven years to tell his kids the story about how he met their mother, I get to take a few damn blog posts to tell mine.

§§§§§§

After I came home from vacation, I kept thinking about that voice in my head. The one that told me that I was going to ride a bicycle up a mountain. And I kept ignoring it.

Confession time: I have a lot of voices in my head. I don’t know if that’s usual or unusual, but there’s always an internal commentary going on. Sometimes it’s a monologue, other times there’s arguments going on up there. Regardless of the number, there’s always been one constant: None of these voices ever spoke with this sort of clarity before. None of them ever told me I would do something that would require the level of commitment this would take.

And it wasn’t tentative, or put as a suggestion, either. The voice said “You’re doing that.” Nothing ambiguous about it. It freaked me out. I continued to ignore it.

I got on with my life. The kids went back to school, I got back into the daily routine. I did start riding my bike a bit more, but so what? It was good exercise. So when a friend of mine told me she was going to run in the Rochester Marathon, I decided to ride my bike to the starting line, and cheer her on as she started. It made perfect sense: I figured there wouldn’t be much parking available there, so it would be a bad idea to drive my car. I’d probably have to walk several blocks from the parking spot to see her off, so why not just cruise over on my bike?

The race started, and as she and her sister ran past, I cheered them on. Yay. Then I rode home. Well, I sorta rode home. I decided since I was already up and it was barely 7 in the morning, I’d go the long way home.

And so that’s how I came upon the roadblock set up by the police. It was another point in the race. I decided to stay there for a while, and when my friend came by, I’d cheer her on again!

So I parked my bike under a tree and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And…thought about what she was doing. This was a woman in her forties who decided to run a marathon. That takes some commitment! I admired her for that commitment. I wondered if she had heard a voice similar to the one I heard in my head, or if she had decided on her own to do this. And, of course, the Itty Bitty Shitty Committee chimed in.

Could I really ride a bike up a mountain? Was that even possible? Well, what was the harm in trying? Even if I didn’t make it, the worst that could happen is that I’d get into shape.

Well, actually, the worst that could happen is that I could get run over by a cement truck while riding and taste my own blood before I died, but still…

The spot where I was waiting for my friend was at the bottom of a hill. Cobb’s Hill. A short, but steep hill just a few blocks from my house. I stared at the incline and heard that voice again.

“You’re doing that…”

Well, if I was going to climb a mountain, I’d first have to climb a few hills. I got on my bike and pedaled to the base of the hill. I dropped into a low gear and started climbing.

Then I dropped into a lower gear.

And a lower gear.

And cursed in my head because there weren’t any gears lower to drop into. I wrote ‘in my head’ rather than the more commonly used ‘under my breath’ in the last sentence because I had such little breath left that there was barely any breath under which a curse could be muttered.

I struggled and wheezed, but I made it to the top of the hill. I was gassed. This was hard! I rode down to the bottom again, and surprised myself by turning around and riding back up again. Wasn’t any easier that time. And when I got to the bottom, holy crap–I started back up a third time. My legs were pudding by now, so I headed for home.

So I didn’t get a second chance to cheer on my friend that day. Turns out this was the route of the half-marathon, and she was never going to be running past it. Story of my life. Up to that point.

Because at that point something changed. I decided to commit to something. Something hard. Something waaaaay out of my comfort zone.

And then I did something harder. Possibly the hardest thing to do on this quest to do a very hard thing:

I started talking about it.

Posted by uphillrider on January 11, 2012

http://uphillrider.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/commitment/