Hello friends,
I finished the Pennine Rally on Saturday afternoon, and am now back in Sheffield, surrounded by half-unpacked bags (given that bikepacking is supposed to involve minimal kit, there seems to be an awful lot of it to process), and feeling the deep, peaceful exhaustion that I’ve only ever known after completing an ultra-distance event.
The last week has seen a return to a world I feared I might have lost, and the rediscovery of many things I loved and had partially forgotten — not least the way that an extremely hard bike ride will temporarily shut out the rest of the world, and narrow your focus to the simple, yet still brutally difficult, task of keeping going.
The most urgent problems I faced were hunger, saddlesore, and gradient, all of which I knew how to resolve, bear or endure. It still seems strange to me, that I could find such solace in hardship — and I still can’t fully explain why some of us are compelled to seek it out, despite having literally written a book on the subject. But I’ve done enough of this to know that there is a particular flavour of contentment that I can only access after several long, hard days in the saddle. I haven’t tasted it for a couple of years, and this week, to my great joy and relief, it came back.
Now, as I told people all week, I have the equal — but very different — challenge of making sure I balance my week of high exertion with as much rest and recovery as my body needs. It felt wonderful to push myself hard again, and to feel strong, but I mustn’t run the risk of overdoing it; I must try and maintain this upward trend, and that will probably involve taking a couple of steps backwards, in order to keep moving forwards.
You should know that this newsletter is being produced under conditions of great exhaustion. I’ve missed this feeling, but I’m also slightly impatient with how much it’s blunted my effectiveness, and made even straightforward tasks seem impossible. Let’s see how I get on with trying to explain myself…
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