VINCIBLE

I had no expectation. I felt so neutral that my life wouldn’t have been any different had I not made the drive. But I did. I toed the line. I pushed the pedals and set off on an experience like no other I have ever had.

I didn't want to be there. Desire for those experiences died earlier this year, or maybe it happened before that and I couldn't see it. Or feel it. When the sensation eventually did swell it wasn't a crashing wave but the weight of it and the water suffocated just the same. And the way out looked like it passed through the bottom of a bottle.

I tried to force it. On my own at first but that didn't work because I am adept at sabotaging myself — no one else could do it as well as I can. Instead, I made commitments to others, people who I wouldn't want to let down, to whom I might still want to prove something. That didn't work at first because I chose the wrong people. Either I didn't care enough about their opinion, or they’d already seen me go as deep as I ever have, or they had already been where I was so they understood.

It took a conversation and some trust to accept an invitation to do something I would never have done ten years ago, or even five. I had to say yes, and to accept everything that came with it, to be open to whatever happened, whoever I found myself in front of and to hear whatever was said. I went to gravel camp and rode my bike for a few days. I knew some people there, but mostly not, and the shy part that remains resisted, hid in the story I told about hating my bike, suppressed my history, pulled the hat lower and kept my eyes down.

But that isn't me. I went up there looking for help and found myself instead helping others whose stories I heard, whose behavior I saw, and who I knew might benefit from some of what I have lived, seen, and sometimes understood. I was in conflict with myself and found the best way to avoid that was to focus on others. Same as it ever was.

On that occasion I rode my bike hard and long enough to remind me of what was and what might be again if I just got my head straight. I drove home almost optimistic. After a few more days of riding alone apathy drowned my optimism so I lost the way again. And it didn't even hurt. There was no sense of loss or impending consequence. I circled the drain but never closed on the pipe. I marked the time I witnessed slipping away and didn't feel any closer to death when the sun set or rose or another bottle went dry.

In those weeks I DNS'd a couple of races I had entered when desire still reigned and barely noted their passing but RPI was one I didn't want to miss. I didn't want to race it either because the volume of training required to actually race, which is different from merely participating, was more than I could bear and it was too late to do anything about it anyway. Last year, I expected to race well, and I did because I put in the hours, I practiced, and I was hungry. I still had something to prove.

This year I promised Rebecca only that I would come up, help if I could when she asked, ride my bike, talk with friends, and then complete the big, 100-mile day rather than race it. I would help Ben as he dragged his cross along those gravel roads and try to see the views I missed when I was chewing my stem during last year's race. I knew I could finish because I have a lot of experience pushing myself beyond the fuel running out, past and through the most determined muscle cramps, and the dehydration, blisters, and soul-crushing self-doubt. But I have never started anything with the objective to simply finish. I am competitive, first with myself and then against whoever I sense around me. I also know my place. I know when I have the horsepower and depth to push hard and when I need to lift pressure from the pedal ... but this time, I didn't know what I was looking for.

I still don't, not exactly anyway, and regardless, I wasn't going to find it inside or around a single, acute dose of overreaching. The long ride was a reference point, my own Via Appia, along which I crucified myself multiple times during the day. I have walked this road before, generally in the mountains, also searching, but with youthful, ambitious eyes instead of the weary, less than 20-20 sight I see with today. Back then I was invincible — not that I didn't back off or retreat or fail, what I did was survive. That put me where I am today, and made me what I am: vincible.

I have lived. I have fought and won, fought and lost, witnessed unbelievable overcoming but also incredible loss — had my whole landscape changed by it — and I always thought I would continue living with the same tight focus, and knowing what I wanted and how to achieve it but when that certainty went quiet the view ahead went black with it.

This isn’t midlife. This is me closer to the end than the beginning and having the option to shorten that life available any hour of any day. The option was always there and early in my climbing career many accused me of trying to exercise it but they were wrong. I was trying to live more fully, to experience more than the risk-averse had available to them, and willing to test the line between alive and dead in order to see with greater clarity. I thought that would lead to understanding and it did … until the means I used to explore the world, to develop my identity, were no longer available to me.

To see and to understand one has to go deep. Risking death might not be necessary but consequence is a helpful, motivating arbiter, something that brightens and clarifies one’s vision. To confront mortality on even ground one’s physical vessel must be robust and resilient and I made mine into a shield that protected me from assaults which would have killed less capable men. I remapped the rev limiter and flew close enough to the sun to trade permanent injury for insight. And now, with the vessel compromised, the experience of life is different, sometimes “less”, and I occasionally ask myself if sticking around is worth the cost.

What can I do to replace what I once did? The things that informed my optimism and values and made life worth living … I recognize that I am not who I was and can’t expect of myself now what I demanded of who I was then but what will satisfy and not just pacify to keep me breathing in the here and now? I struggle with relevance, my own or lack thereof. I always tied my “weight” to what I was doing at the time, my actions informed my self-worth/image. What I learned by doing is my value but passing those lessons along doesn’t scratch the itch that no antihistamine could ever calm. But passing it on is what I owe. So I have to stay alive until the broadcast is complete.

And if pressed, I would admit that paying the debt, paying for what I have learned with communication, teaching, and sharing is why I am still here — because knowledge itself is invincible.