Earlier this year, I did something foolish/laudable – I signed up to ride the 120 km Valley Gran Fondo.
I love riding my bike, and by signing up for such a long ride, I hope to give myself that extra push to get out on the bike earlier in the year, to challenge myself with longer rides, and maybe even to spend time riding with other people a bit. Having a goal is great for a little personal motivation.
And then I tried looking up some podcasts and articles about preparing for such a long ride – I've ridden farther than that, but not for a few years now – and of course, I was deluged with information about "training."
Almost every resource assumes that you are training for a race, that you are a self-identified athlete, that you measure your heart rate and your functional threshold power (I didn't know I had functional threshold power) and, of course, that you need to buy a whole bunch of stuff, like protein powder, a dozen lycra outfits, and a $17,000 carbon fibre bike.
Sorry, I don't think so.
More than a century ago, guys on old steel bikes that weighed 50 pounds went for long rides, on gravel roads, while wearing wool, and they didn't have heart rate monitors or creatine powder. I'm pretty sure if I spend this spring going for increasingly-long rides and eat right for the next few months, I'll be fine.
I want to challenge myself, not suffer. My entire goal for the Gran Fondo ride is to get into good enough shape beforehand that I can cycle for a long distance while enjoying the ride itself. Cycling is fun, isn't it?
But that's the thing about hobbies. Society tells us we're not supposed to enjoy them. We're supposed to do them right.
Cycling is particularly loaded with fitness-maximizers and new-equipment-junkies, but you can find this trend in every hobby.
Want to paint watercolours? Well, you simply must have this easel, these brushes, the top-rated canvas, here, let me ring that up for you! Can't enjoy yourself if you don't have all the stuff you need to do it properly! And if you're not doing it properly, why even do it? For fun? What are you, some kind of weirdo?
Our consumerist society both pushes us to buy stuff for our hobbies, and then to turn them into jobs whenever possible. (Why aren't you selling your watercolours on Etsy? Don't you want to have a side hustle, you slacker!)
But it's okay to have a hobby that you just enjoy. You can even be bad at it. No one can stop you!
There are folks who will be entering the gran fondo ride, and their version of fun is racing each other or getting a personal best time, and I say, more power to them!
Meanwhile, I will be near the back of the pack, having a snack and a breather at every rest area. And if I see a deer or a nice view, I might stop and take a picture.
I'm going to have a blast.
