MUSINGS FROM MIDLIFE
My Stories
Peaking Chick
"You can say that climbers suffer the same as other riders, but they suffer in a different way. You feel the pain, but you're glad to be there." Richard Virenque
Think brutal. Thirteen hours to cycle 235kms with 4,600m climbing. All for a jersey. If not, you don’t get one. Harsh and fair.
Hello Three Peaks Challenge.
Gifted with unrelenting nausea, I'm constantly pushing self-doubt away. Not helped by arriving at the lodge to riders talking tactics for a sub 8-hour finish.
Did I mention wanting to throw up?
The Journey
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice — though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you did not stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognised as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do — determined to save the only life you could save.