What 100 Miles on a Bicycle Reminded Me About the Journey

In late August, I rode the Hotter’N Hell Hundred in Wichita Falls, Texas. Somewhere between the miles, the heat, and a lot of time sitting on a bicycle, I found myself thinking about a few things that had very little to do with cycling.

Preparation Determines What Is Possible

One of the clearest lessons was that the potential of a journey is directly affected by the preparation that comes before it.

You can still accomplish things without being fully prepared, but your options start shrinking. Instead of enjoying the challenge or pushing toward what might have been possible, you spend your energy simply trying to make it happen.

Preparation creates momentum before the moment arrives.

I think that is true far beyond cycling. We often want to rise to an occasion, but much of what we are capable of in the moment was determined by what we did before the moment ever came.

The Journey Really Is the Point

A finish line is surprisingly arbitrary.

Move it ten miles closer or ten miles farther away and the most meaningful parts of the day probably wouldn’t change.

What stays with me are the people.

There are short-lived friendships with riders you may never see again. Volunteers offering hospitality to complete strangers. People stopping to help somebody on the side of the road. Moments when frustration rises after something goes wrong, followed by moments when everybody laughs about it.

For a few hours, strangers become companions simply because we’re all moving in the same direction.

The ride reminded me that a journey is really the spending of time, and time may be the most valuable thing we possess. We can choose how we spend it, but none of us gets to decide how much of it we have.

That makes the people we spend it with matter quite a bit.

There Is Still Something Pure About a Bicycle

Bikes have always had a way of bringing me back to a simpler frame of mind.

Their purity still captivates me.

Human beings have invented countless ways to cover great distances, many of them much faster and more comfortable than a bicycle. But there is something wonderfully wholesome about moving across the landscape under your own power.

Two wheels. A chain. Your legs. A road ahead.

Maybe that’s part of why I continue coming back to riding, mountain biking, and running. There are moments when life gets complicated enough that doing something remarkably simple is good for the soul.

And after riding across north Texas in August, I came away with one other deeply held conviction:

I have absolutely no interest in living any farther south than I already do.

It is simply too hot.