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Sometimes I'm out on a long solo bike ride, the wind is in my teeth, it's hard work.
I let my mind wander off and the pain in the legs is more bearable.
This seems like the opposite of mindfulness.
I'll think on this next time I'm out alone.
I’ve biked thousands of long distance miles. Not so much anymore, but I can relate to what you’re saying.
Decades ago, I biked across the country. On one miserable day in the desolate sandhills of Nebraska, the wind was straight in my face, blowing about 20 mph, the temperature hovered between 40-45, and it was still 50 miles to Valentine.
I didn’t have a cyclometer- just a hand drawn spreadsheet encased in plastic that cross-referenced pedal revolutions per minute with the number of inches in each of my ten gears that yielded speed in miles per hour..
My normal, cross country pedal revolutions were about 80. At first, you simply count them, but after awhile you just know.
In any event, on that particular day, the wind had me down to almost my lowest gear and I could see by my chart I was traveling about 6 miles per hour.
Great…… I would’t be in
Valentine for another 8 hours.
But my next thought was…… good! If I just focus on rpms, I’ll be there in 8 hours, and it will still give me a couple of hours before dark.
So that’s what I did. I focused on a steady cadence and the process soon became automatic. I almost didn’t have to think about it. The “what ifs”…. “What if this happens?” Or “What if that happens?” faded into the background.
It was just me and the cadence. And when I slipped into that state of mind, the fatigue, which remained, took second fiddle to the landscape of the Niobrara River bottom land, the stark, beautiful landscape of grass covered hills that rolled past- herd of cattle by fencepost by abandoned barn, by milepost…until there were trees on the outskirts of town and the road dipped and dropped into Valentine.
Almost 50 years ago, that trip taught me a lot about limits, stark beauty, relying on myself (and others!), and mindfulness.
Didn’t even know the word “mindfulness” back then- but that’s what it was- not the daydreams when the sun was shining, but the attention to what was going on in my life, moment by moment.
And yet, it’s one of those things that I did and really don’t spend alot of time thinking about.
But the lessons are still with me.
I believe we’ve all had experiences like that.
Bicycles are great teachers in that respect
