Future PBP?

"A goal without a plan

is just a wish."

Antoine de Saint-Exupery 

It has been a steamy hot, humid week, filled with ragweed, so once again I steal out of the house quite early to get a ride in before it becomes miserably tropical.  Today I pick the Surly though I have no intention of seeking gravel.  What makes us pick a certain bike on a certain day?  Sometimes it is the route we intend to take, and sometimes it is just as if that bike calls to us.  Sometimes we find we have picked the right bike for the path we find ourselves on, and other times we think another would have been a better choice.  Regardless, like many choices, you just deal with the choice you have made.  Today's choice is perfect.  Today the Surly fits just fine though the SRAM shifters, while shifting so clean and crisply,  test my finger strength.

 

  I just want to get a ride in.  It is still hard to force myself out the door.  Grief is still my constant companion and urges me to stay home and wallow, but I have had lots of  practice with telling grief no.  I will not dishonor this precious gift of health and life that way, to make a mockery of the very gift that has been taken from others.   I can not yet make grief stay home when I leave, but that will come with time.   

 

I don't know that I believe that time  heals all wounds, but we eventually learn accept the dismemberment bestowed.  If we are lucky, perhaps, we learn a lesson from our grief.  In the end, I have concluded that the best way to honor those that went before is to live life as fully and as gratefully as we can while accepting that we are human and will have times of sadness and regret, times when the beauty of the world surrounds but eludes us somehow.    It is best to live so that maybe one day, when it is our turn to move onward, others will learn from how we lived and accepted the events and traumas that life has bestowed upon us and honor our passing.  

 

Everything is still very green despite the heat, and I think how very much I will miss it.  Time passes so quickly any more it seems I blink my eyes and summer has vanished leaving only a memory.  As I ruminate, I come across a large orange and white cat, lazily draped across the road soaking up the heat. He notices my approach, turns his head and stares for a moment, dead still in the way only a cat can be still, then stalks haughtily off the road, obviously angry at being disturbed in the midst of a fine nap.  A short time later, a flash that I identify as a ground hog scuttles nervously to a hidey hole at the road side.  Then, just a moment later, there is a fawn in the road.   "Where," I think, "is your mama?"  Mama is right around the bend.  The fawn takes off to my right, mama to the left, and I hear her snort.  I worry about the small size of the fawn.  Was it a runt or did mom have a late pregnancy?  I am not sure when deer season starts, but this fawn still seems to need it's mother.  A line from "The Yearling" comes to mind, "The wild animals seemed less  predatory to him than people he had known." 

 

I wonder if the snort means something.  Anyone who has been around animals much know that they do communicate though it is certainly not always or even usually through sounds.    Beware the horse that has his ears flat, pressed backwards against his  neck.  Beware the warning growl of a dog who feels you are riding much to closely to his yard.

 

At this point, I am near the big hill that I either need to climb or to not climb depending on if I want to retrace my route.  I decide to climb.  The Surly is heavier than my other bike, but it also has easier climbing gears despite the fact the Lynskey has a triple and the Surly does not.  I climb and find it is not overly stressing me.  Indeed, it feels quite lovely, the way the hills test my thighs and, even more so, my lungs.  I settle into a regular breathing pattern as I tend to do on hills, and before you know it, I have crested the top. The difficulty of climbs depends so much not only on the grade, but also on how quickly you are determined to get to the top of it.  Today I just relax and spin, not worrying about time or speed.   "Lovely," I think, for because of the climb later in the ride I will have a two mile downhill that I enjoy.  Suddenly it comes to mind that on brevets, one thing that always encouraged or discouraged me, depending on the scenario, was that each hill you climbed you would descend and vice versa. 

 

And then I begin to think about Paris Brest Paris and the people I know that were there this year. I got very excited for them and envious of their adventures.  For the first time since my husband passed, I truly wished I were there, and I realize it is not only because of the people I know riding, but because of the people I don't know.  Memories of the experience float through my head tauntingly and making me question if I could,  indeed, complete the course once again.  I think that I could physically, but could I once again obtain the mental fortitude that is necessary to be successful because anyone who rides brevets knows how  important that becomes at the longer distances, that ability to dig deep within oneself and move onward. And could I physically with my seeming inability to recover as quickly as I once did?

 

I toy with the idea the rest of the ride and decide that perhaps, depending on circumstances, I will rejoin RUSA and ride some brevets next year to see how I do.  When I get home, I try to look up the age of the oldest female to complete PBP.  I find the oldest American woman was Elizabeth Wicks who was age 75.   I believe she had a coach to give her direction and was probably a much stronger rider than me to begin with.   But I will only be 71,  so I will have a four year advantage over her. The oldest male was Jean Guillot at age 86.  I never find who the oldest woman was overall.  I do find it interesting in my bit of research to find that 2007, the first year I rode PBP, had the worst weather since 1956, the year of my birth.  How well I remember my husband urging me forward before the ride as I hesitated.  He reminded me that I will become too old to do these things that I love.  It is one reason I continue to ride centuries regularly, because when I stop it will most likely be for good.   So, the question remains, am I too old for PBP and brevets?

 

All this is, at this point, is a pipe dream, or a wish, without a real plan.  Reality comes with plans.  And there would not be the forgiveness that past planning had. My first PBP I rode out too hard but was able to recover with a few hours of sleep. That would probably not be the case again. If I ride out too hard, I will be done. 

 

 Will my desire remain?  Will my current abilities remain that long? I have noticed that  age brings with it one aspect of childhood, changes happen rapidly.   Firsts begin to be more frequent, but rather than it being the first time one does something, it changes to the first time one can't quite do something. Travel and planning the travel is stressful for me, not something that I really enjoy.  I near home and think that if I do decide to try this crazy thing again, in my  mind I will dedicate the ride to all those I have lost. For while I have eluded grief for a bit on this ride, I know it will return. Could I, should I, dream of PBP?  Perhaps I should, but also realize that it is, without a definite plan, still a dream.  And that is okay too.