Over the past 10-15 years I’ve made a personal study of circumstances, situations, things, stimuli and really anything that helps me be creative, inspired, better and more good.
Some of the things that I do in an attempt to chase this and to see where the tools are to break through the ceilings of glass are questioned by others as pointless, irrelevant or analysed in a way which makes it look like the things that I do are ridiculous. But of course, that’s probably the point isn’t it?
Because my wife doesn’t understand why I ride a bike for long hours at a time doesn’t matter because I don’t understand the pleasure she gets from looking after her horse. Your inspiration that is stemmed from walking around a museum is entirely different to the person who appreciates architecture or classical music, or classic cars, or trains, or mountains or any number of things that allow them to reach that place in their mind where they can think clearly and be inspired and move to something better.
And so just for the record it happened again, at the moment it happens once every two years.
An epiphany (bizarrely I was born on the epiphany) There have been three big ones in the last four years. The first on a pile of Argos catalogues outside a shop in Marlow at 4am in the middle of a 24 hour bike ride from Manchester to London. I so nearly gave up, and then I didn’t. Then I changed. Then I was better.
Two years ago in the Outlaw Triathlon it was singing blood stream to myself in the rain. This year it was half way up the Col de la Croix. If you click the link to Col de la Croix you will go to the Col collective with Mike Cotty (Alex Jones showed me this)
If you like cycling and particularly like cycling hills then you must discover and know this website because it is absolutely marvellous. Cotty climbs the climb which is the first in the Marmotte on a long day out and describes it as a perfectly and beautifully. When I watched it back to write this blog I understood it.
Somewhere around the point where Cotty passes the second reservoir that’s where the epiphany happened. That’s where I understood why I ride a bike and I also understood what was required for me to continue to ride and why. It is fascinating that in the video itself Cotty refers to this at the top of the climb and says this reminds him of why he rides a bike, perhaps there is something special about that place for cyclists, perhaps it’s just coincidence. It is not that if you go there now and ride your bike past that place that you will have your epiphany, it’s whatever it is that you do that inspires you, you should continue to do, to continue to have your epiphanies.
What is the point otherwise and what are we doing? If not to try and make ourselves better for the benefit of everybody else.
Blog post number: 1374
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