Lance Armstrong (the disgraced cyclist) used to have a thing with his teams. They would shout 'no chain' when they were riding so quickly along the flat. They were so fit and so powerful that it felt like they were riding a bike without a chain.
It was an indication of success, an indication of fitness, of strength, of being ready for what was coming.
I've never had this so often when I've been riding a bike, but I have had incidences of no chain. In fact, I've had one or two incidences in the last few weeks, which is an indication of feeling better about my cycling than I have for some years.
But the thing about no chain is that you only ever get it rarely after a protracted period of training or when you're just in the right place at the right time.
If all you ever did was cycle to get the feeling of no chain, you would never cycle at all.
So, scrolling through the BBC, I saw news of Richard Gadd and his Emmy Awards in relation to Baby Reindeer, a programme I'm sure I would probably love but simply do not have time to even start.
But I clicked on his acceptance speech, and it was your classic Oscar/Emmy/Tony/ whatever awards speech, where it says, "Just follow your dream, take risks. It'll work, and you'll be great."
The truth is that's not really true and certainly not true for the vast majority of the time, or your life for normal people.
It's mostly about working really hard and not getting famous; it's about following the system and trying your best and not getting the breaks so you become a billionaire.
I don't want to sound like a doomsday guy, but I've been working my way through Oliver Burkeman's utterly fantastic new book, which you can read here; I've got it in print and on audio, and the secret is that once you give away the fallacy, the nonsense that you're entitled to become a superstar or famous or insanely successful or brilliantly beautiful or wonderfully intelligent, you can just get on with what you're doing and try your best, and the comfort in that is extraordinary.
I'm not actually sure at all when I'll feel no chain again or if I ever will, but I refuse to allow the chase for that type of fitness or situation to overshadow the joy of just riding my bike on a day-to-day basis.
Blog Post Number - 3932
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