To Venture
“To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one’s self…and to venture in the highest is precisely to become conscious of one’s self.” - Soren Kierkegaard
Up until four years ago I never really did any mountain biking. I had a mountain bike, road it once on the trails and never got on a trail again… until I had this strange itch to do something that was way out there - to race in the Leadville 100 Mountain Bike Race, actually it was for the entire Leadman series which included a marathon, 50-mile run, 100-mile bike, 10K run and 100 mile race, all within a two-month period. But the mountain biking would be the crux, something I had never imagined possible. In fact I remember driving through Leadville early in the morning of August 1996 and saw a number of mountain bikers gathering on the streets before sunrise - seeing a race banner, and thinking, that’s nuts, then I went into the bakery and grabbed a donut. Not that I wasn’t adventurous - I had already spent three months backpacking, rock-climbing, mountaineering and white-water rafting in Oregon and California part of my regular routine as an Outward Bound instructor. Just something about riding a mountain bike a 100 miles was way above 'my league’ whatever that was.
So in 2016 I got into Leadman. I bought a bike, took a couple hour mountain bike course, spent hours putting in a lot of miles, had solid training plan, and even got into a couple early season mountain bike races. Yes, racing Leadville was a HUGE jump, and I didn’t finish that year, but I did make it through 75 miles of that course before I was cut-off. Then, trying again I didn’t finish in 2018 I got cut off even sooner…but not for lack of a good experience, I was faster out of the gate and faster to the half-way point but severe cramps slowed me down to a crawl. In 2019 I tried it again…this time I did finish…albeit 15 minutes after the last cut-off, but I proudly made it down that red carpet and got a finishers medal - just not the coveted belt buckle…and I’ll do it again in 2021 if I have the opportunity.
The thing is, the Leadville mountain bike was something that I never fathomed of doing - I had the thought that I’d never have the skill or endurance to ride a 100 miles on a mountain bike. For months leading up to the race in 2016 I’d wake up in a panic, my heart racing, I had, all sorts of terrifying thoughts. The reality was… they were just thoughts.
By taking that risk and putting myself out there I became vulnerable -not just for my physical safety (even the experienced riders can fall and break something) but there is an emotional vulnerability as well.
What if I didn’t finish?
What if I just ‘sucked’ at it.
What if I got in the way of someone else?
And oh did I feel like an imposter on a cheap bike with an oversized helmet and absolutely all the wrong gear…
The heavy hitter of shame rears its ugly head ready to strike the moment we start taking risks. The moment we decide we want to try something and push ourselves beyond what we ‘thought’ possible.
The kid who gets laughed at in third grade because he struck out playing kickball, or had a tough time learning to skip… those can stick with you as thoughts in the background - we want to survive and be part of the ‘tribe’ so we don’t make mistakes, we learn ways to hide our weaknesses- or we don’t show our vulnerable skins, so we don’t take big risks, we avoid the scary things not for fear of getting hurt but for fear of losing face of not being accepted.
It is so easy to get hooked on these thoughts and images that they prevent us from doing the exact thing we set out to do, and for many they never take that risk, or take it ever so slowly dipping our toes in so if anything shows up we can easily back away.
I found - as have so many others that ‘to venture in the highest’ takes being present in the moment, here and now. Stuff is going to come up, we need to acknowledge that, not force it away but acknowledge it like cars passing on a highway (or in my case the other cyclists). Then move forward - intelligently and focused on the goal ahead of us. Those gremlins are going to be there - we can become friends with them, fight them, or avoid them entirely. Fighting them wastes time and energy, to avoid them we avoid what we love and what we want to experience. But to become friends with them, then we can ‘venture in the highest.’