The bike is a metaphor for life.
You have to pedal to keep your balance, often putting in the effort to move forward, even more to climb, concentrating on descents and bends, and looking far ahead to avoid pitfalls.
And we all know that on a bike, it's always windy and it's always uphill.
A little adversity... Just like in life!
I knew all this when I started road biking in 2000, because I've always ridden.
As a student, I rode my bike around town. I didn't want to drive, so I'd ride my white Gitane from home to university, then to work, then to the dojo where I trained in the evenings.
That was long before helmets and flashing lights and GPS. No gadgets on my Peugeot, I don't even think I had a bottle cage! A chain with a padlock. After the standard padlocks, a simple U-lock, even though it was said to be easy to disable, yet I was lucky because I never experienced the shock of not finding my bike after tying it up somewhere in town. Blessing!
At the dojo where I trained, a few experienced karatekas were seasoned cyclists, and they rode Marinoni bikes. Splendid bikes, with all the allure of racing bikes. They were going to climb Mount Royal! I thought they were daring and envied them.
Of course, the first (real) bike I bought was a Marinoni. I still have it, I'll never get rid of it. Simone had painted my first name in white letters on the blue frame. How chic!
I use it all winter to train at home, where I do intervals religiously, according to a program my trainer prescribes.
I'm desperate to keep up the watts as if my life depended on it, to take off, or to ride on the big chainring with maximum resistance.
I still have a basic Tacx, I've never managed to get it to work or get used to all these systems so highly prized by the cycling community.
I see them «Zwift» and it intrigues me, but I'm just as happy with my intervals on my old Tacx.
I wrote earlier that a bicycle is a metaphor for life and that you should never stop pedaling. This lesson came in handy after I suffered a serious bicycle accident in 2015.
Rehabilitation is slow, laborious and above all painful.
She's suffering physically, first and foremost, but morally, she's suffering just as much. Fear, discouragement and the desire to give up. Because we tell ourselves we can't do it, that it's too hard.
My cycling partner, Martine, used to come and see me at the Institut de réadaptation de Montréal and bring me smoothies and freshly picked strawberries, just like when we go riding together, and tell me to behave like a cyclist!
On a bike, you don't unclip Don't step on a hill, don't put your foot on the ground, or you'll never be able to set off again.
Come on, pull, push, scratch, pull, push, scratch.
I've climbed hills with this mantra looping in my head.
In the Grands Jardins National Park, when I thought I wouldn't make it to the top, or up Sa Calobra in Mallorca, or to Mount Lemmon.
On my little plateau, when 52/40/30 still existed, I rode everything. There's nothing too difficult.
So I put myself on the little tray and grinded.
When I set foot on the ground, I was there.
And I'm back on the road bike with the same fervor ... and the same anxiety. And more lights than ever!
Isabelle Richer, journalist
