Lessons from The Long Ride, Part 1
Origins of a Suffer Lab
As my training rides continued I began to see The Long Ride less in terms of exploration and more in terms of a deliberate assault on my own limits. In fact, it was no longer just a bike ride , it was a mission.
First Aid Kit was playing over the speaker as I floated around in my pool staring skyward at the puffs of seacloud that waltzed overhead. It was Sunday morning in Destin, FL. My parents were visiting and I could still taste the pancakes and bacon we had eaten out on the patio. Time in my posting was drawing to a close and it was the first time in years that I could truly relax. Mine and my wife’s focus was slowly turning to our next assignment in Washington, D.C.
As my parents sat at the patio table casually reading, our conversation turned to what we’d miss about living in Florida. “I guess I’ll miss riding my bike around here”. What did I know? In spite of the paucity of biking infrastructure in Florida’s panhandle, Destin did a fair job of making key parts of the town accessible by bike. From my house I was able to hop on my bike, pedal about 6 miles to Henderson Beach State Park and run along the surf. Over the three years I lived in Destin I had made this the centerpiece of my fitness, sometimes stopping at one of the large picnic shelters that lay behind the sand dunes to string up my gymnastics rings for some additional work. When the water was warm (every month from March through October), I’d cap off my run by snorkeling in the crystal clear water for about 10 minutes to cool off, taking note of the dense quiet of being underwater.
My Dad mentioned this thing called the C&O Trail. “It goes along the Potomac River and runs over 180 miles, I think.” He didn’t need to say another word. I was in.
For most of my adult life I have toyed with the idea of tackling a long bike ride. Like across America long. The thought of being in the saddle for several hours a day, making deliberate progress across the beautiful, vast American landscape while toting along a few changes of clothing, some rain gear, some food, and basic camping supplies resonated with me in a big way. I would struggle against the elements, meet interesting people, get into and out of trouble, and walk away with great stories to tell! The C&O trail, I resolved, would be where I cut my teeth in long distance bike riding.
Within 48 hours of our arrival to our new home in Northern Virginia, I set about getting the lay of the land. It was July and I held to my commitment to conduct “The Long Ride”. In contrast to Northwest Florida (and to be fair, most of the U.S.), Northern Virginia is laden with bike-friendly infrastructure. I biked often, sticking mostly to the trails that circled nearby lakes and paralleled the parkway near my house. I began to bike to my bus stop. I found purpose in every ride which began and ended with the thought of stuffing my panniers and camel bak with kit and rolling along the old C&O Canal Towpath.
I set my sights on September for the trip. It would be a quiet time in the office and, since I was so new, nobody would expect a whole lot out of me then anyhow so taking a Monday off wouldn’t be a big deal. By August I determined that 60 miles would be a healthy distance to ride. I had decided to start my trip from the Rosslyn Metro station and Harper’s Ferry, WV was almost exactly that far away. In my entire life, I had never ridden farther than about 20 in a single stretch and that was probably accomplished during my training for this event. My riding was frequent but, in hindsight, very low-volume. If I can ride 20, then I can ride 30…and with some rest in between I could bang out 40 then 50…and then gut out the remaining 10.
As my training rides continued I began to see The Long Ride less in terms of exploration and more in terms of a deliberate assault on my own limits. In fact, it was no longer just a bike ride , it was a mission. There was a desired endstate, but the path to reaching it would be lined with risks. It would be difficult: my bike would be heavier than what I was used to during training, it might rain or it might be hot, I might have mechanical difficulties along the trip. I might not make it all the way.
Jimmy Doolittle and his Tokyo Raiders came to mind.
The Doolittle Raid
In 1942, Colonel Jimmy Doolittle led a mission to strike Japan’s mainland using B-25 Mitchell bombers in retaliation for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in the previous year. Owing to Japan’s vast distance from any Allied-held airfield at the time, the only way to range their targets was to launch from an aircraft carrier. Bombers don’t typically depart from aircraft carriers and, because of their size, certainly cannot land on them.
Thus, the plan was to launch all 16 of the bombers from the deck of the USS Hornet, strike their targets, and then head toward China to land. Oh, and each bomber and its 5-man crew would conduct this raid without fighter escort.
On April 18, 1942, the mission got underway. All bombers departed the Hornet and struck their targets. Of the 16 that took off, 15 made it to China (but they all crashed) and one landed in Vladivostok, Russia. Of the 80 aircrew all but three survived the mission.
The raid was not strategically decisive (i.e. it did not cripple Japan’s war-making capability) but it did have some powerful psychological impacts on both ally and enemy alike. For the allies, this was a huge morale boost in the wake of Japan’s December 7th attack. For the Japanese, the raid delivered a menacing communique: you cannot adequately defend your homeland and America can strike you from beyond the horizon.
I use this as an analogy in my personal life, though nothing I’ve done has carried nearly as much risk as Jimmy Doolittle and his team took on. But for The Long Ride, and for many other pursuits that would follow, the parallel was there. I would attempt the unfamiliar — and accept the risks associated with doing so — in order to send a message to myself. I was not in search of a deep “strategic” change in my life. Change, I believed, would come as a result of an accumulation of several seemingly small, occasionally audacious, Doolittle Raids.
For my first raid, the aims were fairly simple: have fun in exploration but ride farther than ever, pedal when I thought I couldn’t, and learn how the machine responds to stress. In a word: Suffer.
