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OPINION
STFU
Mon, Nov 21, 2016 16:45
75
fakepic.jpgWe drag ourselves up and down hills for a few hours, half a day, nudge into the night, emerge out the other side. We ride from one side of the map to the other, wiggle across the country, span a continent, circumnavigate the world. Up to and beyond where vegetation can’t survive, through deserts, tilt at mountains in the rain, we get lost in the lanes and maybe get a bit cold, our water-bottle’s gone slushy look. And we take pictures to show the world how hard it is and how it was a massive struggle of both mental and physical fortitude and there’s a gritty determined face in black and white there and we tell stories full of bluster and heroic pomposity and every time we retell the tale in the warmth of the pub the account gets exaggerated just that little bit more. The hill gets higher, the rain gets harder, the cold stings an inch closer to the bone, there’s an untimely puncture that lathers on another viscous layer of misery that may have been lifted from another tale and merged in the fudge of memory.
Well done us. Well done for enduring the hardship and the struggle. Kudos. Unfortunately none of this is hard. None of this is actually a struggle, not one single grimace into the wind, it’s just mucking about and showing off. Strut and swagger in a comfortable world, a little piece of hollow chest thumping that occupies a few hours in our safe and easy and mundane lives. You smashed it. Hear the ‘Boom’ echo emptily round the valley. Maybe there is a positive to be found in that at least we’re outside doing something, and digging deeper maybe playing to a tiny nugget inside some of us that’s hard-wired to step up to the edge of the comfort zone and annoying what we find with a stick for a few minutes. Then maybe it’s just to secure the validation and adoration of our peers and grasp the air for some long lost attention; look at me, I did A Thing. Lie back on the couch, make yourself comfortable and tell me about your relationship with your father.
That two or three hours a week that you’re pedaling uphill into a bit of drizzle isn’t hard, that little adventure you have at the weekend before you load your five thousand pound bike into the back of the Audi with the heated seats and driving home to your hot bath in a warm house to a lovely supper prepared by your doting partner that you wash down with a couple of artisan beers before settling to fall asleep in front of Netflix isn’t a struggle.
The cycling lexicon seems to have become infected with the canker of suffering. It’s almost become a religion to some. Ex Duris Gloria steers a little too close to Arbeit Macht Frei for comfort, and also too close to Godwin's Law to continue this analogy. We pedal the local loop and the globe in search of self-inflicted anguish, or just stay at home in the garage, sorry, Pain Cave, and inhale it through TV screens and displays on the bars, and then download it to other screens so everyone can see our sufferface. Look at me, sweaty, look how I have Put Myself Through It.
This cult of Suffering has to stop. The word has become diluted and is now almost meaningless. We’ve already lost Epic - once something reserved for crossing polar landmasses on foot because there was no alternative it’s now used to describe home insurance, and a 60 mile bike ride. None of what you do is suffering. It is the tedious rhetoric of a mediocre pastime.
All of this is self-imposed self-controlled hardship. We can start and stop this any time we like, unclip, have a cup of tea. Sometimes we even pay to do this. None of this is hard. There is a planned beginning and end to these voluntary sticky situations, no matter how horrible it gets there is always a finish, a way out. A bit of unpleasantness for a short while. Not hard. What is hard is dealing with adversity we have no control over.
Let’s start with an easily relatable example, something we’ve all been touched by somehow or other - ill health. Let’s just pluck Cancer out of the air as an example, that's hard, we’ll agree there’s a bit of suffering in there yeah? You might have had the misfortune to see or even experience that pain. Cancer can’t be made all better by a nice hot bath and a roast diner at the end of the day, that thing that makes the strenuous effort of your bike ride worthwhile, your suffering earned that. You can’t rub gravy on a tumor. Cancer keeps on going regardless, it doesn’t just hurt a little bit the next day to remind you it was there. It doesn’t always get better. The suffering often strives towards a conclusion.
How about filling your water-bottle, sorry, bidon, with dirty muddy stinking diseased water that might give you a runny bottom or even kill you? Water that’s a ten mile bike ride away. That would certainly ramp up the suffering on your ride wouldn’t it? Lots of people have to do that every day just to get by. Every day.
Just making it to the end of the day basically alive, that's what’s hard. An awful lot of people have to cope with that and they’re not on instagram showing their strained faces. They’re not socially linking and comparing their suffering to friends to see who won at today. #malaria. They are getting up and doing it the next day though, and the next day, and the next day with no end in sight, no recovery days. That's a real struggle. Riding a bike isn’t a hardship so let’s stop with the narrative of torment that’s telling us that it is.
Imagine coming back from a nice cycle to find your house burned down, your children killed and wife violated, and not by people from the rival cycle club, that’s what suffering is, the sort of thing that would suddenly make your ride really hard, and not because the bath’s broken.
If your bike ride started when you had to leave your town because it’s been bombed to shit and you may have lost some of your family in the rubble and you have to pedal through several countries to escape until you can ride no further to knock on the border of a country that doesn’t want you, then that would be considered a tough ride. That would be suffering, real deep down life suffering, a little different and worthy of the word to gritty and unshaven lifestyle suffering.
This so called suffering is entirely of our own volition, we can stop doing this any time we like, we can avoid the hills, we can not go race, we can go the flat and easy way. We can stay comfortably home. Some people don’t have the luxury of deciding whether to suffer or not, it is our privilege.
If we had real hardships, proper life-changing adversities thrust upon us; death, disease, illness, poverty, oppression, tyranny, victimisation, any of the vague horrors that canter randomly across the world, hardships that the victims have no say over, the sort of thing that would really piss on your weekend, would we like a sticker about it? How about a nattily designed t-shirt? Nicely done limited art print? Probably not.
Enough of this ritualised and revered hurt by choice, the ego-massage oil of faux hardship, enough of this Rule 5 posturing and preening rubbish. It is just riding a bicycle. When you have to deal with real suffering all day, every day, you don’t get a t-shirt. Until then STFU. Shut The Fuck Up.
Maybe there should be a t-shirt.
Jo Burt has spent the majority of his life riding bikes, drawing bikes and writing about bikes. When he's not scribbling pictures for the whole gamut of cycling media he writes words about them for road.cc and when he's not doing either of those he's pedaling. Then in whatever spare minutes there are in between he's agonizing over getting his socks, cycling cap and bar-tape to coordinate just so. And is quietly disappointed that yours don't He rides and races road bikes a bit, cyclo-cross bikes a lot and mountainbikes a fair bit too. Would rather be up a mountain.
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75 comments
I alaso tend to agree with Jo's point. His main point is that although you may just have done a 300 mile sportive in the frozen rain and burned every molecule of glucose out of your body in the process, you did the sportive VOLUNTARILY. If on other hand, your house has just been blown up by your own government killing half of your children and you now have no food and nowhere to live, THAT is suffering.
To a large extent, whatever you do on your bike is your choice, kind of a 'first world problem' if you will. We should all be a bit more realistic about the privileged lives we live compared to an awful lot of the people we share this planet with.
Well, of course.
I might say that a climb was 'hard'. I don't then say 'but not as hard as some kids in Aleppo have it'. FFS, I really, really don't have to. It isn't needed.
Some riders moaning on about suffering can be tiresome, but people moaning on about riders whining about suffering is a whole new level of STFU.
It prompted me to stop and think. That's not a bad thing IMHO. I might even read it again.
Strange that some people react very negatively, taking something personally that wasn't even aimed at them. What's so bothersome about it?
I tend to agree with Jo however the article has an air of high snobiority which lets it down.
We're not all Sun or Daily Mail readers (well not since they got rid of page three anyway!). And we're not all liberals either and nor should we be. (I used to think I was a proud liberal, but now according to the general media, I'm slightly right of Gengis Khan.) We're not all easily influenced. We are not all 'untouched by other peoples suffering in life' in the manner assumed in the article.
Everyone I think probably knows someone who likes to boast a little too much about how much they 'suffered' on a bike ride.. You can view the 'bad' in those people, the self gratificatuon in the boast and the lack of perspective, OR you view the good in the conversation and the person, I seem to see the good in most people no matter how much of an ankles* they can be. I think it's cute and is to be applauded anyone pushing themselves to their physical or mental limits should be applauded.
I personally don't like the word 'suffer' for the same reason's as Jo's mentioned it's a word which lacks perspective in the cycling world. I'm being led a little with the next statement, but shouldn't we direct our vitrol toward Rapha for the word 'suffering' seeping into the cycling psyche.. (I own some rapha and I don't care..) I certainly don't suffer when I'm at 110% MAX HR, is it suffering on a climb when your legs are like jelly and you're so light headed you fall over or faint, is it suffering when your guts spew the contents of your insides out - No I don't think so. I do it all for my own personal satisfaction and gratification. It is not suffering, it is pushing my personal limits for a short moment in time.
*lower than a cnut
I thought about bringing up Rapha - and not in the sense you mean! My impression of their marketing is that they're trying to convince prospective customers that they are engaging in an epic, noble struggle - something that appeals to men (mostly?) who probably quite like the idea but aren't really called upon to do in reality. Magazine writers ham it up because "how they had a jolly nice time riding a very expensive bicycle that someone lent them for a few days, possibly in a warm and beautiful location" isn't very compelling reading.
And most of us are probably a bit guilty of exaggerating our usually modest exertions when we want to impress. Blokes (mostly) bragging isn't a new thing.
Maybe road cycling attracts this sort of description because it's an endure-ance sport (where skill and inspiration are less obviously required than in, say, football?) But there's not really much suffering involved - you wouldn't do it if there was. Running might be harder.
The most suffering I've ever done is probably bonking 30 miles from home, riding into a headwind when I've not prepared for the rain or cold. And there's nothing epic or noble about that - I just look and feel pathetic!
Suffering is thoroughly subjective. One man's suffering is another man's pushing on a bit.
The best bit about cycling for me is fact that if I push on a bit (and maybe suffer?), a couple of hours later I realise I've not actually thought about much, which is good.
I like it, nothing wrong with putting things into perspective every now and then. This doesn't apply to the internet though, I reserve the right to kick off on that
Question: Why do you ride your bicycle?
Answer: "Because it's fun" or "because I enjoy it."
"Fun" or "enjoyment" do not equal suffering. On any level. Ever.
It's really not a tough concept now is it? Although the comments might lead you to think otherwise.
Thank you for telling me why I ride my bike and how to view suffering, I was under the impression there were other reasons but hey..
If that is all he's saying, why did he use a lot more words?
Looking for an audience to share a perceived pain via an online platform is common to both the author and the riders in question.
Gosh. Why so serious folks ? Everyone has different reasons for riding a bike and hopefully there's some common ground. Of course it's not real suffering riding a bike and people who go on about it are generally about as interesting as the dullard in the "19th hole" recounting a round of golf for all and sundry.
Sure, by pushing ourselves we can learn more about our perceived limits but those are lessons for ourselves right, not everyone else in hearing distance?
Anyway, enjoy your rides
#outsideisfree
To flip it around...
If I don't ride, I suffer.
I have joint problems and chronic pain. If I'm in a bad way, a thirty-mile ride is enough to activate the reset button on my pain receptors. Sixty miles and I'm walking like nothing's wrong, apart from a bit of fatigue. The effects will usually last a few days - better than dosing up with morphine.
I don't want to suffer, so I ride.
However, I don't want to suffer when I ride, so I prepare in advance. I wear whatever I think will get me through the ride with the least suffering. I'll choose a day and times which'll be easiest to cope with. I'll choose a route which'll minimise suffering or balance it with reward, and to ride with people who'll keep me going, to tick over that magical mark.
(I'm lucky that I've found something which'll give me some relief. Others with chronic pain aren't that lucky. I still battle the love-hate relationship with my bike - I love it most of the time, but getting up, out of bed, getting ready, hearing the wind and rain outside and still knowing that if I want to feel better for the next few days, I have to get on that bike?)
When people talk about how much they suffered in terms of how cold they were, or how wet they got, most of the time, it's because they didn't prepare for it. And as an experienced cyclist, if you didn't prepare for it, you're a fool. If you boast of how much you suffered, you're just proving how much of a fool you are.
I cannot believe that constantly making yourself suffer on a bike will endear you to cycling in the long term. If you have the choice, why go out at 9am when it's icy, when you could go out at 11am and not risk broken bones or bike? Choose the quieter roads if you don't like traffic. And wear and ride whatever will be most comfortable.
Scrape as much joy out of being on a bike as you can. You'll be far more likely to keep cycling than if you just have a suitcase of unpleasant experiences. (IMO, of course.)
Anyway what's so bad about angst and self-flagilation?
He's right though. It's just riding a bike. Pedalling a bicycle. Doing some exercise. The comments are frankly playing right into the article. People taking ait all far too seriously.
Saying he let himself down with the article...... Christ fellas, grow up.
^ That is hilariously lacking in self awareness and dripping with point missing, patronising conceit.
The part where it's stupid is the part where he moans that just because it isn't the hardest thing in the world means it isn't hard. No, riding a bike is not as hard as having cancer or not having access to fresh water or having your house burned down or your children murdered but FFS did anyone even make that claim? And hey, it's not as hard as those things, but it's still hard because fighting gravity and air resistance is difficult.
Its just a weird thing to moan about.
Suffer means "Experience or be subjected to (something bad or unpleasant)". I'd say that could describe a hard ride without it being an unreasonable stretch.
Exactly - nobody's claimed it's that binary, so to write an article seemingly complaining that people have is missing that point.
There's one bloke in the club I'm in has seen enough misfortune for several lifetimes. I mean genuine pack-it-all-in shit. Turns out every Sunday ride. Is he allowed to say a climb hurt him? Does he qualify to post pictures of him at the top of Mont Ventoux or of his Pain Cave?
What are you doing the TCR for, you silly tourist?
Posts trite comment 'it's just riding a bike'.
Accuses someone else of 'point missing and lack of self-awareness'.
Try reading the thread's points. You'll find Jo's rant has been picked apart for sound reasons, to put succinctly, as you seem to have missed them: no-one considers suffering on the bike as synonymous with disease, (they're talking about type 2 fun - similar language), there are degrees of suffering, he's unaware of the suffering and problems everyone goes through in life (including Audi drivers) and as such shouldn't presume or imply that people who're engaged in the 'cult of suffering' haven't endured real hardships themselves.
Jo made points at the end such as that if you really suffered you wouldn't want a T-shirt from it. That's plainly ignorant. People are proud of their suffering and do buy T-Shirts celebrating having survived cancer, pregnancy etc. It's human nature to take suffering and deal with it with a dash of humour and pride. That's at all scales, whether it's self-inflicted or otherwise.
Who is Jo to tell a cancer survivor to STFU about their suffering on the bike? Because I know a couple of older boys here in Edinburgh who love the big mult-day rides and banging on about how tough it was.
The only person I can think of on road.cc who posts anything 'frankly that plays right into' Jo's stereotype is ironically himself, as already mentioned, (athough he umms and ahhs about it). Which is why this article ultimately is about himself, and an attempt to one up other riders with wafer-thin sanctimony.
Anyway, thanks for the snipe and a chance to go over the material again.
A sincere post would have been on why people engage in the cult of suffering. There was a curious point made to me by an older rider recently that the stronger riders have the worse problems off the bike.
An interesting topic. In the case of the bloke in my club that I mentioned a couple of posts back, I suspect it's that he needs the rides, the club, the structure, the Sunday mornings. It's his church.
In the case of others I can think of, it's the other way round. There are instances of resources being devoted to the bike that should be being spent on families. I think I might be seeing one or two divorces brewing in slo-mo, and one divorcee will happily admit that he chose the bike over his ex-wife.
These are club riders, regional TTists and CXers, 3rd/4th cat racers: nothing particularly serious.
Yeah, I like Jo's writing too. Keep it coming. More power to your pen.
"All it says is - angst and a lack of life experience."...really? Is that all it says to you? Go create some art that man. Someone might get something from it. Some might not. But the world will be a slightly better place for it, I can assure you.
Double post.
Jo, I like your writing.
I know it is not an internet thing, but sometimes I wish people would say nothing if they don't have something pleasant to say.
I'm of course now wondering if you're referring to some of the comments here or the article...
I was referring to the comments. Sometimes I like a blog, sometimes I don't. When I don't I just generally fail to get to the end and read something else. Which seems a more balanced response than some around here.
Maybe if I found it offensive I would take a different view, but I didn't in this case. Maybe others do.
Shit I am doing balance again. I'll never get the hang of the forum comments thing.
I hope Jo carries on with this stuff. I disagree with or don't get a lot of it, but it's thought- and debate-provoking.
When a contributor posts something apparently (and I may have misunderstood) railing against general fakeness, the rules, 'suffering' etc, and it contains flammables like 'whatever you're doing, it isn't suffering' and 'STFU', there are going to be some strong reactions. It's surely predictable that people will
1 disagree;
2 think he's a hypocrite for posting at least twice about merely signing up for the TCR and then having a pop at the 'look at me/touristy' nature of cycling;
3 have had enough of his internal, existential ramblings;
4 don't understand that 'it's Jo, it's what he does' or that it's tongue-in-cheek, because we don't know him;
5 all of the above and others.
I'm in camps 1 and 2. I might be 4, but I wouldn't know. But I like the perspective and debate it gets going.
Would you sooner have it provoke merely gentle clapping?
No, gentle clapping wouldn't do it for me.
I am genuinely surprised that this piece did provoke such strong reactions though. That it might generate some debate is good, but many of the comments are hardly 'debate'.
For me, it wasn't the debate that rankled - completely the opposite, getting a perspective on what we think of as hard is a great subject to bring up or discuss and I believe this could have been a hard-hitting, thought-provoking, even black article that made people take time to consider that with a positive outcome. I usually like VecchioJos articles and writing and think this could have been one of the more meaningful ones.
However, for me, it was a sham, a straw-man, a conceit about a word which was made more unpleasant by it's dictatorial manner - "you can not say you can suffer on a bike, nor say in any way it's hard".. what rot. "Shut. The. Fuck. Up." .. great intro for a debate..
I'd say unconstituted summed things up nicely - an article about perspective that almost entirely lacks it. He seems to have taken a word, contorted it to his want, and then lambasted those that might use it where it doesn't fit into his particular, extreme and hugely singular interpretation of it. As davel said, "nobody's claimed it's that binary" - except Jo. Opportunity missed IMO. Y (everyones) MMV of course.
Understand completely, not always the popular option is it ?
Riding a bicycle just makes me happy.
I'm so shallow.
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