I Finished the Race and Remain a Man

Last year I competed in my first bicycle race, an ambitious 60-mile course across the hilly terrain of the Blue Ridge. A year ago, I nearly quit at mile 45, and then again at mile 50, my quads seizing with an unbending tension I’d never felt before. The race’s patrol vehicles checked on me collapsed on the side of the road multiple times. I refused their help each time. I wasn’t ever gonna quit.

How ironic that if I had quit, I’d not have broken my collarbone coming down the final hill at mile 58. I didn’t finish the race either way.

But what would have felt worse: the quitting or the broken bone? The former, I’m convinced.

I didn’t quit the race last year, and I am proud of myself for pushing through the pain until I could literally go no further. I pushed my body, mind, and soul, and finished my race — even if it wasn’t the race.

Falling a couple miles short of the finish line haunted me for the better part of the past year.

For many weeks last summer into the early fall, my arm stuffed in a sling day and night, I felt like less of a man than all the other men who did finish the race. They looked manlier than me in their skintight racing wear, with all their fancy biking shoes and gear. Their finishing — and my not finishing — seemingly proved my masculine case.

I eased up considerably with the self-judgment as I healed from my injury. It took a solid couple months, and I started wondering if I’d give this same race another go the following summer. I couldn’t shake the decision.

There was only ever one decision to make.

Last winter, I registered for this race once again, determining to finish for real this time. I hit the gym harder than I ever had, gaining muscles I didn’t know I could gain. I also biked longer than I ever had in my cardio workouts, topping out at 50 miles compared to a year ago when I was only maxing at 26 or 27.

Objectively, I was in better shape for this year’s race than the one a year ago. A year ago, I honestly wondered if I could even make it 60 miles; this year, I had no doubt.

Even as somebody not that serious about cycling, but also someone who really enjoys the breeze of a bicycle, I knew I could ride with dozens of muscular men who devote way more to this lifestyle.

This bike race wasn’t about beating any of those men. It was about merely existing with men. Breathing their same air, riding in their same lanes. Climbing, descending, finishing with them.

A silly little bicycle race isn’t a substantive piece of where I find my masculinity. But there’s something about this rare experience of dressing athletically like these men and pedaling with them that viscerally reminds me that I am a man, even though I may also starkly differ, living like one of them for a few hours at least in the same four dimensions.

And I gotta say: I felt so good in my racing wear this year, ten pounds slimmer with a couple new pounds of muscle.

Here we go again, I thought to myself, slinking into the starting line with a couple hundred other cyclers. I couldn’t believe I was back in this place.

Last year, I was just so jazzed to be there. My first bike race was unlike anything I’d ever signed up for, similar yet so different from all those 5Ks and half-marathons in my teens and twenties.

This year, though, my second bike race felt more like business than a joyride. I had a year-long task to finally complete. A long, lingering box to check. My masculinity to rediscover.

I felt the anxiety of embarking on this 5-hour journey once again. What if I swerved and broke another bone? I told my loved ones to forbid me from ever entering another bicycle race if I went 2 for 2 in the broken bones department.

Just like last year, I felt great for the first twelve miles and the end of the first timed section. I still felt great for the next eleven miles to the first food and drink station. And I continued feeling great for the next seventeen miles, past the second timed section and the final food and drink station.

Forty miles. Just like last year, my first forty miles weren’t easy, but they were doable, even exciting at times, riding alongside a gorgeous river for a solid stretch. I also felt reaffirmed by my increased intensity workouts over the last seven months. I was in good shape. I felt strong.

But then began the final stretch of this race: a winding ascent up the mountain before a final descent into the city.

Last year, I started feeling my legs seizing around mile 45, multiple times, and I literally had to lie on the side of the road with fierce prayers that God would zap life back into my legs. That I could please, please continue this race.

God met me while collapsed on the side of the road last year, even if I had to walk my bicycle up some insane inclines. Life always returned.

Despite looking and feeling objectively stronger this year, and also more aware of my need to fuel my body with sugars and salts and carbs for this final ascent, I felt my legs seizing once again – this time at mile 41 — a few miles earlier than when the cramping first hit me last year. And I wasn’t even close to the hard part yet.

If my legs were giving up on me now, how on earth would I reach the top?

Why wasn’t my supposedly stronger body cooperating?

I’d never even considered this possibility — that my body would wear down this early.

I knew I could bike sixty miles.

I started to wince, and I started to cry. I didn’t want to quit. I couldn’t quit.

Just to add some cinema to it all, an overcast sky led to some drizzling rain. I pulled over under a bridge and collapsed to the sidewalk, massaging my unyielding quads with frantic thoughts of quitting.

I remembered to breathe.

Maybe it’s cheesy, but I told my legs that I appreciated them. They, like the rest of my body, were doing the best they could for me. My legs knew how much this race meant to me, as did the rest of my body. My entire body and mind and spirit were doing everything in their power, all in conjunction with one another, to get me through this impossible race to the finish line.

I started walking my bike uphill through the light rain, working out the uncomfortable tightness in my legs with a new movement apart from the cyclical pedaling. My cramping subsided, and I hopped back on my bike for a few miles, only for the cramps to return at the next ascent.

This happened over and over for the next ten miles, a constant re-cramping and re-walking and re-riding, pace by pedal, zig by zag, up and further up this mountain of doom.

God, give us hills to climb and strength to climb them. A prayer of yesteryear.

In those staggering moments of climbing impossible hills, I’ve cried out to Jesus like I rarely do otherwise. It’s brutal, and also intimate, a place of dependence I never want to leave despite also this intense urge to give it all up.

I met Mario in that final ascent, another guy my age similarly struggling up the mountain. I knew I was in the back of the pack, and I felt relieved not to be alone. He and I passed one another a half-dozen times up that beast, and I got emotional as I neared the end of the forever ascent, leading to the final downhill turn where I’d had my infamous incident a year ago.

My heart leapt as I pedaled down this perilous mountain once again. My arms stung from the perpetual pressure I exerted on the handles, braking for three miles down. I couldn’t let go. I couldn’t lose focus. I couldn’t crash again.

After dozens of miles, and dozens of weeks stretching back to an unexpected ER trip, I finally reached the bottom of that mountain — all bones fully intact. The race wasn’t over yet, still a final mile or two through the city to the finish line, but barring something utterly freakish, I knew I had done it.

I had finished the race.

I cried when I pedaled past my car, still parked on the street – the same spot as last year – able to ride past it of my own volition rather than dropped off in a patrol vehicle. I crossed the finish line, people cheering, even though I had nobody there to cheer for me. I felt sad but also more triumphant than I’ve felt in a while.

A woman put a medal around my neck, and I enjoyed the complimentary feast that I’d missed last year while awaiting x-ray results in a stale hospital room. I posted a picture of myself online and felt the love immediately.

In the end, I finished 142nd out of 179. Men and women. Part of me feels some masculine insecurities flaring, like I “should” have finished higher, like I’m still not quite good enough.

But thank God that’s only a whisper of what I feel. Because I do feel manly. I feel like a man for finishing this race a year after starting it, when I easily could have not signed up again.

I feel closer to God, meeting him in those hills in such a visceral way. I want to keep meeting him in the mountains of this life, with or without a bicycle attached.

A bicycle race or competition like this is a nice little metaphor for the spiritual life, isn’t it? God will meet us when we cry out to him. Even if it takes a year (or longer) to feel a sense of completion or victory.

Now what? I ask myself. Others ask me, too. Will I now enter a longer bike race after conquering sixty miles? This same race does offer a 100-mile course, after all.

No. I’m not signing up for that one any time soon. Sixty miles is more than enough time on a bicycle for me.

But – I do love pushing myself. Having something on the calendar once a year is a helpful impetus for keeping in shape throughout the year. And then to rediscover that brutal intimacy for a few hours with God.

So, who knows what manly competition next year will bring?

It’s good for my masculine body.

Even better for my soul.

Do you discover spiritual connection when you push your body to its limit? How have you seen God provide in the midst of impossible mountains?