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February 28, 2008
Sunday in Hell
While spinning today, I was watching a Sunday in Hell which is a documentary on Paris-Roubaix from the 70's when Merx was still rising. First, the music on this movie totally sucks. It has an operatic tune that is trying to add drama to the scenes on screen, but it just comes across as high-pitched noise. It is hard to concentrate on the trainer while having to hear that. Second, I realized that I can never complain again while riding or racing after watching the beating these guys take during the race. Watching the first section of cobbles had my stomach in knots. The dust kicked up by the cars and moto bikes is atrocious. Then add the wind (and sometimes rain) and the cobbles themselves and hell is truly created. Watching the faces of these men while they traverse the cobbles, which is also the place where these guys start attacking pushing up the pace in general, just amazes me. Then you look at their arms and you can see the shock their bodies are taking as the bop, rise, and drop over each cobble, and my own arms start to hurt.
So this morning, when my alarm went off at 5:50 AM and I headed down for my 1/2 hour easy spin as a recovery to yesterday's interval session, I was complaining because my legs felt like crap and my mental motivation was 100% gone. About 1/2 through my short session while watching these men fling themselves across the cobbles and knowing that all but a select few were there to just suffer with no glory, I stopped complaining. Yeah I was tired and my head was not in it, but I muscled through an easy session and felt better for it at the end.
Posted by kermisch at February 28, 2008 9:16 AM