Overland: Shifting Habits
Overland: Shifting Habits
Words: Amity Rockwell
Photos: Zack Piánko, Wil Matthews
I used to break everything into two parts. Sleep and awake. Intro and extroverted. Excitement, rest. Chaos peace. I put myself in the introvert box and sighed with great relief after coming home from a race that blurs lots of micro conversations, of “Hey how’ve you beens?” in passing, until I can go home and tuck into my strange mind and the lack of stimulation feels good.
I am not an introvert. I am forced to confess this to myself every time my calendar pops up and reminds me that Super Skaggs is tomorrow BWR is tomorrow Dirty Kanza is tomorrow and I want to scream!
I want to pack into a starting corral and elbow all the old men off of my line and smell the people who didn’t bother to shower after yesterday’s shakeout and then I want to lie on the ground and hug some other disgusting people and pack into a bar late that night and complain about people touching me.
I miss what I can’t have. It’s a troublesome aspect of being human that we are content only when we are slightly unhappy, that everything trends towards entropy and even us quiet ones take comfort in that assurance.
Nothing tastes as good when you are full. The quiet isn’t what it used to be when the loudness is gone.
Socially Isolated
In a certain sense, I have been socially isolated for a few years now. A life centered on distance cycling has kept me relatively solo, as humans go, interactions limited to asking the barista what’s on drip today and waving at a car who lets me pass on a descent. Habitually declining invitations to things in order to ride 10 hours by myself on Sunday.
This feels more natural to me than big get-togethers, crowded rooms and concerts, the necessary evil of a rush hour train ride across the Bay satisfying all the human closeness I really need every week.
So pretending like this is a massive behavioral shift for me would be a little bit false. I think it’s easier to see races as being the outlier in a previous existence that was actually pretty similar to this one. I am at ease in slowness, surrounded by a world that moves faster than I can think or write. Maybe that is why endurance sports call to me - a disregard for speed; a reward for slow persistence.
And yet I can’t seem to make myself comfortable with this new life, and I spend so much time wondering why that is. I don’t have a full answer yet but I have come to realize slowness is pretty devoid of meaning when it is not in contrast to stress, to speed, to weeks that are a blur of flight connections and bike builds and seeing how high my heart rate can go for how long. Slowness was sweet because it was a respite, a welcome decompression.
There is no shifting now. Every day is the same. Thursday is Sunday is Tuesday.
Creatures of Habit
I wake up, drink one coffee, two coffees, thirty minutes of yoga, and then look at my emails. I have no excuse not to answer them but some list in my inbox as my brain feels like a mass of tissue and I don't have the answers I think people are looking for. I consider riding. Where? This loop or that loop, the issue being that I’ve already ridden this loop and that loop and also that variation on this loop this week already. Or was it last week?
I feel like I am training for nothing as races are cancelled and postponed to the fall, to 2021. And then what? Offseason again. Unwelcome to me after an anti-climactic 2020.
And look at me now! Whining about absolute freedom to do all those things I said I would do if I weren’t so gosh darn busy with racing all the time. My garden. My sourdough, which isn’t even a new quarantine hobby (this bread thing is a lifestyle), but heck if it isn’t better than ever now. My yoga practice. I can fold in half and put my hands flat on the ground for the first time in my life. Progress of a sort!
We are creatures of habit. Think about that phrase. We have routines and we love them and we fall to pieces when the routines do. We are but creatures. We have habits.
Mundane Freedoms
I denounce all the media pushing change and progress down my throat during this time. But a chance to destroy old habits, establish new habits, habits that gift me a serenity through the unknown - that is something I can hold onto. Habits come from repetition and with a year wiped clean of dates and destinations, I can methodically plot my slow reluctant journeys towards understanding myself and this weird existence and all that it brings.
Here is to emptiness and small mundane freedoms and an everlasting capacity for complaining, and through the complaining, contentment.
While defending the DK200 title in 2020 has taken a pause, riding has not, as #trainingfornothing has also become riding for meditation, cycling for catharsis, or perhaps simply enjoying again the freedom of the journey itself.
Amity has been doing much of her coastal exploring on the Canyon Endurace CF SL – and you can see her bike check on our Instagram!
Words: Amity Rockwell
Photos: Zack Piánko, Wil Matthews
I used to break everything into two parts. Sleep and awake. Intro and extroverted. Excitement, rest. Chaos peace. I put myself in the introvert box and sighed with great relief after coming home from a race that blurs lots of micro conversations, of “Hey how’ve you beens?” in passing, until I can go home and tuck into my strange mind and the lack of stimulation feels good.
I am not an introvert. I am forced to confess this to myself every time my calendar pops up and reminds me that Super Skaggs is tomorrow BWR is tomorrow Dirty Kanza is tomorrow and I want to scream!
I want to pack into a starting corral and elbow all the old men off of my line and smell the people who didn’t bother to shower after yesterday’s shakeout and then I want to lie on the ground and hug some other disgusting people and pack into a bar late that night and complain about people touching me.
I miss what I can’t have. It’s a troublesome aspect of being human that we are content only when we are slightly unhappy, that everything trends towards entropy and even us quiet ones take comfort in that assurance.
Nothing tastes as good when you are full. The quiet isn’t what it used to be when the loudness is gone.
Socially Isolated
In a certain sense, I have been socially isolated for a few years now. A life centered on distance cycling has kept me relatively solo, as humans go, interactions limited to asking the barista what’s on drip today and waving at a car who lets me pass on a descent. Habitually declining invitations to things in order to ride 10 hours by myself on Sunday.
This feels more natural to me than big get-togethers, crowded rooms and concerts, the necessary evil of a rush hour train ride across the Bay satisfying all the human closeness I really need every week.
So pretending like this is a massive behavioral shift for me would be a little bit false. I think it’s easier to see races as being the outlier in a previous existence that was actually pretty similar to this one. I am at ease in slowness, surrounded by a world that moves faster than I can think or write. Maybe that is why endurance sports call to me - a disregard for speed; a reward for slow persistence.
And yet I can’t seem to make myself comfortable with this new life, and I spend so much time wondering why that is. I don’t have a full answer yet but I have come to realize slowness is pretty devoid of meaning when it is not in contrast to stress, to speed, to weeks that are a blur of flight connections and bike builds and seeing how high my heart rate can go for how long. Slowness was sweet because it was a respite, a welcome decompression.
There is no shifting now. Every day is the same. Thursday is Sunday is Tuesday.
Creatures of Habit
I wake up, drink one coffee, two coffees, thirty minutes of yoga, and then look at my emails. I have no excuse not to answer them but some list in my inbox as my brain feels like a mass of tissue and I don't have the answers I think people are looking for. I consider riding. Where? This loop or that loop, the issue being that I’ve already ridden this loop and that loop and also that variation on this loop this week already. Or was it last week?
I feel like I am training for nothing as races are cancelled and postponed to the fall, to 2021. And then what? Offseason again. Unwelcome to me after an anti-climactic 2020.
And look at me now! Whining about absolute freedom to do all those things I said I would do if I weren’t so gosh darn busy with racing all the time. My garden. My sourdough, which isn’t even a new quarantine hobby (this bread thing is a lifestyle), but heck if it isn’t better than ever now. My yoga practice. I can fold in half and put my hands flat on the ground for the first time in my life. Progress of a sort!
We are creatures of habit. Think about that phrase. We have routines and we love them and we fall to pieces when the routines do. We are but creatures. We have habits.
Mundane Freedoms
I denounce all the media pushing change and progress down my throat during this time. But a chance to destroy old habits, establish new habits, habits that gift me a serenity through the unknown - that is something I can hold onto. Habits come from repetition and with a year wiped clean of dates and destinations, I can methodically plot my slow reluctant journeys towards understanding myself and this weird existence and all that it brings.
Here is to emptiness and small mundane freedoms and an everlasting capacity for complaining, and through the complaining, contentment.
While defending the DK200 title in 2020 has taken a pause, riding has not, as #trainingfornothing has also become riding for meditation, cycling for catharsis, or perhaps simply enjoying again the freedom of the journey itself.
Amity has been doing much of her coastal exploring on the Canyon Endurace CF SL – and you can see her bike check on our Instagram!