Testing Limits

That's really what it's about.

How do you know what the limits are without testing them?

It's like sex. You can't know what you're doing until you've tested it; you don't know what you like until you've tried it. That unsure, uneasy but awkwardly anxious yet excited moment in kissing someone for the first time? Same thing. It's a boundary, a limit that's being tested. It's the same feeling I get when I toe the line at any race.

Sex and bike racing share common ground: They're both dangerous when done without protection; they involve sweat and precise movements in near nudity; you get better at each through training; both have a lot of accessories; each requires time, energy and focus for a brief moment of glory and euphoria; in both cases natural talent get's you further; and afterwards all you want to do is pass out on the ground.

Testing limits is something I do on a regular basis, I used to do it a lot more, but you only need to test some limits once to know what's good for you. I value not only the lessons I've learned by proxy of these tests, but the insight I've gained about my own psyche. It's this insight that's guided me through some pretty shitty moments in life - moments I'd care to forget but inform who I am today, and in this way feed that insight and make me a stronger person.

It's cyclical. In the most simple terms, going beyond a limit can be viewed as a fuck up. You red lined it on the bike for too long and blew up before the summit. You tried to do 10 hours of work in 8 and half-assed the task. You tried one too many drugs and ended up hurting a lot of people who love you.

Bottom line is as long as you fuck up and then you learn from the experience how you fucked up and you don't fuck up again, then you've gotten what you need out of that test - you now know the boundary, you know the limit, you learned from your experience.

One day, you have a lot of fuck ups under your belt and all this fucked up wisdom from wadding through a fucked up life and somebody says to you, "wow, you've been around the fucking block" and you think, "yeah, I have been around the fucking block, what am I doing with all this fucked up knowledge?"

I guess that's why I write in this blog? Just passing it around I suppose.

I can't believe I spent four hours thinking of this while I rode today - that's what happens when you ride by yourself a lot.

I also thought about why fat people think it's appropriate to wear a moo-moo. Just as a side note, it's not.