I re-read my previous post this morning. I found myself feeling vaguely unsatisfied by it.

I am not new to relying on words.  Words are my medium. They are my bread and butter. They are also the primary way that I create art, and they are my comfort zone. Sometimes, I even feel as though I’m better in word form than in person.

That said, I’m also more accustomed to using words for story-telling purposes. Even when it’s informational material, I know how to shape it to give it a linear logic and form. Good stories have clear beginnings, middles, and ends.

Blogging is relatively new to me. I happily participate in collaborative music blogs with friends, but those rely on music and images, not words—and arguably, by virtue of the collective mixes we make together, those work toward achieving a narrative shape, too.

But I’ve been resistant to blogging for other purposes, probably because I’m such a control freak, willing to have a complicated, meandering artistic or editorial process on the way from Point A to Point B, but less comfortable with the idea of sharing it with others lest they see my inevitable, numerous screw-ups and false starts along the way.

What does all this have to do with cycling and training rides? Nothing and everything. I am coming to think blogging is a lot like training. I may be working toward a definite goal, with corresponding time constraints, but the experience of writing it, and reading it, is episodic. In the moment, goals and progress can feel murky. Training rides are like that, too. They’re an ongoing journey, not a destination. The Blue Streak and I may end up at home each time, but even after I am sitting on the couch—drinking iced watermelon juice and thinking of how soft I’ve gotten in my old age because I am loving loving loving the air conditioning this summer after my weekend rides—there’s another piece of the training to work at harder or longer. Adding weekly mileage one week. More hills the next. Speed the next.

That’s the thing about this endurance-ride training journey. There’s always always always another hill.

To be continued…

The episodic cycling training narrative structure: Lather. Rinse. Repeat.