Dostoyevsky on Cyclocross

Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote a great book about suffering and madness, Notes From the Underground. He wrote in the first person, adopting the voice of a slightly mad, introspective civil servant. He might as well have been writing about cyclocross.

After the existential sufferfests this last weekend at Granogue and Wissahickon, some of the fundamental truths about man's habits and eager willingness to suffer are better known to me than they were previously. I have trouble articulating that truth in anything resembling a coherent form. Not so, Dostoyevksy. Enjoy the pull quotes.

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What is to be done with the millions of facts that bear witness that men, consciously, that is fully understanding their real interests, have left them in the background and have rushed headlong on another path, to meet peril and danger, compelled to this course by nobody and by nothing, but, as it were, simply disliking the beaten track, and have obstinately, wilfully, struck out another difficult, absurd way, seeking it almost in the darkness. So, I suppose, this obstinacy and perversity were pleasanter to them than any advantage....

Yes, getting off the beaten track. You can interpret that as the moment you took up cyclocross. Or the moment mid-race, just before you went yardsale all over that off-camber turn.

Does not man, perhaps, love something besides well-being? Perhaps he is just as fond of suffering? Perhaps suffering is just as great a benefit to him as well-being? Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering, and that is a fact. There is no need to appeal to universal history to prove that; only ask yourself, if you are a man and have lived at all....Why, suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.

Um, what about if you are a woman, and you have a bike, and the bike has DuGast tires on it? Do you still love suffering? Anyhow, yes, the suffering leads to self-knowledge. I suffer, therefore I am. The moment of truth is when your legs blow, the cluster you were riding in leaves you, and you have a choice to make. Your choice informs your world view for weeks afterward, it is painful to live with when you discover in your suffering that either your legs or your will did not measure up.

[A]t last all desire in me to struggle against this depravity passed. It ended by my almost believing (perhaps actually believing) that this was perhaps my normal condition. But at first, in the beginning, what agonies I endured in that struggle! I did not believe it was the same with other people, and all my life I hid this fact about myself as a secret. I was ashamed (even now, perhaps, I am ashamed): I got to the point of feeling a sort of secret abnormal, despicable enjoyment in returning home to my corner on some disgusting Petersburg night, acutely conscious that that day I had committed a loathsome action again, that what was done could never be undone, and secretly, inwardly gnawing, gnawing at myself for it, tearing and consuming myself till at last the bitterness turned into a sort of shameful accursed sweetness, and at last -- into positive real enjoyment! Yes, into enjoyment, into enjoyment! I insist upon that. I have spoken of this because I keep wanting to know for a fact whether other people feel such enjoyment? I will explain; the enjoyment was just from the too intense consciousness of one's own degradation; it was from feeling oneself that one had reached the last barrier, that it was horrible, but that it could not be otherwise; that there was no escape for you; that you never could become a different man; that even if time and faith were still left you to change into something different you would most likely not wish to change; or if you did wish to, even then you would do nothing; because perhaps in reality there was nothing for you to change into.

Yes, in cross, it feels like one has indeed reached the last barrier. Of course, it's followed by a bitch of a runup, this nasty kicker, a downhill sweeper without much traction, and the wondering that if you quit the self-loathing would be worse than if you lost. Sarcasm aside, it does strip your character down to the bare essentials for 40 minutes. You *know* whether you have courage and daring and will, not to mention legs & lungs.

Fortunately, moments of acute self-awareness like this usually pass, and I quietly get back into the ditch.

Tempo intervals tomorrow.