I know someone who's a big bicycling enthusiast, so we recently spent a few weeks watching coverage of the Tour de France. In case, you don't know, it's a bicycle race that involves 21 stages through various mountain ranges in and around France. To call it grueling would be an understatement.
Whenever I hear professional athletes complain about how tough they have it, I try to sympathize. I don't personally go out 162 days a year and try to hit a little white ball somewhere that doesn't have someone trying equally hard to catch it. I don't run a few yards only to be smashed to the ground by a gigantic person who wants that brown object in my hands. I don't slice across the ice on tiny blades while trying to hit a puck without being crushed by another person who can get an awful lot of momentum on that ice.
So I don't feel I can comment on how tough it is to be a professional athlete. They battle tough crowds, injuries, the always-constant possibility of losing their job. I understand that it isn't easy.
But I also want to laugh at most of them. Sure it's tough, but why don't they try this: get on a bicycle, ride 100 miles or so up mountains and across windswept plains, battling hundreds of others, sometimes getting knocked down when someone else loses control but then climbing back on the bike to continue. Do this all day until you can barely breathe or walk. Collapse on the ground or stagger to a trailer. Then get a few hours of sleep and do it again. Repeat every day for three weeks (with only one or two rest days).
Some of those cyclists ride with broken bones. Some of them are bleeding. It's hard to get water or food sometimes. They have to battle through crazy fans who think it's funny to crowd them or try to pat them on the back.
And they choose to do this! There are several races across the world and they show up as often as they can to apparently try to kill themselves so they can be first over that line and bathe in the short-lived glory of victory.
As I learned this year, it's actually a team effort ... but it's still one person on that bike who has to make it through the day. And the next day. And the next.
I hope I'll remember that the next time I think I'm having a hard day at work. I'll look at the cushy desk chair I'm sitting in. I'll feel the air conditioning (or lack of rain on my head). I'll reach for my fruit bar and cup of water. I'll think about the weekend. And maybe I'll realize how relatively lucky I am.
Amazingly enough, though, we have one thing in common: they love cycling, I love writing. They'll keep doing it, I'll keep doing it. That's what we're here to do, in a way.
And that's what it's all about, isn't it?
