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First signs of summer

Bobbin Head, at night

How not to drive, Sydney edition

2,200 words. 9 minutes reading time.

This was not the ride I planned to do. Earlier in the week, I'd planned to ride further, but I felt tired on Saturday afternoon, mostly packed. I put my Sunday plan off to Monday. On Sunday night, I realised I was now more tired. 
 
When the alarm went off at 0300hrs on Monday, I was not excited to get up. This is the reason I only spent 10 hours out riding.

---
 
Over the past year, I’ve formed the view that endurance cycling seems to have a systemic problem. Not the sort of problems that allow for virtue signalling, but a problem that is deep and insidious. Endurance cycling is anti-intellectualism. I've listened to enough podcasts, read enough articles and even tried to read books and never once thought, 'that's interesting'. My threshold is pretty low for interesting.
 
While packing my bike at 0400hrs this morning, I had my bottles sitting on the front step (inside the door). I found a cockroach feeding on my sugar water bottle. I kicked it off, killed it and washed the bottle. This moment was interesting as it reminded me how little we can imagine of what is happening if we can't see it. I know there are cockroaches around my house (I live in Sydney), but I have rarely thought about them being on my bottles until I saw this. I extrapolated this to all the things I don't see and assume don't happen.
 
The collective wisdom of the endurance cycling community (that I have found) is less than that of a cockroach on my drink bottle. In the past, I've referenced individuals for their failings and, more to the point, their inept understanding. No one likes this because we want to pretend we're all friends. Note the virtue signalling. No one is friends with everyone, but if you're not willing to publicly express criticism, you're virtue signalling.
 
This time I'll reference a podcast I listened to before the Rhino Run that had three participants in the race. I don't think I heard one idea discussed in the hour they spoke. Not. One. Idea. Two of these people have PhDs. What does that tell you? Here's where nuance is required: the riders at the front of that event were incredible. The winner was on that podcast. In the same breath, I can say that the ride he did was terrific, but no ideas discussed. Your training log and food protocol are not 'ideas'.
 
Why does this matter? For many, it doesn't. Winning races is a finite game. Ideas are infinite game. Ideas outlast your success. They move the world forward. By definition, someone will always win the race, even if no one finishes.
 
I wanted to write a different essay about how we fail to understand data.
 
Listening to the interview with Niall Ferguson on the Tim Ferris show, I was struck by how he spoke about the failings of historians and how closely this relates to endurance cycling. Niall spoke about how "...any causal statement, this is obvious to philosophers and it’s obvious to people who do the law, implies a counterfactual."
 
The classic conversation in endurance cycling - x, y & z happened. Okay. This means a, b & c. I am yet to hear one person speak about a counterfactual. I've never heard the word used. Let me go back to Niall.
 
"The fatal mistake is to write history as if it was bound to happen the way it happened. And this, of course, is the mistake that a great majority of historians make."
 
I posted an extended essay after my ride in January which I stated:
 
"Another way to say this is if I repeated the trip I did in January 100 times from the same starting point and imagine I do this simultaneously, you'd expect that over those 100 trips, I'd complete some successfully and fail at others. In each of these hundred trips, the inputs change slightly. Some are hotter and drier. Some are cooler and wetter. Some trips have minor mechanical issues, some have none, and a few have a significant problem that ends the trip. On some trips, I get good luck; on others, I don't. I start with the same training, mindset, and gear in every case. Depending on the outcome, the value of the information changes.
 
We'll never know what might have happened on those other 99 trips. I only did this once. I have no plans to do this again, well, at least the part out near Mungo National Park on a (loaded) gravel bike with 37mm tyres in the middle of summer."
 
The quoted section is a discussion of ideas. This approach is based on statistics, using populations and samples. I am acutely aware that the success of that trip was not 'bound to happen’ the way it did to quote Niall. Find me one other person that writes like this.
 
In interviews and Instagram posts, the implied sense that looking back allows us to see what was 'bound to happen' - the outcome that occurred once is an intellectual failing. Having made this mistake, it's not unsurprising (note I am doing this now, looking back without considering alternatives - ahh ideas, look, they're everywhere when you're attuned) to misunderstand what you have learnt. Niall stated:
 
"Taylor’s conviction was that most people thought wrongly about the past, had misconceptions about it, and these misconceptions led them into error."
 
In other words, you don't understand why things went wrong, so you changed the wrong things.
 
The self-help movement has rebranded failure into learning as a feel-good idea not based in reality. Failure is often the prerequisite for learning, but failing does not mean you have learnt. For all the failing in endurance cycling - find me one person who has stated this (that we do not learn because we failed).
 
Niall states in the interview:
 
"I believe, and I’ve always believed, that we are trying to learn lessons from the past. And when Taylor said that men only learn from the past how to make new mistakes, he wasn’t dismissing the possibility of learning from history, but he was being ironical. It’s probably right that no matter how hard we try, we’ll end up making new mistakes. But that’s not a counsel of despair. And I passionately believe that the study of history must be motivated by a desire to do better or at least to fail better next time. "
 
There have been two people who I have seen this year go overseas to endurance bike races and events and pull out early. On social media they talk about what they 'learnt'. They'd both be lucky to make new mistakes. Should they succeed, it will be despite themselves. Not because of their growth. It's worth noting neither person failed due to a lack of training or gear. They failed despite their training and gear. Once you take out these two causes, everything else is likely to be complicated and nuanced. Their explanations don't express this. Worse than all of this is the notion that they should be celebrated for having the courage to stand on the start line. You're on the start line because you could afford to travel overseas, not because you deserved to be there (as evidenced by the result). Neither person rode the remainder of the course.
 
In both cases, I would guess the problem was how they developed reward structures. This idea could easily be worthy of an essay.
 
For one of the people, who I follow on Strava, their photos show their reward structures as being picked up in a car, drinking beer and eating cake. They always ride with other people, primarily in a tiny geographic area, wearing their branded jerseys with all their sponsors. They post all their rides to Strava (I post less than 5% of my activities). You could imagine when you're in a race, and things are hard, that none of these reward structures is available, and all of a sudden, you have nothing to rely on apart from willpower which is weak and fleeting. Again - this is an idea. Any good first-year psychology student should be able to identify the problem here. If you can't replicate your reward structures in the event, when something goes wrong, you'll probably pull out once your willpower runs out. Sure, you might think you have a high pain threshold, and you're fucking tough. You still have a willpower threshold. Assuming this will get you through is like assuming your tyres will last indefinitely.
 
Coaches often talk about the idea that the first improvement stage is recognising the problem. These people haven't made it here yet, and I doubt they ever will. I want to say it's a lack of humility, but I reckon it's more profound. It's a lack of intellectualism. It's hanging out with the same small group of people and not being able to walk away and start again.
 
An idea worth pursuing is what should be your reward structure if alcohol, processed carbohydrates and people congratulating you are not going to serve you? That's something you'll need to work out, I have my ideas. My generosity is not to solve the problem for you but lead you far enough to solve it yourself. 
 
I am reminded of something I thought of a few years back "You can have anything you want; you just have to be willing to give up everything." It's an oversimplification to say that there are two types of people, but those who focus on the first part rarely grasp the idea; those who focus on the second see the meaning and just how fucking hard this is. There is a third group that argue with the premise entirely, those ignore. I have yet to meet anyone who has said I am willing to do this. One day they'll come along.
 
Returning to Niall one last time:
 
"So I say all this because I think it’s really important to convey to your listeners and viewers how exciting history is and how studying it makes you understand the course of events in your own life better removes that passivity that sometimes people succumb to. If you think great historical forces are going to have inevitable outcomes, if you have a deterministic view of the historical process, it’s very easy to lapse into fatalism."
 
Endurance cycling offers more than most people will ever take from the sport. 
 
If you ride with the same people, on the same routes, taking the same photos with the same reward structures, I wonder why you bother to pretend that you're someone you aren't? If you think this is being too harsh, then don't go on podcasts talking about or accepting the premise that you're there as an endurance cyclist.
 
You can't have it both ways.

Quotes taken from: https://tim.blog/2022/11/16/niall-ferguson-transcript/
 
---
 
The ride.
 
Ten hours out in the wind, solo when you're tired, is a different approach to how most people train. The revelation today was realising that Peats Ridge Road is a truck highway during the week and best avoided. The trucks were fantastic and were as generous as they could be, given the road conditions.
 
The narrow road, at elevation with gusting winds (60km/hr+), proved stressful. I could feel my front wheel being pushed out from underneath me at various points. Blue gravel on my left and a truck on my right. I wonder why people don't come out with me...
 
A few observations about the ride - despite feeling good for the first five hours, I was pushing a little too hard (heart rate), even though this was not reflected in the speed (fatigue). I struggled in the last few hours and was dehydrated when I reached Brooklyn. I drank almost four litres of water in the last 50km. I was also starting to feel the onset of cramps. Sitting in Subway helped this, but I never regained my power, and my heart rate stayed low.
 
The reason I mention this is two-fold. It's easy to lionise an effort and not be honest about failure. If you're training is not hard, why bother leaving the house? The second and more important point is that it is easy to overestimate where you're at if you stop when you still feel good. If you'd asked me how the rest of the day would go at five hours, I would have been wrong in my estimation. Every hour became progressively harder.

Riding Wisemans Ferry Road I video-called my girlfriend to show her the sublime scenery. As were chatting, I waved to someone in their front yard with my phone and my girlfriend asks "didn't we get water off them?" I think we did.

That's the world I want to live in. Give me enough time, and I'll eventually meet everyone between Wisemans Ferry & Calga. To quote James Clear, "Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become."

Do people not know this, or do they think they'll get around to doing this tomorrow?



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Andrew Pratley

Anti-intellectualism

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