Embrace the pain my a@#e

By Gavin Moffat

A week or three ago I read these words from Scott Martin, which meant little to me at the time. “To be a cyclist is to be a student of pain … at cycling’s core lies pain, hard and bitter as the pit inside a juicy peach. It doesn’t matter if you’re sprinting for an Olympic medal, a town sign, a trailhead or the rest stop with the homemade brownies. If you never confront pain, you’re missing the essence of the sport. Without pain, there’s no adversity. Without adversity, no challenge. Without challenge, no improvement. No improvement, no sense of accomplishment and no deep-down joy. Might as well be playing Tiddly-Winks.”

So what Scott failed to mention was the pain that you feel when you are taken out by a car, while cycling. Yes, there is that pain too. There I was doing a perfectly normal and reasonable training ride on Saturday afternoon and a “gentleman”, who shall remain nameless, decided to add my name to the list of South African cycling statistics, those that involve being hit by a car because of driver stupidity.

Luckily for me his idiocy knew bounds and I still have my life, am breathing and able to curse him and can at least feel the pain of the scrapes, scratches and bruises.

I thank the driver. Weird I know but I am grateful because now that I am feeling an ache in my knee, shin, calf, elbow and shoulders I realise how much I want to do the 5150. I really enjoy exercising. I really get a buzz from the visualisation of crossing the line at the finish at Bela Bela. By no means am I ready to take part. My swimming is still terrible. The extra 20 kilograms really doesn’t help with the running and my bike is now basically ready to be mounted on the driver’s wall to add to his other trophies.

BTW — nothing flashed through my mind. Hoping that’s a sign that it all happened too quickly as opposed to, little mind for anything to flash through. But in the aftermath of being helped by two awesome human beings, Johann and Louis, and my kids doctoring me and picking bits of tar from my elbow and knee, I realise that I am in fact grateful for the fact that I am a man who can make choices about what he wants to do. A man that wants to do just a little more for himself and others than he did last year.

I am lucky enough to have the luxury of being able to make the choice to set a goal, to be far enough up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that I am empowered to set these goals and then strive to achieve them.

On second thoughts, maybe I missed Scott’s point. Maybe confronting this drive-by-bike-trashing is in fact the pain, the motivation, the continued impetus that is needed. A little extreme though, don’t you think?

Gavin Moffat is an accidental specialist in the field of communication and public relations and has been “practising” for the past 20 years. He started in a small agency in the entertainment space and later founded eCommunications with his business partner Ingrid Lotze in 1998. This led to the establishment of puruma business communications. He focuses on strategic marketing and communication, business consulting, social media strategy and implementation, a little bit of conference speaking and trying to be a purposeful, nice guy. He is a PADI open water scuba instructor, microlight pilot, trimix technical diver, Emergency First Response instructor and tries his hand at cycling, swimming and running.

Follow me on twitter @gavinmoffat