Quitting

Sometimes not quitting might actually be easier

This is the 42nd essay in the second edition of POISON, written on June 10th, 2012. I had done a ride the day before that only covered 65 miles but featured nearly 8000' of climbing, and one of the climbs, the Montée du Plateau des Glieres, almost destroyed me. The climb is 3.75 miles long and gains 2100' of elevation in those few miles. The average grade is 10.8% and I did not have a small enough gear so my cadence was probably in the 40s or maybe 50s — either is an enormous strain on the knees. I had just watched the peloton climb the lower slopes of the Col de la Colombiere during the Criterium de Dauphiné where the road is only 4-6% and they were hauling ass, with Team Sky on the front. That inspiration provoked me to bite off as much as I could chew on the ride towards Annecy, and halfway up the climb was fairly sure it was more than I could actually swallow.

Upon reaching the plateau I was blown away to discover that it had been used as a drop zone and base of operations for the French Resistance late in WWII. During the month of March, 1944 the British dropped many, many tons of supplies, which attracted the attention of German forces. Close to 5000 Nazi personnel fought a protracted battle against the (Free) French maquisards, killing over 100 and forcing the remainder into hiding. Almost 30 years after the war, in 1973, a national monument was built on the plateau to honor the dead resistance fighters. The abstract sculpture, created by Émile Gilioli, shows a hand holding the sun. More importantly, to me, was the small information sign describing the local resistance leader, Tom Morel, who coined the infamous and inspiring phrase, "Vivre libre ou mourir," Live Free or Die.

After spending some time at the monument and finishing off the last of my food, I descended and rode 28 miles back to the hotel in Talloires, where I ate and drank until I collapsed. Only then did I allow myself to quit.

This is some of the best road cycling terrain in the world.

Long ago I began training so that I might become a better climber. Fitness was an issue, of course and that was physical but every failure I experienced as a FNG happened because I quit when it got hard. Or when I got scared. I could do all sorts of pull-ups and go uphill faster than many of my contemporaries but most of them were mentally stronger and willing to continue when I wanted to run home to mommy. I had to change.

I lifted weights with friends and learned a few things. The gym wasn't the ideal environment for what I really needed because I could quit any time, because everyone around me did, because going to failure meant 8-10 reps since it was the thesis of the day - and our brains were preprogrammed to believe reps 6, 7 and 8 were hard whether the weight made them so or not. So although I didn't realize it at the time, the gym was of limited use to me.

The best training happened alone, often at night when I did laps uphill and downhill on foot and on a bike and tried to turn myself inside-out. I had no point of reference to indicate what was hard other than my own feeling. No one told me if I was doing well or not. I didn't have a heart rate monitor, and no power meter or computer — except for what was in my head. There was no social media, no "community" I could compare myself with after the fact. All I could do was plumb my own depth. Sometimes I didn't like what I saw. More often than not I was surprised by what I could do when I didn't quit.

From the time I began consciously training, and did so by myself, my entire objective was to teach myself not to quit, to learn what it takes to keep going when the easiest, most comfortable thing would be to stop. Climbing was a good teacher because sometimes comes a point of no return when quitting or turning back is no longer possible, which meant I took training (with climbing as an objective) more seriously than I would have if I just wanted to get laid. The psychological aspect of training was always of equal or greater importance than the physical for me. Perhaps this is why I have such trouble understanding the posers and liars and quitters I am exposed to by way of my connection to the so-called fitness industry.

You said you wanted X but you won't do what it takes. Is it because you don't know what you really want or what X actually means? Or that you do not understand what it takes to achieve it, to become? Are you ignorant? Or lazy? Or scared? There are solutions for each and they all require hard work of one sort or another. Perhaps that is what frightens you.

Well, you have to do the work. What I mean is this: I don't want you to get the result without having worked for it. You don't deserve it. The shortcut isn't. The gym address is on a steep, hard road. I have always lived here. And the rent isn't cheap. Talk is though, and that's a lot of what I hear echoing up from the valley below.

So I shout back.

You bite it off — and you chew it. Then you swallow and you smile even when you want to choke. Why? Because you crossed the start line. You said it. You began it. Now you fucking-well finish. It's OK to negotiate with yourself along the way. It's normal if you want to quit. You just can't. Instead you do what it takes to make yourself keep going. After all, it's what you said you wanted. To be confronted. To be set ablaze. To be transformed.

I hear them say, "It's easy for you. You train all of the time. For a living." The statements that always precede excuses. But I am human so how am I so different? You think I don't want to quit? Do you think I (naturally) want to finish everything I start? Do you believe it's easy simply because I've been doing it for all of my adult life? Well, let me illustrate how the conversation goes …

My back hurts

My legs hurt

My knee hurts

Hell, my goddamned brain hurts

I didn't eat enough

I didn't drink enough

My lungs aren't big enough

I'm not strong enough

And?

Will quitting make any of it hurt any less?

Yes, right now

A short-term solution

But what about later today?

What about tomorrow?

Fuck, I'll have to redefine what I meant by "this" when I said I wanted it

I have to rewrite the day in my head so I won't see myself as a failure

Or admit to myself that I quit and have that be OK

Not quitting might actually be easier

And better in the long run

So go on

Keep pushing

Don't quit

And this conversation plays over and over. For the hour. For the day. For the rest of my life.

Yeah, it's easy for me.

Last Saturday I wanted to quit more than I have wanted to quit for a long, long time. It would have been easy to do so: a simple u-turn, a little gravity, and then soft-pedal back to the hotel. No one the wiser. Except me. Instead, I spent 40 minutes at 90-95% of my maximum heart rate. Confidence made the first 20 minutes easy even though it was a steep climb. Then doubt reared up and I spent the next 20 minutes against the ropes in my own head. It wasn't getting easier. The lowest angle sections were as steep as the hard parts of some climbs back home. I kept hearing an internal conversation that George Willig had written about steep, hard rock climbing,

"It can't go on forever.

Yes, it can. But you can't."

It looped in my ears so I turned the music up. I turned the cranks over. And over. I was too proud to quit. I was too proud to weave back and forth like a paperboy. "Fuck that. Kill yourself on this hill. You chose it. You said you wanted it. Deep down you knew this was coming. And you started. By starting you signed the contract. So finish it. This is temporary. But quitting isn't — unless you lie to yourself about it. So go on."

And I did. Which took me even further away from understanding why others find quitting so easy. I just don't get it.

Live Free or Die

A mere 17 minutes slower than Tadej.