Columns: MayDay!

"So," I thought, cinching my kidney belt down around my waist and watching a usually absent roll of flesh sort of squish out around its upper edge, "this is what it's come down to."

Usually by this time of year I'm starting to feel a little feisty. About a decade ago, I'd have been feeling feisty all winter long and would be firing on all eight by now, looking to implode sometime in June as my early-season fitness deserted me and an entire summer of racing suddenly spiraled down from being a strong affirmation of sacrifice and perceived manhood into a brutal ass-kicking of my own psyche. But, as said, usually by May I'd have been feeling some spring in my step.

Not this year. After what seemed like an eternity spent cowering indoors, watching subtitled films during the winter, the weather cleaned up and there was a sporadic glimmer of fitness on the horizon back in early March. Then there was a month of long airplane flights, with a little riding thrown in between airports. There's a lot of good to be found in traveling and riding, but when it's done as part of some brutal deadline scheduling, the airports and rental cars and massive quantities of food and liquor and dead-leg eternities between rides tend to dominate one's personal sense of well being to a much larger degree than any of the riding or other healthy moments.

Then, on the most recent leg of hectic travel with some biking thrown in, the weather turned to absolute shit. We were in Italy, the highways were closed with mudslides and the streets of Milan were flooding, and so we just hunkered down in Riva Del Garda, in the middle of a soggy throng of bedraggled German festival-goers who seemed to be reveling in their cultural sense of Schadenfreude and drinking themselves into daily stupors of magnificent midafternoon proportion. Not being able to ride, the soil resembling something between Elmer's glue and grinding paste, and everything between the soil patches being some form of jagged but totally snot-slick limestone rock, we did what the Germans did: tried to annihilate our livers with alcohol.

In retrospect, I'd have to say that this hasn't been the most productive spring as far as getting into shape goes.

The rolls of fat didn't really come storming back as they sometimes tend to, probably due as much to the lack of sleep as the fat-burning benefits of a stressful lifestyle, but everything kind of went soft when it was supposed to be getting firm. Time, as they like to say, to face the music.

Day one of last weekend's Brutal Reality Check wasn't so bad. I resurrected the bike that got ground into trash by the slurry of Italy and went for a nice, couple-hour spin by myself. Legs felt a bit heavy, Lycra fit a bit tight, but nothing too tragic. But I was riding alone, so speed wasn't anything to worry about, and I don't think that anyone this side of a tree sloth could describe my pace as quick.

Day two. Hmm. Day two was ugly. Four hours on a trials motorcycle, riding steeps and checking the snow level around Downieville on all the trails (5,700 feet, for those who care. Gonna be a few more weeks before anything opens up at the Packer Saddle elevation.). There's something about squatting in a jockey crouch and pointing an uncooperative, 170-pound lump of metal up and over downed trees for four straight hours that makes everything between the shoulder blades and ankles feel like someone sneaked inside and took a whole lot of tiny ball-peen hammers to every joint and muscle in the way. Day two was the day I felt all this soft skin squish out of the way of my kidney belt. Day two was the day I realized I'm running into summer in worse shape than I ever expected or intended.

Sad shape means one thing: Double Top Secret Probation. Which brings us to today. Day three of the beginning of what will hopefully be a summer-long binge of pain. With the words of Dean Wormer ringing through my head—"Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son!"—I started up the opening climb of this afternoon's ride, a 2,000-foot, three-mile head-popper, with nothing but flagellation in mind.

There is something so perfect about suffering uphill on a bike. When you are out of shape, it's just icing on the cake. Climbing when out of shape is right up there with the other all-time great moments of catharsis. Like confession for a Catholic. Like burning the mortgage. Like a fresh coat of paint. Like taking out the trash. Climbing when out of shape gives added dimension to the suffering of climbing, in a nonjudgmental sort of way. It's not like being fit and climbing, where there are all these moments of introspective doubt—am I in the right gear, are the other guys fitter than me, is my bike too heavy, did I drink too much wheatgrass juice this morning? No, instead climbing when out of shape is like digging upward out of a long, dark tunnel.

There is nowhere to go but up. Sweat poured in buckets, legs felt rubbery and baby weak, lungs burned like martyrs, bugs swarmed and mocked every inch of gradual upward progress. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned—uttered soundlessly as the helmet was donned. Hail Mary, full of grace—with every childbirth pedalstroke. There Is Nowhere To Go but Up...