Feet vs. Wheels

I love running.

Well, that’s not totally true. I love the first 45 seconds of running.  Before my joints start screaming at me and my lungs threaten to shut down. The 45 seconds when I still feel like an eight-year-old girl again, running through pastures and across terraces. The 45 seconds during which my body experiences the exhilaration of self-made speed.

I love the last 45 seconds of running, too. That’s when I congratulate myself on my amazing self-discipline.

Nope, that’s not true either. What I actually think in that last 45 seconds is, “It’s over. Thank God, it’s over. I will be able to breathe again in 20 or 40 minutes.”

I am able to make myself run for the 45 minutes between those two 45 second bits of time because my body has fond memories of running as a child. As a little girl, if I fell, my body simply tumbled back into an upright position, and I continued bounding across the landscape. Falling was only a slight hitch in my forward movement. My body still believes that is possible. It really has no idea that I am much farther from the ground and gravity has increased significantly. And I’m not telling it.

Recently, I have attempted to take up bike riding. It scares me to death. The only fond memory my body has of bike riding is learning to ride. That moment when I wobbled around the house without any help added another skill to a growing repertoire of ‘things I can do.’ With practice, my confidence soared. I traveled round and round the house until I was an expert at going in circles. (Oh my, there’s some kind of Freudian revelation in that statement.)

There was one problem with riding a bike. The only place to ride was round and round the house, which, once conquered, held no appeal. We weren’t allowed to cross the cattle guard and ride on the gravel road. We weren’t even allowed to cross the cattle guard to walk on the road. (Daddy was more afraid of humans we might encounter on the road than snakes we might encounter in the fields.) So, what was the point of riding round and round in a tight circle when I could run in a straight line across 600 acres?

Since my body is not as familiar with biking as it is with running, it balks at getting on top of two wheels in an almost upside-down position (certainly no memory of that!) and trying to remember which of the 32 gears works best for uphill or downhill and how the heck to get in that gear while trying to stay upright on one-inch wide tubes of slick rubber. Makes me love my size nine feet!

Still, I don’t like not being able to do something (except maybe algebra), and I detest being afraid of anything. So, with much encouragement from a friend who dislikes running but loves biking, I have embarked on this on-again, off-again attempt to conquer my fear of wobbling down a highway with huge chunks of hard metal hurtling past my exposed, unprotected body.

But first I had to get the right seat. That’s something calloused bike riders don’t tell you:  bike seats hurt like the dickens. I didn’t remember being uncomfortable on a bike seat as a child, but neither did I remember riding pitched forward with all my weight on my arms and the unmentionable, delicate areas of my body - it isn’t my padded butt taking the pressure on this bike-built-for-speed.

Before I purchased a new seat, I ventured out on the highway with my expert bike-riding friend. My old seat was designed for comfort, not for stability. I fought to stay on it. Add hills and gears and speeding cars and I was a wreck. Literally.  I wobbled and crashed to the pavement. My head bounced. Yes, it bounced. If I had not been wearing a helmet, my skull would have cracked open like a Halloween pumpkin. That’s a memory my body isn’t likely to forget. As it was, I came away with a kneeful full of concrete burns, a hip bruise, and free dermabrasion of the shoulder.

My new seat is still untried. My body keeps finding excuses to keep my feet on the ground. I will venture forth again, and when I do succeed, my body will remember that child-like exhilaration when I first peddled round and round the house.