On Pain and Galaxies
Guest post by Sarah Pape, one of our SBT GRVL athletes.
About a month into training, I ask him if he’d like to go for a ride. In the past, he’d always be the first to ask and I would almost always say no. Never enough time, or energy, or ease. Of course! he replies and begins the long thread of questioning about where we should go and how far I want to attempt. We decide to ride to Little Moab, an expanse of dirt formations, cattle fields, and mud pits at the edge of town.
Like so many places he’s shown me on the bike, it is stunning out here beyond the cul-de-sacs and homogenous housing. A thin stream of water weaves around the orange dirt mounds, then, verdant fields dotted with lowing black cows. A blue line of sky cuts the mountains from the clouds and I think back to all the times he returned after a day out riding, smelling of chilled air and sweat, leaning in close to show me pictures of places that looked to be entirely different countries, somehow just a few miles from our front door.
He advises me to ride slow through the pooled water, to avoid the muddiest spots, and then cheers me on as I sit atop a little hill, paralyzed momentarily looking down into the lumpy slope I must cross. I look forward to the day when I can just assess and pedal forward with confidence and forgo the pause that comes with every dip and dive. He videos me and later I see how insignificant the chasm was and marvel at how large it felt in that moment.
On our way home, my wrists begin aching and my hands go numb, so I move them around on the handlebars, seeking some relief. I know I need to loosen my hold, trust my body’s strength to take some of the pressure off, but in moments of non-attention, I look down and I’m gripping hard. My other familiar nemesis, the wind, has also decided to make an appearance on this, my longest ride since starting to train. “I know it probably negates the purpose, but I need you to tell me you’re proud of me a lot,” I say, trying to make a joke, but also express a real desire.
“I’m proud of you, Sarah,” he says, smiling.
“I know, but like, why would they choose me to do this? To everyone else on my team, this
would be a warmup.”
“You’re the exact right person. Isn’t the point to get folks who want to ride, riding?”
“Yeah,” I relent a bit, feeling the extra miles in my butt and left leg, weak still from a lower back herniation and surgery years ago. I tell my writing students that comparison is the killer of joy, and yet here I am, enacting the same miserable rubric on myself, a beginner. A month into this process and I incessantly prod the future race in my head. If I ride ten miles, I project out what it would be like to do that plus twenty-seven more. Oh, and add 2000 ft of elevation. At 7000 ft elevation to start. But I don’t think it works this way. If I were at the start line with only a month of training, by the time I’d doubled the distance, my ass would be broken and my arms like tingly ghosts. And as with everything hard I’ve ever set out to do, you cannot imagine the end at the beginning. Everything is in flux—growing, changing, moving incrementally--even when it feels like you’re never going to get there.
***
After Little Moab, my wrists hurt, waking me up at night with more numbness and tingling than I’ve experienced in a while. I’m still getting used to the idea that I have Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. When the neurologist tested my hands and forearms, I thought it was to assess a pinched nerve in my upper back. The day of the test was my 44 th birthday, the same morning, in fact, I learned I was accepted to be part of the All Bodies on Bikes team for SBT-GRVL.
The doctor laughed when I asked him if he was going to electrocute me on my birthday. Kind of, he replied, holding my hand in his, turning it all different ways to mark the points where the electrodes would be placed. Little pluses and minuses traced the lines of my nerves and the electricity running through my arms. Jolting and prodding, he worked his way through the pattern, pausing to turn a volume knob and briefly broadcast a pulsing beat from the needle threaded into the fleshy hill next to my thumb.
In trying to track down the mysteries of my body, to understand the persistent and chronic pain I meet each day, I’ve had more tests done in the last two years than in my whole life combined. I’ve seen my brain, my heart, my thyroid glands, my neck and spine, my broken and mended ankle, my blood, my breath, my urine. And now I can hear the humming in my hands. It feels like floating through space and looking out the portal to see the vast galaxy beyond. Only this galaxy is inside me.
It is the most natural, most original position of comfort to pull your fisted hands up to your chest before falling asleep. Too, I spend many hours a day, arms bent in an L with hands moving over letters, forming feedback, poems, emails, and likes. In the evening when the words are done, I watch TV and hook yarn in loops, and over time a blanketing tide stretches over my lap and warms me. All these everyday comforts and necessary movements lead me to the sound of my nerves thrumming through this little medical office.
And now I cycle a few times a week and wake up in the middle of the night to the song of their ghostly pain.
My physical therapist shows me where to massage—the lines at the base of my palm, up the underside of the forearms, over the rise, around the margins. She was the one who encouraged me the most to apply for the SBT-GRVL team, assuring me that even with all my pains and headaches, old injuries, and mysterious workings, I could do this. I’d have my crew of healers and practitioners to see me through. Professional athletes have a team of people working on their bodies, she said, and this gave me a bit of comfort. No one does it alone. My perception of others’ effortlessness is the culmination of time and practice and commitment to moving forward.
***
Though it was their articulation of inclusivity that drew me to All Bodies on Bikes and a strong sense of representation in seeing bodies like my own unapologetically exploring the world on two wheels, I’m now understanding how size is the least accurate metric for the cyclist I’m trying to become. For once, I want to reveal my body’s capacity. Pain has made me fearful. And the fear of greater pain has narrowed my life. Capacity, from the Latin capere, means to “take or hold.” It’s not a mistake I associate this word with suffering. Over the course of my life, I’ve been praised and valued for what I’ve survived and carried. And it’s also not a mistake I associate movement and exercise with punishment, or how much I could “take.” Before my last back injury and subsequent surgery, I was going to a personal trainer at a gym where it was commonplace for athletes to vomit from overexertion. In many ways, it’s no surprise I was injured while attempting to “get fit” when the process was steeped in regularly pushing into a place of extremity. Other than a cursory intake form, any histories or knowledge I already held were seen as something to bypass or ignore. Endure to transform.
Rather than what I can take, I’m seeing, perhaps for the first time, all my body holds. I don’t have to suffer for her to arrive. What I’m asking for is already present. Yes, I feel the neuropathy in my left leg and the tingling in my hands after many miles on the bike. But I can adjust, and with each month of riding, I go deeper inside myself. When I first started on this path, I could only witness myself as if looking from the outside. All the internalized voices rode alongside deploying their cruel missives: You’ll never be strong enough to do this. Your body is damaged. You’re going to get injured. You’re going to fail.
And yet, I’ve continued. A few rides a week. Sometimes alone. Sometimes with others. And I’m getting stronger. As if an invisible gear shifted into place. My inner voice has changed to one of camaraderie and encouragement. You’ve got this, bb, I hear my best friend say as I’m huffing and puffing up the next hill. Even when I feel tired or stressed or, at times, in pain, I’ve found that getting on my bike is always a good idea. The resistance I used to feel when he would ask me if I wanted to ride doesn’t happen anymore because the answer emerges from an interior certainty, not an external pressure or fear of inadequacy. I’ve given myself utter and undeniable permission to do exactly what my body feels like doing. This permission is changing my life.
Many years ago, I was part of a Health at Every Size group and one evening our leader asked us to imagine and write about types of joyful movement we did as kids. I wrote about swimming, a rusty pogo stick, dancing, basketball, and my beloved first bike. My bike was an amalgamation of BMX parts, a banana seat, and basket built by my dad—pink spray-painted frame with yellow rims. I remember the unabashed joy of riding up and down the gravel drive until night fall. Two friends from our neighborhood would come in the morning and we’d all ride together to school. Growing up in a rural town, this was our small freedom. The dirt trails and shortcuts unbound and apart from everything waiting for us at home. To me, cycling feels beyond gravity, weightless, and propels all of me into arrival before my mind intervenes with its logic. Hurtling through my favorite tree-canopied path at the end of the day, that young self is with me, as well as the self I don’t yet know. The pain quiets. My legs invite the pedals’ resistance. I go faster. I feel the margins of this galaxy expand.
