Redemption

I feel like a cliff diver standing on the edge looking at the white water below as it crashes against the rocks. I know what it will feel like if I jump, that moment of freefall as my mind goes blank and the air around me goes silent.
The whistle of the wind as my senses overload and my heartbeat quickens. The adrenaline pumps as the fragile body plummets, placing all faith in destiny and the outcome of life and death with chance.
Like a poker player, you plan, plot, scheme and prepare as best you can but in the end it all comes down to fate. As the dealer flips the final cards, will it be a triumphant punch in the air, like the diver returning to the surface or will it be that one gamble too far, the soul destroying sink to the ocean floor?

7 months of training have come to this. Tomorrow, my grand depart on my own Tour de France. I know now that I have done all I can and I feel ready, stronger. I still feel like I’m standing on the edge, on the brink of something special, something defining. A challenge.

To some, a challenge that may not seem that mean a feat. I’ve had it all over the last few months. The supporters, the disbelievers, the questioners, the mocking. 300 miles? That’s easy… oh I did that last year. Not much of a challenge is it?

I am not doing this for anyone else. Not for a charity. Not for a group of people less fortunate than myself. Not for a jolly. Not for a laugh or because it’s there. I’m doing this for me. I find that for some people this is the hardest thing that they fail to understand. The selfishness of it all.

I don’t care about anything else. I need to do this to prove it to myself that I can. That for once, I follow through with something that I set out to do. For once, I don’t take the easy option. For once, I train and I put in the hard work and I deserve every bit of goodness that comes out of that hard work.

For the times when I’ve said no to the alcohol, no to the chocolate bar, for the double training sessions when all I want to do is rest. The early starts, the look on my girlfriend and children’s faces when for the umpteenth weekend in a row I’ve put on my cycling gear and said, “I’ll see you this evening.”

Cold, wet, hot, dry miles. Miles on my own, miles with friends, miles with strangers. Miles when the wind is blowing in my face and the rain is clinging and dripping in equal measures. When it’s so hot that you just can’t take any more and question, “Why did I agree to this?” Days when I’ve felt like I can’t turn the pedal one more time, when my lungs hurt so much on that final climb that they feel like they must be filling with blood. The days when I’m flying, invincible and that hill that I walked up last year felt effortless this year. The days when I could take on the world and days when I want to curl up in a ball and sob so that the world can forget about me.

These are the days that make me stronger, the days that define a person, the days that I must go through to better myself and become the person I want to be. The days when I can puff out my chest and scream at the top of my voice, “THE REASON I AM HERE TODAY IS BECAUSE OF ME”

Me, 300 miles, 3 days and the start of the rest of my life.

Let’s finish the game.