This week's lesson, brothers and sisters, comes to us not from some crazed, foamy-mouthed bike coach, not from some pocket-protector-accoutred, clipboard-carrying exercise physiologist, not from some bulemic nutritionist.
No, this week's wisdom's source is T. E. Lawrence. Yes, THAT Lawrence. The "of Arabia" one.
If you really (as opposed to lip service) want to be as good a cyclist as you can be, draw direction and inhale inspiration from this one small moment in Lawrence's life, an incident ably and dramatically depicted by Peter O'Toole in the film.
So we have a young Leftenant Lawrence, a pre-Arabia Lawrence, outposted to some hellish backwater of the British Empire. He lights a long wooden match, pinches the bottom between thumb and forefinger, and then slowly, slowwwwwwly, moves the two digits up the match's stem until they touch the base of the flame, whereupon he continues their slow-motion upward progression, through the flame's lower quarter, then (tick-tick-tick), its halfway point (tick-tick-tick) until, at last, thumb and forefinger close around the final red-orange tip, extinguishing the flame. The whole process is strung out over maybe 15 seconds.
"Here," shouts a young comrade, striking a match, "let's give it a try, shall we?" He then mimics Lawrence's action up to the point where his thumb and finger first encounter the flame. "OWWWWWWWW!!!!!" he shrieks, drops the match and begins to violently wave his hand. Then, puzzled, looks over at a bemused T.E.
"Christ-O, Lawrence, that bloody HURT! he bellows. "What's the trick?"
"The trick," says Lawrence, oh so casually leaning back in his chair, "is to not care that it hurts."
Something to ponder on your next climb up Newberry.