Mountains

I stop pedalling. Not because I want to, but because I have no other choice. In the oxygen-scarce air that’s found at 4,600m I only have the physical and mental capacity to focus on one task at a time. My mouth is parched, my lips are cracked and I need to drink. The effort of climbing for the past four hours has left me fatigued and weary.   

Behind me lies a road that has already risen two vertical kilometres, snaking its way towards an azure-blue sky in a series of dizzying switchbacks, ahead is another three hundred metres of vertical ascent, a daunting thought if ever there was one. And yet, despite all of this, there is not a single part of me that would rather be anywhere else in the world than here, high in the Andes in Peru, surrounded by gnarled peaks that tower over me. 

Why? 

It’s a question I have been trying to answer for as long as I have ridden my bike. One that is, to others at least, made even more puzzling by the fact that I have a physique that’s better suited to track racing, or at least contesting long flat sprint stages, and yet my heart has, and always will, belong in the mountains. There’s something magical about the roads that twist and turn, coil and wind their way up the behemoths of rock that define countries and cultures.

I’m not alone in my love for vertiginous roads, I know that much. There are cyclists the world over, maybe yourself included, who take pleasure (a weird one according to my wife) from testing themselves on roads that most would avoid in motorised vehicles, let alone on bikes. From the iconic, mythical climbs made famous by the sport’s biggest races, through to the little-known stretches of road close to home that, for some inexplicable reason, have as much a hold over us as their illustrious counterparts. 

It was George Mallory who famously said ‘because it’s there’, when asked of his desire to climb Mount Everest. If only it were as simple as that. Yes, the mountains are there, but their presence alone doesn’t account for why so many of us continually return to them, often seeking out steeper, longer and more challenging ways of reaching their summits to gaze at the world below us. I’ve ridden enough climbs around the world, accumulating days worth of pondering time, to try and articulate an answer. 

Just like the numerous switchbacks that make up a great climb, my answer too has many elements, ranging from the simplicity of the act and the meditative qualities through to the physical challenge and sensory stimulation. And, in the same way that the best climbs develop and evolve as they reach ever higher, often sucking us deeper into our own personal hells, so too has my answer morphed over countless ascensions of all manner of climbs. 

There will be some who revel in being able to ride in the literal wheel marks of their idols, on ribbons of tarmac steeped in the history of our beloved sport, comparing their efforts to their heroes. Whilst the importance of that is not lost on me, it’s never been a factor in my own love for the mountains. For me, in the simplest sense, there’s something primordial about riding in the mountains, it’s you against the road, you’re either good enough to reach the top or you’re not – irregardless of anybody who has been before you, or who will come after. 

That simplicity has always appealed to me, and yet as I have gotten older I have grown to understand there’s so much more to it than that. For there comes a time on every climb where, through sheer physical effort, the mind begins to free itself from all other thought, the world around me narrows to the six feet of road in front of me. Nothing else matters, there are no worries, no thoughts, no voices, just the rhythmic turning of pedals to the thumping beat of my heart. 

Now I purposefully go in search of that escapism from my mind, from the world I live in and the demands on my time and attention. Admittedly there are less strenuous ways to achieve this detachment from thought, a meditative state that’s as good for the mind as it is the body, but none are as enjoyable in my eyes. The very nature of being submerged in the mountains means that this pleasure extends into the physical, and it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the love of seeing the natural world, never more beautiful than when surrounded by a cirque of viridescent mountains. 

But, when all is said and done, maybe it is the simplicity of it all, even now in my thirties I take the same innocent joy from riding my bike as I did when I was a little boy. The views, the fresh air, the freedom, the gradual ascension away from everyday life to a place of clarity and happiness, atop a mountain with the world at my feet.