Resolving the Bike Trip of the Mind vs. the Bike Trip of the Body

It was only a few days into the trek when I realized how much I underestimated the price my body would pay riding across the country at the ripe old age of 61. On the morning of Day 4 -- my last day in the Olympic Peninsula -- when I climbed out of the densely wooded RV Park where we had spent the night my left knee twinged with sharp pain while my right Achilles tendon hit me with dull, continual agony. I wondered then how I would ever scale the long ascent up to the Western Continental Divide in the Rockies if such a short incline was so problematic.

If “growing old is not for sissies, then its corollary is that growing old and riding a bicycle across the country is for masochists.

The mind knew what it was asking the body to do. I had completed two long-distance treks back in my college years when my body was better able to withstand the grinding punishment. More recently in 2014, I had ridden 325 miles from Pittsburgh to Washington D.C. with my friend David and in 2020 I rode the 326 miles of the Ohio to Erie Trail solo.

But in the years preceding the trek, my body had taken a beating. I had a nasty spill in July 2019 on a commute ride, fracturing my left pelvis in three places, causing residual stiffening of the quadriceps in my left leg that was a trigger for the knee pain. I also required surgery to repair an inguinal hernia tear in April 2021, just a few months before I set out on the trek. The combination of age, injuries, and stiffness was a sludge of sorts from which emerged dark doubts that I would not be able to complete the trek.

To separate mind and body seems disingenuous because, after all, they are part of the same physical form. Yet, psyche and soma have distinctly different functions and capabilities, creating tension and often leading to conflict between the two. We have all experienced how setting a goal often requires us to push ourselves beyond the limits of our bodies. Endurance athletes do this very well. Fatigue is an enemy that must be overcome to beat opponents or achieve a personal goal, such as completing an event with a faster time.

I wouldn’t be surprised if my mind and body were to have a conversation about the trek, it would go something like this:

Mind (excitedly): “Let’s go on a bike trip. It’ll be fun!”

Body (wryly): “Not if I can help it.”

Nursing a sore knee on Day 5 (a rest day in Issaquah, Washington), I became aware of this conflict. The mind – the executor of the ego’s will – so desired to complete the trek. After all, I had been dreaming of crossing the country for years. My achievement-oriented mindset was the sword-in-hand, damn-the-torpedoes-full-speed-ahead yang mirror of my ego. The body, however, was the beast of burden on which the mind so casually rode, one which required respect and care. But on Day 5, even though I had only covered a mere 179 miles, I realized that this vision wasn’t enough, that I required full buy-in from my heretofore ignored body. I struggled to resolve the conflict between the bike trip of the mind and the bike trip of the body.

I departed Issaquah on Day 6 wearing a newly purchased knee brace with KT Tape strategically applied on my right heel and left knee. By the end of the day, I had scaled the 30 miles up the western flank of the Cascades to Snoqualmie Pass (ascending more than 3,300 vertical feet). The knee brace was a life saver, and, psychologically, I felt as if I had passed my first test. Several days later, the knee pain was a distant memory, and I concluded that the body was becoming accustomed to the demands my mind had imposed on it. Surely, I would only get stronger over time.

Cue ironic laughter of the Gods.

This self-congratulatory mindset was sadistically humbled soon afterwards when chafe erupted like an archipelago of flaming volcanoes on the inside of my upper thigh. A few days later I began to feel waves of chest pain. As the weeks passed, the combination of heat, muscle soreness, and general wear and tear eroded my stamina, and I became increasingly weaker. The physical stress created bizarre symptoms, such as when, on the morning of my last day in Wyoming, my sphincter muscles started tremoring involuntarily and continued to do so intermittently for the remainder of the trek. Riding on narrow lanes surrounded by corn and soybeans in central Illinois, the heat and humidity combo drained my essence, like a Gelfing in Jim Henson’s movie The Dark Crystal suffering at the hands of the evil Skeksis. The worst was when a weeks-long nagging ache in my ribs exploded in excruciating pain in my B&B bed in Pennsylvania, casting doubt on my ability to complete the trek. And yet, with each crisis, the mind commanded the body to get on the bike and pedal hours each day.

Endless soybeans and corn meet on opposite ends of an Illinois county road.

Of all the physical symptoms, the chest pains were probably cause for the most concern. I rationalized (as a means to allay the anxiety) that the pain was only a temporary response to the physical stress I needed to endure daily, and that it would recede as I rode eastwards. But my outlook was tested barely a few miles after leaving camp that day when I experienced another wave of tightness on the left side of my chest. It was early in the day, and I was riding comfortably (the temps were not yet in triple-digit range). The road followed a stream, which, in one of those fluid free-associative moments, led me to consider the virtue of water in Taoism (water may be soft, but it can penetrate the hardest of rocks).

In this Taoist frame of mind, when the pain began, it was easy to enter a state of what I can best describe as “moving meditation.” Instead of mentally feeding the cycle of doubt and fear, I consciously relaxed my body and, as I turned the cranks, started breathing deeply.

Hold on a second. If mind and body are a closed-loop duality, who then is the “I” that directed the mind to relax? Many traditions or philosophies speak to this. In the Hindu-Vedanta tradition, it is Purusha, the true self, that is the unchanging, observing consciousness distinct from mind and body. Zen Buddhists speak of reaching a state of mindfulness as a presence that transcends the “thinking mind” or the “doing body.” Jungians speak of the Self, the archetypical foundation of the psyche, that mediates between conscious and unconsciousness, instinct and thought.

The answer is less relevant than what I was able to do that morning in Idaho. Using habits internalized from years of qigong practice, I turned inward, focusing only on my breath and deliberately erased from my mind all plans: the day’s route, arriving at a certain location by a certain time, even the larger objective of making it to the Atlantic Ocean. I recognized that up to this point, I had been struggling to hold the tension between the achievement-oriented nature of my goal and the need to remain in the present moment and listen to what my body needed. Breathing helped me merge these two opposites. Almost instantly, I felt physically lighter.

From that moment on, the chest pains never returned.