Shut Up, Legs!

Last night during gal time, one of my friends recounted her workout from earlier in the day. We are all at different stages of training for different goals, so swapping workout schedules and such is (somewhat sadly) fun for us. On this particular day, she was supposed to do a hard running interval workout, which included more than one red-line area heart rate bracket. Summers here in Greensboro are never forgiving, and the intensity combined with the heat and humidity forced her to throw in the towel a bit early.

"I just had to listen to my body." And rightly so, as she could have passed out from heat exhaustion.

Cyclists are rarely so smart.

Today was my own version of purgatory on the bike: AT Intervals, 2x30 minutes of them. I have a love/hate relationship with this workout, as I know it makes me SO much stronger, and when they go good they go GOOD. But when they go not good, they make me feel a little loopy afterwards, and are extremely hard to slog through.

As I spun up my heartrate, I could feel my legs were a little heavy, the number on the monitor a little slow to respond. It was not going to be one of the good days.

Now I'm never a pretty picture when doing this. I sweat profusely. I mean... a lot of sweat. I'm hunkered down with my mouth hanging open, headphones on, usually some sort of sweatband (did I mention I sweat a lot?) wrapped around my head, towel underneath me to protect the hardwood floors, and a rag draped over the bars that I blindly reach for when the salt dripping into my eyes starts to sting too much.

So there I was. Not having fun. Looking stupid and gross. And my body was telling me to stop. Not very loudly, certainly not as loudly as it does on some of the group rides I try, or the races I've attempted, but there was a little voice trying to get my legs to stop pedaling.

Of course, I didn't. I finished the workout with the numbers maybe a bit lower than I would have liked but still within acceptable parameters (that was for my coach in case he was wondering :)

But the thought occurred to me. With this sport comes pain. If you want to be a good cyclist, and certainly if you want to improve, you will suffer for it. There will be times when every cell is screaming at you to STOP. FOR GOD SAKES HAVE MERCY AND STOP MOVING YOUR LEGS.

But we don't. We push on, push over, and keep going. And when we don't, when we succumb to the voice, more often than not we regret it later, knowing that if we had just suffered a little longer, stayed in the pain cave for a few more minutes (even seconds) we could have climbed the hill or bridged the gap or won the sprint. And we kick ourselves for it.

This is why Jens Voigt's famous, "Shut up, Legs!" quote resonates so clearly for us. It is the cleanest, simplest way of describing what a cyclist goes through to get better, to win, to challenge themselves. We don't listen to our bodies. We tell our bodies to shut up.

Which is both part of the beauty and the stupidity of the sport. And also why all cyclists are, simultaneously, beautiful and stupid.

Jens Voigt, after crashing at last year's Tour and with no team car/spare bike in site, grabbed a bike 4 sizes too small for him w/ old fashioned toe clips from a kid in the crowd and caught back up to the peloton.

SHUT UP, LEGS!