Legs pump, crank turns, chain whizzes, and wheels turn.  It’s a never-ending ballet of up-down being converted into round-around.   And down the road we go.

Pressure increases as the hill starts to rise underneath my tires.    My breath catches a bit as my body struggles to adjust.

“Don’t you puss out on me,” he injects harshly.

I look up, the bright rays of the late-afternoon sun splashing at the edges of my glasses, rendering the world into a half-washed-out landscape.   I gaze up the road to the top of the rise, several hundred yards away and far too many upwards.    My neck drops my head.

“It’s a damned hill.   ‘Tough’ is kind of the point here, I’m going to have to gear down,” I retort.

“Bullshit.   ‘It’s a damned hill’,” he sing-songs.    “Weak.    So it’s a hill.   One of, what, half a billion on the roads?  Suck it up.”

Brain negotiates contract terms with legs and they dig in harder, pushing the pressure gradient steeply upwards on the pedals, and causing my lungs to panic into a pant.  Teeth bared, silence pervades for a bit as we concentrate on the act of hoisting upwards, thoughts turned towards the effort being expelled and the aching of the muscles involved.   Sweat collects in my helmet band and beads down my face.

“Come on!   COME ON!”

I can feel myself faltering at the edge of potential.   “Stupid.”  I gasp, “Why am I doing this?”

“Because you need to actually move your nearly 300-pound ass for once in your life?” he cackles.   “Because you know you can and you just insist on being a wuss about it?”

I sigh.   It’s the same old story; the same inability to live up.    It’s like a record whose needle resets automatically, starting all over with the same message, in the same, crackly fidelity.

I gear down.   It was inevitable.   But not so much that he’ll complain a lot.    “So why bother, then?    I’m just going to end up where I was before.”

He’s suddenly fierce, right there, in my face.    His mocking has disappeared.

“Because it doesn’t have to.    You know you can change this, you have the ability.   You just need to be convinced of it.    Now, MOVE!”

I move.   Not because the entirety of myself wants to, but because somewhere inside there’s a small kernel of myself that believes him, however unlikely the fantasy might be, surrounded by a lot more that desperately wants to have faith.    So I move.   I dig, and crank, and push, and pant.    And the top comes closer.    As I feel the crest beginning to flow underneath my tires, he chants softly beside me.

“Thaaaaat’s it, yes, that’s it.   Keep it up, keep it up.    That’s what I’m talking about!”

I round the top of the hill and the pressure releases from my legs, although my lungs have yet to read the telegram and still grab hungrily at great gobs of air.    I keep moving — staying in motion is the only way to prevent the large knotted muscles from freezing solid.

“Wooof,” I exhale.    I take in a breath and look around, taking in the grasses, the fields, the waving corn, the stretch of road ahead of me.

As the bike sinks into the downhill side, I can see him grinning at me, and I cannot help but crack a small, ironic, but meaningful smile out of the corner of my mouth.   I feel a new-found vigor rush into my legs, infusing them with a renewed energy and excitement for the next challenge ahead.   Pedals push, speed increases, and the wind rushes past.

The miles tick down.   He is still there, mostly damning.   Sometimes encouraging.   At the best of times, seemingly at war with me, but that’s how it always is.   The motivation is not that of the heroes, not that of the stories.   This is hard-won, struggled, squeezed out of every fibre unwillingly.   But in the end, it is real.

I glance down to look at our silhouette; two wheels, two legs, one body, and a hundred miles of hot pavement.

And down the road we go.