Bicycle racing is a sport for warriors. Some fight on the side of giant mountains, some rolling through the heart of the populace and others in all out dashes to an arbitrary line painted on the town square just that morning.
It isn’t the roads, or the country or the trail that makes this so. It is the earnestness lived, honor shown and willingness to utterly fail by mortal men and women who rise above any place they ever thought that they could.
Most of us stand on the side, voyeuristically watching, exalting their virtues, lamenting their fate, somehow seeking larger purpose. Some people have to be good and some people have to be great. Anyone who completes the Tour de France is great.
Seek what you will, but seek something at which to be great. There is no greater profundity than that achieved by reaching some place a little too far, just yesterday.
