The RRR is behind me. It was crazy. Not sure if I will do it again. I want to, though.

In exactly the same way as last year, day one and two were just miserable. Horrible. My ass hurt, everything was totally sapped of energy, and I was close to succumbing to the heat both days.

Day three was great. Day four was even better.

Something happens to the human body when put through trials like this. We don’t get to see it very often living in a comfortable society, but the body is built to endure. Once you get over the goddamn hump everything seems to click into place, and the exertion feels normal. I remember vividly, waking up on the third day of the ride, 160 miles in, and getting progressively more angry and upset at the prospect of getting back on my bike. I fully assumed that I would be quitting somewhere after the halfway point of the day, if I even made it that far. The idea that I would actually finish the full 90 mile day and get into camp in a great mood honestly never occurred to me, even though that is exactly what happened last year.

We need to do hard things in order to prove to ourselves that we can do them. Comfort is really great, but pushing way beyond what is normal really seems to me to be the body’s reset button. Yadda yadda – body is a temple etc. People need to do things that they deem impossible if for no other reason than to prove how shitty we are at deciding what is possible for ourselves.