One Man’s View on Energy Just Might Increase Yours

By Kevin Kolodziejski 

For Cycling and Other Stuff Too

You read the next question in the cycling survey and shake your head. Not because the survey’s already taken far too long (which it has) and you’re only halfway through it (which you are), but because this question has a painfully obvious answer.

So as you scribble down A lack of time, you wonder why any pollster would bother to ask If you don’t ride as much as you’d like to ride, why is that so? For if that question leads to 500 responses, you feel it’s safe to assume 475 of them will be the same as yours.  It’a fair assumption, one I hold, too. But my assumptions on the matter don’t end there.

I also suspect that in more instances than you might ever imagine that painfully obvious answer is a lie.

But surveys allow for anonymity, if you choose. So why choose to lie?

Why Lie About Why You Don’t Ride More?

I assume because it’s convenient, eases the conscience, and (more often than you or the pollsters might imagine) keeps the liars from facing up to the real reason: They don’t lack time; they lack energy. And once again, my assumptions don’t end there, and these need to be read closely. Assumption #1: That in a group of 500 cyclists who — after a good hard look in the mirror — actually confess to lacking the energy to ride any more than they already do, 450 or so would be confessing falsely. Assumption #2: That these falsehoods wouldn’t be intentional. They would be because those “good hard looks” were into a funhouse mirror.

You know, the type you find at a carnival. The type designed to distort things.

Assumption #3: That a funhouse mirror’s the sort you’re inclined to use when it comes to assessing the energy you have for cycling, and sometimes for other stuff too. I make this final assumption because this tendency had also been mine. Then I listened to an interview with my favorite college basketball coach, Marquette’s Shaka Smart where the interviewer began by thanking Smart for recommending a book to him years ago.

So I bought Michael A. Singer’s The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself (New Harbinger, 2007) and read it. And then — and even though I still believe the title to be hyperbole — I read the seven pages of “Infinite Energy” again and again.

About the Seven Pages Worth Multiple Readings

I did so because what’s expressed in the chapter is spot on. And when I recognized that, lo and behold, I had more energy for just about everything, including cycling. But before we get to that, here’s a synopsis of those seven pages.

Singer believes the reason you don’t have energy all the time is not because you lack it but because you block — and you block it “by closing your heart.” Now, if that phrase is a bit too sugary and touchy-feely for you, join the club. No matter how you choose to phrase it though, the idea reveals a fundamental truth: That you possess a phenomenal amount of energy inside you [that] “doesn’t come from food and it doesn’t come from sleep,” and if you stay “open” to it, it “restores, replenishes, and recharges you.” And yes, the idea that energy results from “openness and receptivity” is also syrupy and soppy. The hypothetical example Singer uses to make this point, however, is as matter of fact as it is true.

You’re in your twenties, your boyfriend or girlfriend has just broken up with you, and that has sapped you, it seems, of all energy. “You can hardly get out of bed, so you just sleep all the time.” After three months of being “simply too tired to do anything,” you get a phone call.  It’s from your ex who’s asking for more than forgiveness or reconciliation, but to be a couple again.  “Practically instantaneous[ly],” Singers writes, you have energy again. So much energy “it blows you away.”

More Words to ‘Blow You Away’

Now I’ll assume you’d be lying to claim Singer’s hypothetical has not happened to you a time or two. I’d be doing the same — as well as lying again if I professed to be anything less than blown away by Singer’s channeling of his inner Amazing Kreskin to accurately write what I “really” want out of life. “To feel enthusiasm, joy, and love” — and that we all can have all three if we “learn to stay open, no matter what.”

But the truth is Singer never fully reveals how to do this. He does say, though, the “ultimate trick” to staying open “is not to close” and that how you manage this is personal matter. So I’ll get personal and share the trick I’ve been using to stay open to riding on those days I seemingly lack the energy to do so. Which, given my age and injury history, is far more often than not.

But before I do, let me warn you. You could find it more sugary and touch-feely than Singer’s words. That’s because I recall something my cute-as-a-button, five-year-old niece Kobi said to me about 20 years ago a few weeks after I gave her what she came to call her big-girl bicycle. After we’d pedaled the two blocks from my parent’s house to a park, Kobi cried out, “Race me, race me, Uncle KK.”

‘Race Me, Race Me, Uncle KK’

And she kept imploring me to do so. Even though before we set out, I thought, I’d hammered home we were going to the park not to ride around it but so she could play on the swings and slides while I’d sit and watch. I’d hammered that home because I was feeling absolutely hammered. That morning I’d ridden about 25 miles to get to a 20-mile crit I raced for a workout, somehow got talked into doing a second longer one, and was only able to pedal home because the cycling gods provided one helluva of a tailwind.

But how could an uncle say no to a third, 500-feet-per lap, criterium with a niece he loves and would love to see get interested in cycling?

So the race began. Kobi screamed as she took the turns, but I didn’t — and neither did my legs.  In fact, after about 15 minutes of thoroughly enjoying myself and soft pedaling my mountain bike, my legs actually began to feel good. When I’ve been recalling that story to “stay open” to riding when I feel low on energy, I’ve been feeling good and enjoying myself, too; it’s seemingly become a source of energy.

Now I won’t lie to you and claim like Singer this energy is infinite, or even that 25 miles into a ride I feel like an absolute hammer. Remembering what Kobi said and how I felt during my third crit of the day, however, certainly keeps me from feeling like the nail.  Which has led to me riding more.

Pleasure Reading Leads to More Riding

Before reading Singer’s beliefs on energy about five weeks ago, I had been riding an average of just over 11 hours per week this year. Since using the aforementioned story to “stay open,” I’ve averaged just over 13 hours per week. Moreover, an increase in saddle time was never the intention. It just happened.

Something to consider the next time you wonder if you could be riding more. Or fill out a cycling survey.

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Kevin Kolodziejski began his writing career in earnest in 1989. Since then he’s written a weekly health and fitness column and his articles have appeared in magazines such as “MuscleMag,” “Ironman,” “Vegetarian Times,” and “Bicycle Guide.” He has Bachelor and Masters degrees in English from DeSales and Kutztown Universities.

A competitive cyclist for more than 30 years, Kevin won two Pennsylvania State Time Trial championships in his 30’s, the aptly named Pain Mountain Time Trial 4 out of 5 times in his 40s, two more state TT’s in his 50’s, and the season-long Pennsylvania 40+ BAR championship at 43.