Fun Hurts!

Here’s a fresh metaphor for starters: life is a spiral. Or rather, a Slinky resting on both of its ends. And I might have completed another turn going “up”, because it feels like progress and a wash at the same time.

Before September 19th, 2021, I had a strange, somewhat unhealthy relationship with my road bike. Every time I’d get on it, I’d feel like there had to be a purpose. Every pedal stroke was supposed to make me faster. No place for joy, no moments of execution. A perpetual training toward nothing. Not only did I not know the solution to the problem, I didn’t even perceive that there was anything wrong with it. Until I broke a spoke. Perhaps on Wednesday. I have no recollection of that exact moment (why would I?). I just checked my Strava now while writing this to see when the last ride was before the weekend. But I do remember the Sunday morning, as if it were one of the most memorable days of my life (maybe it was). That’s when my six-year-old and I went to Mike’s Bikes of Palo Alto to fix that wheel. Those were the “good” old days when I only had one bike to ride, and it seemed like enough. Put me in those shoes now, without even a spare wheelset, and the anxiety will perhaps eat me alive. That’s like walking on a frozen lake in Spring. If you push your luck long enough, you’ll have to find joy in swimming. But I was a few weeks sober by now, and had too much energy and motivation to spare, so having my horsie taken away for a couple of days opened a void big enough that it could suck me in and spit me out onto the dark side of my past, unless immediately filled.

So, I looked at the indoor trainers, and they looked back at me, asking, “What else needs to happen for you to finally pull the trigger”? Well, I suppose at that moment even my kid already knew the answer, but I wisely responded with an eternal classic: “Yes, but first — coffee”. Then added: “And a hot chocolate, medium temperature, with whipped cream, of course.” We drove to Verve Coffee, thoroughly discussed the matter, then headed straight back to the bike shop. Can you buy happiness? Well, the answer is “it depends”. But if the inner peace makes one happy, then I just bought a small piece of mine.

Peace came from magically solving my not-yet-acknowledged problem. The side that’s obvious to any person with an athletic obsession is that only consistent training will make you better (as in faster, or stronger, or durablerier). This played an important role in the further development of the story. But that’s a long game. An immediate, overwhelmingly positive impact was on how I was now perceiving my rides out in the real world. Now, when I had a spot in the corner of a rented apartment that I could proudly call a pain cave, and where all the hard work now was being done, I gave myself an indulgence to do whatever the heck I’m pleased to do when rubber touches the tarmac. Which would go both ways: if I feel like beating the shit out of myself on every climb — knock yourself out, my friend; if I want to roll like a slouch — my innie won’t judge. I basically invented The Severance before it became trendy. Suffer inside, play outdoors. And so myself an I lived happily ever after.

Until a few weeks ago, I read this piece by Dominic Rivard “Are You Actually Riding, Or Just Collecting Content?” 2025 was the year when I could sense that something's off, and this story happened to be the nudge to stop and think. Am I still having fun riding my bike, or am I back in the never-ending state of grind? And if I am, then what is it that I’m collecting? If it were, once again, a perpetual obsession with fitness improvement, it wouldn’t be that bad. But it’s not that. What is it then?

Since Dominic’s story is now behind the paywall, I’ll give you two key aspects he’s talking about (all in my own words, hoping that the memory serves me right):

1. While out on a ride, the author often finds himself looking at the world around him not with wonder, but in a constant search for a perfect picture to post later on.
2. And naturally, when those pictures have been snapped, he can’t help but think and think and think of a good title and description to accompany them with. He even uses a clever notion of pre-memories, but if you’re wondering what in the world that could mean, I’d encourage you to pay your dues and read the original story at the link above. I don’t want to step into the territory of copyright infringement, even slightly.

Mind you, I’m not a picture-taking material. I’m not even a stopping-for-a-second-to-admire-the-beauty-around-me kind of a guy. But I do have a guilty pleasure of my own, which echoes loudly and clearly to both of the obsessions named above. I could take that story, auto-replace all occurrences of Instagram with Strava, the word “picture” and its synonyms with various kinds of “achievements”, title and description with… well, title and description, and the entire text would still make a whole lot of sense.

Even more to that. I don’t know about you, but tenish years ago, when Instagram was all the rage, we used to say, “If you didn’t post it, you didn’t eat it.” Which is no different from “If it’s not on Strava, it didn’t happen,” is it? I can hear you thinking, “Oh, this guy posts all his activities. Everyone does it, there’s nothing wrong with that.” LOL, I wish. Here’s where things are getting worse.

The problem is not in sharing the activity. It’s the self-imposed necessity to make it worth sharing. First, there has to be a standout achievement. It can be racing performance, or an impressive distance, or decent elevation gain, or a top-10 time on a random segment (bullshit, they are never random, it’s all pre-planned), or at least some significant PR, but that’s kinda pathetic. No matter the form, the validation must be there. And if it’s not, here comes the complementary piece of the puzzle.

I thought that maybe I shouldn't be so hard on myself. Maybe the truth is that I’m chasing the virtual hardware solely for my own entertainment. I’m no monk to deprive myself of little pleasurable sins. Making those achievements public is not even a vanity, but simply a rule of the game, because technically, you can’t win if you don’t open your hand. But unfortunately, such a theory does not explain the second part — obsessively crafting the title. Song lyrics, smart-ass wordplay, dad jokes, self-praise or belittlement, everything goes. I kid you not, I can spend two hours in the saddle thinking about nothing else but how I'm going to name my ride on Strava. If only I could get a penny for every minute of it.

And if you think I’m exaggerating, I’ll give you that: if it’s neither overly impressive in numbers, nor notably hilarious in words, then more often than not I don’t even post it! I just keep it private, as if I must be ashamed of being active and genuinely happy for a couple of hours. Ridiculous.

In the end, it feels like I’m riding for all kinds of reasons and purposes, except for my own joy. Even if it’s not true, even if all this is nothing more than noise in my head, it takes away its fair share of fun. And as the 2025/26 offseason progresses, it becomes more and more about the mental side of my hobbies. As I wrote a few weeks before, this slow-going winter has its undoubted benefits. It creates time and space for reflection. Brings up all the right, yet unpleasant, questions.

I don’t know what I’m gonna do about all this. There’s only one obvious medicine: quit or take a break from Strava. It wouldn’t be the first poisonous thing I’d cut out of my life. In fact, it’s probably the last one standing. I‘ve already either quit everything I possibly could or established barriers that made things hard enough for me to access, so I tend to forget that they even exist (I have literally zero distractors on my phone now, and it’s fucking awesome).

But frankly, Strava is different. No matter how many sides of it I wish didn’t exist, there’s one that makes it all worth it. With no exaggeration, people on Strava truly are my community. That’s how I’ve met a lot of great folks. That’s how I stay in touch with many. And for my humankind (aka expatriated sociopaths), it’s not that easy to cut one of not so many threads that keep us socially alive.

Time will tell.