Photograph courtesy of Ira Ryan Cycles.

From a cyclist’s point of view, the attributes of a great place for road bike riding include beautiful routes, lots of organized rides, friendly clubs, and custom frame builders.

Frame builders?

Unless you live in Oregon, you might not consider the impact that independent bicycle builders have on a community. But for those of us who live here, the benefits of riding among men and women who make their living making bicycles makes us smarter riders. Their work challenges us to reconsider long-held opinions, most of which are formed by reading magazine advertising or listening to sound-bites on The Tour de France.

Have you ever noticed that the rides with the biggest pay-off are the ones that we consider the most difficult? When you say that something is too hard or too difficult, what do you mean, exactly?

Are you talking about the skill that is required? Are you talking about muscle strength and cardiovascular endurance necessary to sustain your pace for 100 miles? Or when you say, “that ride is too difficult,” are you talking about the terrain and the weather? Or are you thinking about the emotional toughness required to keep the pedals turning and not quit?

Easy rides are the ones we know we can do.

Difficult rides are the ones that our local heroes have done. We might dream of riding them, but we don’t, because we believe we aren’t up for the challenge on some level.

Have you also noticed a rider in your club – a regular Joe or Jane just like you and me - that has taken on one of these “too difficult” rides and succeeded? Have you wondered how they have done it?

Everybody has their own technique for breaking out. But if you are new to the game of stretching yourself beyond your comfort zone, here are a few tips that have worked for me in the past, and I hope will work for me again on the Rocky Mountain 1200.

Back in the 1970s, when young American frame builders were perfecting their craft, I was perfecting my own. We were all serious riders back in the day, but unlike these dudes, my first love was riding waves, not roads.

Oh, I had a road bike, and a nice one, too. I rode it every day from my apartment in Cardiff-by-the-Sea to UCSD in La Jolla. And, when the ocean was flat, I would get on that bike, point it east, and just ride. That Peugeot was everything I needed in a bicycle. If I needed more, I wouldn’t have had the words to explain it.

Fast-forward 30 years. The roles surfing and cycling play in my life are reversed. To put it in terms my old surfing buddies would understand, the Cascade Range is to cycling what the north shore of Oahu is to surfing.

It takes a lot of emotional strength to build the momentum necessary to accomplish a really big goal on the bike, especially early in the season, when it’s cold and wet and dark outside. But once the training becomes habit, the rider gains momentum. The physical improvements begin to show up in strength, speed, and endurance.

Then, an injury sets you back. You can’t continue the training without risking further injury. But you can’t back off your program, without jeopardizing your fitness and ultimately, your ability to finish the ride you are training for.

How do you keep a positive attitude in the face of a seemingly no-win situation?

You must face up to the fact that you are injured. Just as it is with any other aspect of your training, dealing with a sports injury requires discipline and time. You can’t keep pushing the edge of the envelope and expect to recover. Healing must become the training priority. And, because of the anxiety you will experience, knowing your goal ride is in jeopardy, the focus of your riding, when you return to it, should be as much on healing the soul as healing the body.

One of the keys to success in cycling or any endeavor is achieving “self-unification.”

Author and time management expert Charles Hobbs defines self-unification as aligning the actions we take with our most deeply held values. When our actions are an outward extension of our core values, the world seems to revolve around us.

But when our actions are out of alignment with them, we experience disharmony. When these feelings come to the surface, they can take many forms, including anxiety, depression, anger, despair.