In tour cyclng there are two kinds of riding; cruising and grinding.
Cruising is like being on auto pilot. You get a great stretch of road, find just the right gear, and discover the perfect cadence. Miles and time melt away and you forget you’re even riding.
Grinding is the exact opposite. There’s no rhythm, and everything’s somehow just slightly out of sync. It might be the weather, or the terrain, or how you’re feeling. But whatever it is, getting down the road is just, well, a grind.
Wednesday was a grind for me—thirty-five miles directly into a gusty fifteen-to-twenty mph wind. Every time I started to find some rhythm a gust would disrupt my cranking. The whole day was an exercise in focus—any time my mind wandered I found myself losing momentum. I felt like I had to will myself to keep cranking and moving down the road. It would have been very easy to quit.
I don’t think cycling is the only place where we experience the grind. Every part of life has its seasons of grinding.
I bet the disciples experienced the grind. I imagine them walking along some dusty road to some nameless village wondering why in the world they left families and friends to travel from nowhere to nowhere. I’ll bet there were times they were tempted to ditch the grind and go back to their real lives.
The thing about the grind is that it is not very interesting or exciting. Parents know about the grind. So do caretakers and teachers and business owners. The grind just wears you down because it’s hard to see progress or reward.
So what do you do when you find yourself in the middle of the grind?
First, recognize it’s part of the journey. You didn’t do anything wrong and God’s not mad at you. The grind is just part of what we do to get down the road. Knowing it’s a normal season makes it less likely that you’ll give up.
Second, keep your mission in mind. I imagine the disciples sharing their misgivings. I imagine late night conversations around desert campfires when Jesus reminded them about kingdom issues and assured them that what they were doing was important and necessary. I picture Him smiling at them telling them that in the end they’d be glad they stuck with it.
Wednesday I thought a lot about hungry kids. I believe somehow that what I’m doing will change the world for a few of them. So I told myself that if I kept cranking, some kid I’ll never meet might have some food. That matters to me. It was enough to keep me going through the grind.
I believe God understands the grind. I think He knows life’s not all a basket of fruit. I think He understands the struggle to keep moving when moving seems incredibly difficult and pointless.
He wants us to know the effort matters.
He also assures us that, in the end, it will be worth it.
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Florida media has been kind. Here’s a nice article by Chris Graham of the Daytona Beach News-Journal.
We really need to express our thanks to Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express. They’ve been incredibly generous with discount rates that take a lot of pressure off our budget.
Not sure yet what Thursday will look like. Frankly, I’m pretty zonked after three pretty long days and 126 miles. Plus, we had a small mishap today. The GPS device somehow fell off the bike and got lost. So we have to replace that. So Thursday will either be a rest day or we’ll do two shorter (maybe 25 miles) riding days the next two days.
Hopefully we’ll get caught up and back on track in the next couple of days. Thanks for following along. Your presence in the circle means a lot to us.
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