Why does this feel kind of....sick?

(NOTA : Pedro H., si lees eso, me encantaría oír tus opiniones y tus interpretaciones sobre el tema. -- D)

If your Spanish is up for it (and I apologize in advance, I use that phrase WAY the hell too much), one of the best people writing about cycling in Spanish is Pedro Horrillo. The Basque biker has taken his "Desde mi sillín" column in EL PAÍS to the Internet (YAY for having free access to anything and everything; BOO to EL PAÍS for -- I'm guessing -- being too cheap to pay the guy. Y dinos si no te paguen por eso y pondremos el grito al cielo para que los tacaños de la calle Miguel Yuste se aflojan los cuerdos de los bolsillos.)

So today on the forum they're describing the climb up and through the Sierra de la Pandera. Like most really challenging mountain climbs in Spain, Pandera is located way the hell away from most important urban centres (looking at the map, Jaen's a good 20 km away). The pavement is crap and the road is as wide as a small bathroom, which must create one hell of an element of freaking out when riders have to climb up 12% grades with screaming fans three deep on the side of the road. (TVE's broadcast of the stage showed the Guardia Civil gettin' pretty physical with at least a couple of fans who dared step a wee bit too close to the riders.) You can't see squat when you get to the top, and I pity the poor project manager who's responsible for getting everything and anything down from the peak of the mountain on a road that, really, is little more than a goat path with some asphalt smacked on top.

These stages, however, are the unmissable ones. They're supposedly the ones that make cycling fans, and it ain't because of the scenery. Cyclists have an unnerving addiction to suffering and pain, one which pretty much has to be learned because anyone born feeling that way probably would have committed suicide before his sixteenth birthday. (Yes, the use of the masculine possessive adjective was deliberate.) And it's not enough to haul your sorry, lactate-laden ass up the Marie-Blanque or Angliru: the dictates of the sport insist that you, having stretched and spent the morning hauling or being hauled up several climbs, have earned the right to lie back on the sofa and watch guys (again, note the use of the masculine noun) who earn thousands of Euros or dollars or whatever a year to ride bicycles so hard and with so much force that you can't help but wonder how many of them spend the ten minutes after the race throwing up, or trying NOT to. Our gentlemen cyclist friends, having ridden all the way from Granada, arrive at the military installation looking like they've been hauled out of Wales's dirtiest coal mines, legs hammering like sewing machine needles, freezing (in spite of it being August in Andalusia), wet and probably wondering why they didn't just break down and study Law like so many of their friends.

Am I being overly sensitive or is this, in some way, a little bit sick?

I mean, I'm not dumb. Sports is, after all about being able to exceed, if not destroy, your limits, and though I've suffered through my fair share of climbing this year (and apologies to all, I still have yet to learn to love it) I would be lying if I didn't say that the sweetest thing about doing the Marie-Blanque in this year's Quebrantahuesos wasn't actually knocking the bastard off - it was beating both AG AND Javi, both of whom started climbing three minutes before I did. (Truth be told, aside from that, I honestly don't remember much about the MB except that there were a lot of guys pushing a lot of very expensive bikes.)

But there's a part of me that really doesn't like the idea of suffering for mere spectacle. I watch the mountain stages but I can't say that I enjoy them any more than I like watching time trials. (Maybe because I find the idea of doing time trials more attractive.) What I nearly wrote on Horrillo's blog (but didn't think it entirely appropriate) was:

"¿Vas a ver la Vuelta hoy?" se preguntaba dos o tres veces ayer en la salida de nuestro club de ciclismo. "Poz sí," respondió más que uno, "en una Vuelta tan descafeinado, merece la pena ver la subida al Anglirú del sur." Y lo fue. El esfuerzo, la lucha, la determinación por superar límites y darle todo. Pero hay una cosa que me hace sentir un poco (¿?) idiota.

"You gonna watch the Vuelta today?" was asked two or three times before our club went out on its ride yesterday. "Hell, yeah," more than one answered, "with the Vuelta being so toothless this year, it's worth the trouble to watch the climb up the Anglirú of the South." And it was. The effort, the struggle, the determination to break barriers and give it all. But there's something that makes me feel like a bit of an idiot.

Si se lo piensa mucho (y seguro hay algún filósofo que tiene algo que decir sobre hacer espectáculo del sufrimiento de los demás...¿no?) es un pellín (¿enfermo? ¿triste?) que a veces se base el espectáculo en el grado de puro dolor y sufrimiento que hay en una etapa. ¿Porque gritamos tanto en las etapas de montaña si sabemos que los CRIs pueden resultar casi iguales de machaca en su propio manera? (¿Alguien se atrevería subir los 17 km a Navacerrada desde San Ildefonso en una bici de CRI solo por el mero placer de experimentar?) ¿Es más aceptable disfrutar del sufrimiento si solo se trata de sufrimiento físico? Si fuera un show de humiliación personal, ¿podríamos disfrutarlo igual?

If you think about it -- and there's probably some philosopher who has something to say about creating spectacle out of the suffering of others...isn't there? -- it's kind of...sick? sad? that, at times, we base the quality of the spectacle we see on the suffering that we see in a particular stage. Why do we yell so much during the mountain stages if we know that ITTs can end up being equally rough in their own way? Would anybody really try to do the 17km uphill to Navacerrada from San Idlefonso on a time trial bike for the sheer hell of experimenting? Is it more acceptable to enjoy suffering if we're only dealing with physical suffering? If it were a show based on personal humiliation, could we enjoy it just as much?

Reconozco que les paguen por eso. Entiendo que superar tus límites forma gran parte de cualquier deporte y que mucho de la belleza del ciclismo es ver a gente destrozando los límites, da igual si existen o no. Sé perfectamente que ni Cunego ni Valverde ni Danielson me oyen cuando lanzo gritos que despierten a los vecinos de sus siestas. Pero pase lo que pase, sigo gritando. No sé si eso me marca como idiota o qué.
I recognize that they get paid for this. I understand that passing your limits is a big part of any sport and that a lot of the beauty of cycling comes from people destroying their limits, whether they really exist or not. I understand perfectly that Cunego, Valverde or Danielson can't her me when I scream so loud I wake the neighbors from their siesta. But whatever happens, I still cheer. I don't know if that marks me as an idiot or what.

Pedro (and Jason, Chip, Yago and Walesy), if you're reading this, I would really like your interpretation and thoughts on the subject.