The Tour de France and the Interior Life

As you read this, 166 men have ridden their bicycles 1,691 miles. And among those miles, they have climbed 127,950 feet through the rugged mountains of the Pyrenees and the Alps. 

Come the final laps in Paris this Sunday, they will have ridden 2,075 miles, with 172,240 feet of climbing. That is 32 miles of vertical climbing. This does not include hundreds of miles of ups and downs on the roads that do not count as “climbing.” 

They do this mostly going full gas. The average speed of the riders so far this year is 27.3 miles per hour. That is only the average. On the flats they often ride at 40 mph. They do this mere inches from each other. Riding in a pack of riders can be truly terrifying. I have done it. And after they mount those monstrous climbs of up to 10 percent gradient for mile after mile, they will scream down the other side at speeds upward of 60 mph. Men have died doing this. 

Nothing separates these men from the hard asphalt. Nothing. They ride in thin bike shorts, bare legs. There have been numerous crashes this year. One rider crashed at high speed, separated his shoulder, which he popped back in, and went on to place third on that stage. They ride in intense heat, upward of 90 degrees, and severe cold across the tops of mountains. They ride in fog and rain. Nothing stops the peloton, the name given to the pack or riders. 

It is perhaps the most grueling sporting event in the world.

It is a physical test to be sure, but perhaps even more, it is a mental test. 

Imagine getting on your bike and going full blast for five hours over 100+ miles and then getting up the next day to do it again, and again, and again, and again, for 21 days. 

This is the interior life. Getting up every day and making your morning offering, saying the Rosary, attending Mass, spending time in mental prayer, examining your conscience, mortifications, sitting in the presence of God, and doing this all day every day not for 21 days but every day for the rest of your life. 

There is a mental toughness that is called for in order to combat laziness and sloth and that kind of spiritual sadness called acedia. Is this all there is? I have to do this every day until I die, even if I “get nothing out of it”? It can be painful. 

Cyclists ride in pain. They suffer greatly, especially on climbs. When you go all out on a climb, you can get into what they call the “red zone” where the oxygen in your muscles becomes depleted. Your body fights back by flooding your muscles with massive doses of lactic acid that burns and burns and burns. Your muscles scream out for you to stop, but you push on through. It is a weird thing, runners get a runner’s high, a second wind where it feels like you can run forever; but this does not happen for cyclists. It is often pure pain and suffering. You cannot say that they love the pain and suffering, but they certainly embrace it. 

St. Josemaría Escrivá, a master of the interior life, said, “Blessed be pain, sanctified be pain.” Catholics know about pain and its uses. Most of the world does not, not even our Evangelical brethren. Pain is not a test. It is a tool for sanctification, ours and others’. Yes, you can take pain reliever, but we know that pain is not meaningless. Even bone cancer in a child is pregnant with meaning and purpose. 

Josemaría also said the purpose of the interior life is to take the prose of your everyday life and turn it into heroic verse. Even the littlest thing done with the proper intention is the stuff of legend. Martha’s problem was not that she was busy but that she was busy without the proper intention. We meet Him in the everyday mundane. In all that preparation, she could have met Him just as Mary met Him at His feet. 

Without a doubt, many of those Tour riders are Catholic. There was this moment a few Tours ago where a Spanish rider finished a stage in first place and his little brother rushed up to him and the rider blessed his little brother three times. It was a genuinely moving Catholic moment. 

You hope that many of these men offer their stages and their pain and their fear—yes, they ride through fear, too—for themselves and for others. If only for the proper intention, what they could do is take a fairly mundane everyday thing, peddling a bike, and turn it into heroic verse. 

This is what we are called to do each and every day.