The Body Comes Home

After years of stagnation, the bicycle touched the road again.
I must admit, I don’t remember exactly how my first ride after that long pause went. I would give anything to have a precise memory of that day. I imagine it was the summer of 1994.
I do remember, however, that I was working with a colleague who had also raced, in the same categories, perhaps a couple of years older than me. Like me, he was just getting back on the bike after a long break. One evening, after work, we decided to ride together: a short loop, a climb, just enough time to say goodbye.
He pulled ahead immediately. I struggled insanely. It wasn’t more than three kilometers, with gentle inclines, yet for me it felt like the Stelvio. I remember perfectly the taste of blood in my throat, my legs burning, the pain, my breath a distant memory. Each pedal stroke was a small compromise between will and survival.
That day, the coals, dormant for years, flared up again. From that moment on, I started riding regularly, maybe only once during the week, but always at least one fixed day on the weekend. That feeling of effort and pain became a promise: a bridge between the past and a new present, one filled with freedom, rhythm, and the simple joy of being back on the saddle.

By the end of 1995, I left my 26-hour-a-day job and moved to a more humane workplace. There, I finished at five, and a road opened up before me. A real road, made of asphalt, wind, curves, and climbs—all to be lived. I had only to ride it, letting myself be carried by movement, feeling my legs regain their rhythm, my heart adjusting to the pleasure of moving again without external pressures.

1996 began with a well-lubricated chain, pedals gliding smoothly underfoot, wheels spinning without resistance. And I went with them, ready to reclaim my time, my effort, my joy. Each ride became a small ritual, reweaving the thread that had been broken between me and the bicycle, between me and the road, between me and who I truly wanted to be.

That year, I lost about a dozen kilograms. I returned lean, athletic. At first, it was a sort of bet with a coworker—someone who didn’t believe I could actually lose the weight. His disbelief sparked something inside me, a small fire that ignited something much larger. Soon, the bet became a mission, and eventually a promise: a promise to a body I had neglected, mistreated, and forgotten for too long.

I began to soar in the climbs again. Every meter gained was a small victory, a reclamation of the strength I had always possessed but that had lain dormant for years. What had I missed during those empty years? The heart pounding, legs screaming, breath becoming rhythm. Everything returned. And with it, the pure joy of being on the bike.
The body remembered. And now it was remembering everything clearly.
It remembered the joy, the thrill, the absurd ecstasy of effort.
Every movement, every turn, every pedal stroke carried my muscles along the roads of memory. Memories etched in muscles, breath, and bones. Now there was no rush, no pressure from races. Only the sensation of piecing together the fragments, of finding an inner rhythm that had quietly been preserved inside me.

In those months, I learned to ride without expectations.
To recognize effort as a friend, no longer a judge.
To feel the wind on my skin without my heart racing to prove anything.

Something had come alive again. In a sense, in those years I was reborn. I began to give a familiar “you” to the roads, the forests I crossed, the mountains I climbed, the valleys I admired. The world became a partner, not a backdrop.

Now, my body felt right at home. No more “separate in the house.” I returned to inhabit it with a joyous intensity, the sensation of finally being aligned: what I thought, what I felt, what I did. Everything pedaled in the same direction.

I extended my loops, added climbs. I was once again addicted to that marvelous aluminum horse with carbon wheels. I felt good. Physically and mentally. I sensed something inside me realigning, as if every kilometer was putting back a piece that had been out of place for years.

The year was drawing to a close, and I was already thinking about how I would spend my cycling time the following year—not as an obligation, not as a prescribed plan, but as a journey I truly wanted to take.

I had broken with what didn’t make me happy. I had found the diamond I had lost, and this time, I knew how precious it was. I didn’t hold it tightly out of fear of losing it, but with the care reserved for things that have taught you how to breathe again.

The bicycle was no longer a place to escape from, nor something to prove. It had become home once again. And I, finally, had come back to live in it.