The First Miles

I don’t remember exactly how things happened. I was five, maybe six years old. The edges are blurry, but the body isn’t. The body remembers perfectly.

It remembers a small bicycle, held tight as if it were something you never want to lose. It remembers the hands on the handlebars, the slightly extended arms, the torso leaning forward. Most of all, it remembers a continuous stream of sensations: movement, speed, the wind on my face, breath quickening without yet being called fatigue. There was a simple, immediate sense of physical well-being that came with every pedal stroke.

I rode around the house, in the garden, the courtyard, on the sidewalk behind it. My father had built wooden ramps connecting the spaces, as if everything had been designed for me to ride in circles without ever stopping. The turns became faster and faster. Every lap was a little bolder than the last.

I wasn’t thinking. The body anticipated. It saw before the eyes, heard before the ears. It bent on its own, braked at the last moment, accelerated whenever possible. The bicycle stopped being an object: it became a natural extension, a prolongation of the body, as if I had grown with a third joint made of wheels and frame.

In those moments, the body felt good. Very good. And that feeling never stayed still. It always pushed a little further. Not for challenge, not to prove anything, but simply for the pure joy of seeing what would happen next. To endure a few more seconds when the legs began to burn. To enter a curve a little harder. To trust.

Whatever was really happening between body, mind, and surrounding space, it was creating a primordial balance, a silent dialogue. There I learned something I’ve never unlearned: the body knows. It knows how to stay. It knows when to push and when to stop. And if you listen, it doesn’t lie.

Sometimes, though, that trust went a bit too far.

The fall never comes when you’re still. It always comes when you’re moving, when something is working. I remember a descent. I still know the road, and every time I pass it, my body notices before I do. It was one of those descents that seem endless to a child: a sequence of curves, speed rising without asking permission, the sound of the wheels changing tone as the asphalt rushed beneath.

I was with my father. I don’t remember if he said anything first. But I was already inside the descent, inside that absolute concentration that leaves no room for words. There was only the trajectory, the breath, the body seeking balance between brake and courage.

At the fourth curve, I didn’t turn. I went straight.

It wasn’t a decision. It was a fraction of a second in which the body misjudged. Too much speed, too little margin. The bike stopped following the road, and I followed it out. I remember time stretching, the sudden silence after the noise, lying on the ground.

A fall is a suspension. For a moment, everything stops: the game, the ride, the illusion of control. You’re there, on the ground, and the body takes a quick inventory: bones, skin, breath. Are you intact? Yes. Then you can get up.

That was a fundamental lesson. Not because I got hurt, but because I realized the fall isn’t the opposite of movement. It’s part of it. It’s the price of going further, of trying, of trusting a little too much. There were other falls: against a wall at the end of a ramp, against a fence outside the gate, with a scar I can still find if I look for it. Every time, the same pattern: push a little further, misjudge, pay, learn.

The bicycle never taught me to avoid falling. It taught me to fall. To fall without unnecessary drama. To distinguish fear from attention. To understand that limits are not enemies, but moving lines to negotiate continuously. Falling also meant getting up without excuses, looking at the curve, understanding what happened, and moving on. Maybe a little slower. Maybe with a new sense of measure.

And continue.

Over time, continuing took on another name.

Fatigue cannot be explained. It must be traversed. And the bicycle taught me this very early. I don’t remember the first time I thought “this is too much.” But I remember clearly the first time I kept going despite that thought. At first, fatigue had no name. It was a diffuse sensation: burning legs, short breath, a new slowness creeping into my movements. But along with that slowness came a quality of attention I had never experienced before.

The climb to the village above our house is one of the first places where this school opened its doors. I don’t remember the slope itself — the incline, the curves, the meters — but I remember the arrival. I remember my father and uncles watching me. I remember the body knowing it had done something great, even if the mind had no words for it yet.

There, fatigue wasn’t suffering. It was achievement. It was the body discovering it could endure more than it thought.

Over time, fatigue stopped being an extraordinary event and became a habitual companion. The body learned to recognize its signals: the point where the legs ask for relief, where the breath falters, the subtle moment when the mind begins to look for excuses. And it’s there that the bicycle truly teaches.

Because fatigue isn’t only muscular. It’s mental. It’s the voice that says “enough” before it really is enough. The bicycle doesn’t argue with that voice. It lets it speak… and then keeps pedaling.

I learned that fatigue has layers. There is a superficial, noisy fatigue that comes early and scares you. Then there’s a deeper, quieter fatigue that only comes if you stay. If you don’t run away. If you accept to be there a little longer. Staying in fatigue is an act of trust — not blind, but embodied.

Over time, I understood that the body is much wiser than the mind. It knows when to stop for real. It knows the difference between useless pain and fertile effort. The bicycle taught me to listen to this intelligence: not forcing, but not giving in too soon either.

It also taught me the other side: fatigue that frees. After hours in the saddle, when the body is emptied and the mind stops producing noise, a simple, vast space remains. There, fatigue no longer weighs. It becomes silence. It becomes presence.

In those spaces, I realized fatigue isn’t only about becoming stronger. It’s about becoming more real. It strips away the unnecessary, leaving you with what truly matters: the essential gesture, the breath in and out, the road ahead.

Perhaps that’s where it all truly began. In those first miles, at that age, I was simply learning to play the most beautiful game: the game of life. I didn’t know it then. I just rode. But everything I learned from the bicycle, I would encounter again, many times, in the days I lived.

I learned to trust. To trust the bicycle and, unknowingly, to trust what came next. Curves, descents, climbs, difficulties: the body learned that they could be traversed. That not everything can be controlled, but much can be accompanied.

I learned to fall. Because in life, as in biking, sometimes you fall. You misjudge, you get disappointed, you wake up in the morning unmotivated. When you fall off a bike, you can’t stay on the ground forever. You don’t put down roots in the fall. You get up, brush off some dust, care for your wounds, and get back on. There is always another stretch of road to ride, another climb to face, another descent to enjoy.

And fatigue? Where do we leave fatigue? Where do we go in life without meeting it at least a little? Fatigue taught me more than any book. Not because life is only fatigue — it isn’t — but because, as on the road, not everything is flat. You learn to live with it, to know it, to make it a companion. Sometimes even to welcome it, not as a challenge, but with love.

So, unconsciously, I was learning to play. I was absorbing some fundamental rules that would help me later in life. At the time I didn’t know it. I just did it because it made me feel good, because it made me feel alive. Because it made me smile when I looked in the mirror. It let me talk to adults without feeling small, because I wasn’t small anymore. The bicycle, silently, was already teaching me how to be in the world.