Somewhere along the road during this year’s Tour de Munster, I found myself cycling behind Paul Sheridan and Sean Kelly.
There were no Garmins being studied. No obsession with kilometres remaining, average speed or elevation gained. Just following the road.
We knew where we had started. We knew where we were going. Everything else was the experience.
And during the event, raising funds for the Munster branches of Down Syndrome Ireland, I began to realise that the people we were meeting along the way seemed to understand that better than any of us.
At every stop there were children with Down Syndrome and their families waiting to meet us.
There were smiles, hugs, dancing, laughter and an excitement about whatever was happening at that exact moment.
Nobody was worrying about the next stop.
Nobody cared how many kilometres were left.
They were simply enjoying where they were and who they were with.
And somewhere between watching those children, meeting their families and following Sean and Paul down another Munster road without looking at a Garmin, the connection struck me.
Perhaps we could all do with living a little more like that.
Because we spend an extraordinary amount of our lives trying to get to the end of things.
Get this job finished. Get through Monday. Get to Friday. Get this month out of the way. Get the mortgage paid. Get the kids through school. Get to the holidays. Get to Christmas.
Always looking towards some imaginary finish line where, presumably, we will finally have time to enjoy ourselves.
But then another finish line appears.
The children we met along the Tour de Munster route didn’t seem particularly interested in finish lines.
They were interested in now.
And cycling has a wonderful way of reminding you of exactly the same thing.
Leave Cork. Get to Killaloe.
On paper, that is the task.
But the magic happens in between.
The same can probably be said for most things in life.
Olympic medalist, rower Gary O’Donovan has ridden the Tour de Munster and he and his brother Paul once gave perhaps the simplest description of rowing imaginable.
You go from A to B as fast as you can.
And that is pretty much it.
Cycling can be like that too, of course. If you are racing or riding a time trial, the whole point is to get from A to B as quickly as possible.
But most of the time, cycling is something completely different.
It is about everything that happens between A and B.
It is taking in the scenery around you.
It is having a completely relaxed conversation about absolutely anything with a friend you have known all your life.
Or having exactly the same conversation with somebody you only met that morning.
It is the smell of pine after a warm summer shower.
Freshly cut grass during silage season.
Newly turned soil when it is time to plough.
It is rolling through a village you might otherwise have driven through without ever really seeing it.
It is doing one simple thing that requires just enough concentration to distract your brain from the thousand work and home emergencies that seemed incredibly urgent before you got on the bike.
And which, strangely enough, don’t seem quite so urgent a few hours later.
For a little while there is just the road, the people beside you and whatever happens next.
Living in the Moment
At one of our stops, children from the local Down Syndrome organisation performed a dance routine for the cyclists.
And they were spectacular.
Not because every move was perfect.
Because they were having the time of their lives.
They weren’t trying to get to the end of the routine as quickly as possible.
They weren’t worrying about what somebody watching might think.
They weren’t thinking about what they had to do afterwards.
They were dancing.
Right there.
Right then.
Completely in the moment.
Watching them, I couldn’t help thinking that while the adults standing around applauding might supposedly be there to support these children, perhaps they were teaching us something far more valuable.
We are the ones racing through life.
They aren’t.
The children we met during the Tour seemed to understand something about living that the rest of us can spend years trying to rediscover.
There was an honesty about them.
An absence of ego or pretence.
No apparent need to impress the person standing beside them or to be anything other than themselves.
When they were happy, you knew they were happy.
When there was music, they danced.
When somebody arrived whom they were delighted to see, they showed it.
They were interested in the moment they were actually living.
Perhaps instead of only thinking about what we can do for children with Down Syndrome, occasionally we should pay attention to what they can teach us.
Jack
In Lismore, as at every stop along the Tour de Munster, we met children with Down Syndrome and their families.
One little boy in particular caught my attention.
Jack Bolger bounced over to say hello with his family and had one of those smiles that immediately makes you smile back.
His Mam told me about Lámh, the key-word sign system that allowed Jack to communicate before he could speak.
Jack became so proficient at it that he has appeared on television several times, including on The Late Late Show.
It was a lovely story.
But it was also another reminder of why the Tour de Munster matters.
Because behind the colour, the bikes, the jerseys, the tired legs and the camaraderie, the money raised does something very real.
It pays for services.
It pays for speech and language therapy.
It pays for multiple therapy sessions that help children communicate with the people around them.
It quite literally helps give children a voice.
When you meet Jack and his family, fundraising suddenly stops being an abstract number on a cheque.
You see exactly what it can mean.
One Last Hill
And then, after four days on the road, there is St. Patrick’s Hill.
It is almost cruel really.
After more than 600 kilometres around Munster, countless climbs, tired legs, early mornings and long days in the saddle, the Tour de Munster doesn’t give you a nice flat road to the finish.
It gives you one last hill.
And not just any hill.
St. Patrick’s Hill. A climb that became legendary during Sean Kellys reign as Nissan Classic champion.
You turn the corner in Patricks street in Cork and there it is in front of you, rising ridiculously towards the sky.
By then the legs have every excuse they need to stop.
But something happens on St. Patrick’s Hill.
People line the road.
Families, friends and supporters shout encouragement. The brass band lures you in.
The noise gets louder as you climb.
Cyclists who have shared four extraordinary days together suddenly find whatever little bit is left in their legs.
And you keep turning the pedals.
One more turn.
And another.
Perhaps St. Patrick’s Hill is the perfect place for the Tour de Munster to end.
Because the easiest road was never really the point.
At the bottom you look up and see this enormous final obstacle.
At the top you look back down and realise you made it.
Life gives us plenty of St. Patrick’s Hills.
Things that look impossibly steep when we are standing at the bottom of them.
Sometimes all you can do is keep moving.
One pedal stroke at a time.
And when you eventually reach the top, you realise something else.
The hill wasn’t the story either.
The story was everything that brought you there.
Four days earlier we had left Cork.
In between there had been Waterford, Tipperary, Limerick, Clare and Kerry.
There had been mountains and valleys, tired legs and bad jokes.
Old friends and new ones.
Conversations that went nowhere and somehow meant everything.
There were children dancing.
There were families standing at the side of the road.
There was Jack Bolger bouncing over with that enormous smile.
There were children finding their voices because somebody cared enough to help provide the services they needed.
There was Sean Kelly and Paul Sheridan riding down a road without worrying about what the Garmin said.
And eventually there was St. Patrick’s Hill.
Standing at the top, it would be very easy to think that reaching there was the achievement.
But maybe that’s the lesson of the Tour de Munster.
The top of St. Patrick’s Hill is just where the road ends.
The magic happened in between.
And perhaps nobody we met understood that better than the children with Down Syndrome who were waiting for us along the way.
While we were counting kilometres, they were counting none.
While we were thinking about the next climb, the next stop or how far we still had to go, they were enjoying exactly where they were.
Dancing when there was music.
Laughing when something was funny.
Running over to say hello.
Being delighted to see somebody and making absolutely no attempt to hide it.
Jack wasn’t thinking about St. Patrick’s Hill when he bounced over to us in Lismore with that enormous smile.
Those kids performing their dance routine weren’t trying to get to the last song.
Conor and Cillian were in no rush as they went around to say hello to every single cyclist in Clogheen.
They were living the bit that was happening right then.
Maybe that’s what stayed with me most from the Tour de Munster.
You spend four days cycling around Munster to raise money to support children with Down Syndrome and their families.
To help provide the speech and language therapy and other services that can make such an enormous difference to their lives.
But somewhere along those roads, the people we were supposedly there to help gave something more important back.
A reminder.
A reminder that life doesn’t begin when the work is finished.
It doesn’t begin next weekend.
Or when the mortgage is paid.
Or when the kids are through school.
Or when we finally get through that never-ending list of things we have convinced ourselves are urgent.
It’s happening now.
On an ordinary road somewhere between where you started and where you think you need to be.
Maybe we should remember that a little more often.
Stop trying to get through the day so we can reach the evening.
Stop wishing away Monday so we can get to Friday.
Stop measuring our lives by the things we have completed and start noticing the things that are happening while we are completing them.
Talk to the person cycling beside you.
Look over the hedge.
Smell the freshly cut grass.
Dance when there is music.
Laugh loudly.
Say hello to Jack, Conor, Cillian, Charlie, Ciara and all of the other super special children.
And every now and again, turn off the Garmin.
Because none of us really knows how much road we have ahead of us.
Life isn’t about the start or the finish. It’s about the people we meet, the conversations we have, the laughter, the dancing, the unexpected moments and the ordinary days we too often wish away.
The magic happens in between.
