Rating:		4/5	Cycling

The Art of Cycling

by James Hibbard

I picked this book up expecting it to be an account of how the author entered professional cycling and their progress in their professional career. It is all of this and more because this book is essentially two stories; one about cycling and the other about the history of philosophy and how this directly relates to the author’s own personal and intellectual journey.

Hibbard describes his time before, during and after being a professional cyclist and how cycling came to dominate his life and define the person he was. After becoming disillusioned and retiring from cycling, he struggled with depression and a personal identity crisis as the crutch of his previous cycling persona no longer existed. The book details the history of philosophy and relates it directly to his own personal experience in trying to understand his place in the world again.

Following a ten year absence from cycling, he decides to ride for three days with two former team mates from San Fransisco southbound on Highway 1. He weaves the story of this ride throughout the book and we come to see that this experience as redemptive, rekindling a love for all the positive aspects of cycling which have been absent from his life for a long time.

This is a deeply thought provoking book which provides an insight into the mind of a professional cyclist and a man deeply interested in trying to answer the question of why we exist. This book was not at all what I expected in the way that “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” is not just a story of a road trip and how motorcycles work.

This is a book that I will probably return to in the future as I feel that there is an even deeper insight that eluded me in my first reading. Recommended if you like either cycling or philosophy.