KEY POINTS:
See, it's just like this: you spend hours and hours on the road and on the steep-banked track _ toiling, grafting, sweating, hurting. For much of that time, you're with your mates, working together, exchanging banter, keeping up the pace.
But now you're alone. Feet strapped on to
the pedals, thighs and calves poised to explode. In your mind, you've banished the demons of self-doubt, and you're ignoring the fact that very soon, your body is going to be in such pain, lesser mortals would wish they were dead.
This is the lot of an Olympic 4000m individual pursuit track cyclist. And if you're Hayden Roulston, this is what you live for.
After all, he's one of the best in the world at it. In March, at the world championships in Manchester, Roulston finished fourth. He rode faster than any New Zealander ever has, 4m 18.33s. And yet, after Manchester, he felt unfulfilled. He'd wanted more.
He wants an Olympic medal. Bad.
On the eve of the Beijing Games, 27-year-old Roulston and the other New Zealand track riders have been based in Bordeaux, France, emulating the set-up they enjoyed four years ago, a build-up which earned Sarah Ulmer her world-record smashing victory in the women's individual pursuit.
When he entered the camp last week, Roulston was buoyant, especially after winning a local French four-day race, the Tour des Deux-Sevres. He was confident, but his mood was in check and he was eager to share any glory from his triumph with his New Zealand teammates who also rode the tour. "Whether I won or somebody else won, it left everybody in a really good state of mind," he said. "The team rode fantastically."
True. But the fact is, Roulston dominated. Sure, this was not the Tour de France. On the last day, though, came an ominous portent. After three days of tactics and miles of riding, the cyclists lined up for a 15.8km time trial.
As Roulston puts it: "The time trial is just a longer version of what I'm going to be doing at the Olympics."
So, with half an eye to what the result might say about Roulston's preparation for Beijing, the squad watched eagerly. He approached it in a similar way to how he will prepare for his Olympic races _ focusing, disciplining his mind and blocking out the pain in the same way.
The result? He blitzed the field, snaking along the course 25s faster than anybody else.
"It was good to have a hit out," he said. "It wasn't an easy time trial and done on the last day, but everybody was in the same boat regarding their fatigue. To pull out a time trial like that, I was really pleased."
Roulston is blessed with natural talent. He was born to ride and was soon tearing around the dirt tracks of Ashburton on a BMX. The lure of cold, hard cash saw him switch to track and road cycling: winning a BMX race earned him a trophy; at the Tinwald Cycling Club he could pocket $3 for a win, enough for a pack of wrestling cards. There was no choice.
At school, Roulston admits he was not in contention to pick up the dux prize, once telling an interviewer: "At school, let's just say that I didn't really excel!" But, boy, could this kid ride.
His strong legs pumped him all the way to the world stage, along the way bagging a 2003 world championship silver medal in the Madison with Greg Henderson, finishing a credible 7th in the same event at the Athens Olympics, and landing contracts with pro teams Cofidis and Lance Armstrong's Discovery Channel.
Having the physical talent for cycling is one thing. For Roulston, the tricky part was staying on track.
Two brushes with the law _ court appearances for scraps in 2004 and 2005 _ did not exactly make life easy. Injuries along the way didn't help either. None of that should have been a problem, though; injuries are an athlete's lot, and, as for the fighting _ well, let's just say that there's a school of thought which says the same exuberance which made him a great rider was bound to get him in trouble sometimes.
The really debilitating blow for Roulston came in 2006. He was diagnosed with arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia (ARVD), a rare heart disease in which the heart muscle of the right ventricle is replaced by fat and/or fibrous tissue. It is a disease which can cause sudden death; Roulston's symptoms included shortness of breath and an irregular heart beat but in some ARVD patients the first sign is a fatal sudden cardiac arrest.
It goes without saying that Roulston was shocked, and so was the cycling world. One of the country's brightest hopes on two wheels was unlikely to ride again. At least that's what the doctors thought. Roulston refused to submit just because of a mere medical diagnosis.
Less than two months later, he was back on his bike, winning the national men's road title. Fans were astounded. How could this be?
Roulston was initially reluctant to talk about what had happened. Now he is more relaxed.
"The way it happened was pretty unreal," he said. One day when he was at his lowest ebb soon after the diagnosis, he ran into a woman who practised reiki, a Japanese hands-on healing process. "She was practicing the technique on another person and just one thing led to another ..."
Reiki practitioners describe their therapy as the use of "life-force energy" flows. "When our life-force energy is low we are likely to get sick or feel stress," says the NZ Reiki association's website.
Roulston says that not only has that chance meeting improved his health _ it has affected his life. "To be honest, it changed me as a person altogether. I've developed spiritually. For me, it was a big, big turning point." He realised that if he changed the way he lived his life, he could achieve more on the bike.
Even gold.
