Translator: Elisabeth Buffard
I filmed the video I just showed you in July 2019,
when I was trying to break the record for crossing the Royal Road of the Incas.
Imagine about 2,000 kilometers of tracks,
with 35 passes higher than 4,000m, to cross between the city of Cusco
and the Cordillera Blanca.
My body endured enormous pressures on this expedition.
At this altitude, the oxygen level is half that at sea level.
So I need to breathe twice as much to supply my muscles.
My blood, which is pumped and ejected by my heart
beating at 150 beats per minute, thickens.
If it thickens too much, I am at risk of an oedema, even death.
I have deep chapping on my hands
due to the extreme -20 degree temperature in the Andes.
I have an open cut on my thigh
due to bike shorts that I couldn’t change for more than 10 days.
The sun, the Peruvian star.
Its UV index is twice as high as that of the Côte d’Azur.
So I have sunburned skin.
To top it all off,
the high altitude upsets my senses and plunges my body
into a sort of narcosis to survive.
The suffering is so unbearable during this expedition
that I cry every day.
Watching this video with you,
I say to myself that I must be a little bit crazy.
Or at least I wonder about the reasons leading me
to immerse myself in such such suffering.
It’s true.
I could have, for example, taken a 4x4 and go through the Incan road
assisted by a vehicle.
I could have also taken my smartphone and looked at photos on the internet
behind a screen or more simply,
I could have just not planned such crazy expeditions.
It’s super dangerous, I could have killed myself.
But what if the recipe for happiness was to learn to suffer better?
Yes, you heard correctly.
Knowing how to manage pain to be happier.
Attempting crazy challenges on a bike
is my passion, but also my profession.
I had the chance to ride
on some of the most incredible tracks on the planet,
in the wake of the great human migrations:
twice on the Andean mountain range, the Royal Incan Road,
the King’s Road in Jordan, the Laotian jungle.
I crossed continents, hostile environments,
completely independently and pushing my body to the limits.
What might surprise you, however,
is that several years ago,
I was sitting, in this room, like you,
and I had no idea that my life would be turned upside down.
It was through the experience of death
in my immediate circle that I started to change.
Over these ten years of exploration,
I made discoveries that transcended my daily life
and I’m going to share three of them with you today.
I am often referred to as an athlete, an explorer,
by the feats I achieve on a daily basis.
But I’m going to tell you the true story.
I have three brothers and three sisters
and I was always described as the puniest
of these siblings.
When I was a child, nothing predisposed me
to carry out these great cycling expeditions.
I suffered from terrible migraines when I was a child,
which isolated me from other children.
I still have the vivid memory of the hours spent with my eyes closed,
waiting for these migraines to pass so that I could go play with my friends.
I also remember I would automatically say yes
to my siblings’ suggestions,
thinking about those moments of isolation
caused by my migraines.
You will note that more generally, children often say “yes” to each other,
like an instinctive evidence.
They don’t think about the necessary pain or effort.
They think about games and the positivity they create.
They just dare.
As adults, however,
think carefully about how many times we say no on a daily basis.
That’s not possible.
I don’t have time.
I can’t or I will do it later.
We often say no, because unconsciously,
it implies extra effort to get out of your comfort zone.
All these refusals lock us in.
So by simply saying yes on a daily basis,
yes to effort,
yes to challenge,
you will naturally create
the ingredients for your own transformation.
I’m going to give you a very simple example that turned my life around.
It was in 2021, a meal organized by two friends who hoped to ask me
to accompany them on a bike expedition across Eastern Europe.
At that time, I found myself saying yes without thinking
and this simple action
triggered a tectonic chain reaction in my life.
I didn’t think about the effort or the pain that it would cause.
And believe me, there was a lot of that.
What would have happened if I had told them no?
The truth is, these cycling expeditions taught me
that the pain resistance threshold we all have
is a variable that must be worked on every day.
Today, when I feel pain during an effort
like before with my migraines,
that’s a mental barrier I can push back.
I finally understood, by making huge efforts,
by multiplying the small daily efforts,
by coming out of my comfort zone,
I accept the mere act of exposing myself to pain
and I say yes to it.
And accepting the pain as a partner and saying yes to it every day
is essential.
Aïcha wrote:
“Once we accept our limits, we surpass them.”
I am often asked:
“What do you feel during these extreme expeditions?”
The act of moving by human power changed how I view effort
and the relationship with nature.
Making physical efforts to reach places
suddenly makes them take on a special dimension
when you reach them by your own means.
These moments of extreme efforts are imprinted in memory
like a marker inscribed on my brain.
Not because the place is exceptionally beautiful,
but because the way to reach them is singular
and that it required an effort.
I will never forget the Ushuaia sign after 240 days of biking
to cross the Andes mountain range.
I will never forget the Uturuncu volcano and its ascent at 5,800m in altitude
on one of the highest tracks in the world
in the heart of a former sulfur mine.
I will never forget crossing the Laotian jungle, at night,
with these snakes on the ground.
Access to nature reminds us how much we need to respect it
and be the servants of this sanctuary, not its masters.
You also visualize the spirit that reigns there.
It helps to push back the anthropocentrism of our time
where we live in enclosed spaces
and are hyperconnected, behind screens.
To get moving and reconnect with the living world,
it is essential to leave our screens and dedicate moments of life
to the effort in the middle of nature.
Moving, walking, running, pedaling, swimming causes a vibration
and gives rise to a sensitivity that each of us possesses.
We have only been sedentary for ten thousand years,
while our ancestors were nomadic for nearly seven million years.
Imagine a treasure map that is revealed to you
as soon as you get moving.
Behind a filter, the window of a car, bus, or train,
or behind your smartphone screen, we blur out this map,
we forget to look at and understand the landscape in order to take a selfie.
Outdoors, I know how to tell if a river is nearby before perceiving it,
to sense a dangerous situation or anticipate a change in weather,
but also to read the intentions of the humans I encounter.
I learned this through effort, without a guide or coach
simply by listening to my body
and by reading this famous map that we all have.
By using your own energy to move,
your perceptions change.
Since my first major bike expedition, my relationship to effort,
to my material needs, has been turned upside down.
It’s what I like to call: the metabolic voyage.
In ancient Greek, the word “metabolism” comes from metabole, which means change.
Transformation.
To have hot water by turning a faucet,
light at any time of day,
or a hot meal in minutes
using a microwave.
I have learned that these aids are a blessing of everyday life
but you must remember not to abuse them.
Without effort, we become blind.
And the metabolic voyage allows us to reestablish
our essential connection to life.
The act of crossing parts of the Earth
where these aids are sometimes inaccessible,
made me slow down and profoundly change the rhythm of my life.
I changed my way of living day-to-day,
especially my consumption habits.
I went from a state of “how to have more”
to “how to have what I truly need.”
Above all, this is what allowed me to meet incredible people,
sleeping about 100 nights in the homes of locals.
Movement, human strength, create a natural empathy in humans.
When biking, I rarely sleep outside,
very often welcomed by the generosity and goodwill of my hosts.
Could this be the genetic memory of our nomadic ancestors?
Whatever the culture, going to meet others by bike
makes it easy to create a bond, like a solidarity of pain
which makes prejudices disappear.
I maintain this metabolic journey by simple gestures on a daily basis
and I apply a mechanism that anyone can use.
I often travel by bike.
I place the solution of effort against that of comfort and ease,
and I try as much as possible to go to physically meet people
rather than with videoconference.
These effort gymnastics allow us to rethink the way we act,
rethink our relationship to screens, to technological aids, but above all,
it allows freedom spaces to be created by using our bodies as tools.
And using one’s body, moving, escaping from screens,
is an essential tool to change our relationship to effort.
I will tell you a truth about yourself that you probably don’t know.
We are all marathoners.
We are all high-level athletes and explorers.
We have all been selected among 200 million spermatozoa
to have the chance to be alive today.
Considerable effort, suffering,
were necessary for yo to be in this room today.
However, today’s world tries to immobilize us,
to blur out the map I told you about just now,
with comfort, technology, physical immobility,
and above all the prohibition of suffering.
Nowadays everything is immediate, effortless, risk-free.
Coffee, information, transportation, and even pleasure.
However, this lack of effort has a price.
We are developing a growing distrust of risk,
danger and pain.
By connecting more and more behind screens,
we are destroying
our connection to nature, but also to other human beings.
And machines spend a massive amount of energy
to assist us on a daily basis,
at the expense of the health of our planet.
To conclude, I will quote a thinker I admire a lot, Aristotle,
who said: “courage is the middle ground between fear and boldness.”
It is therefore time to face your fears,
to confront them and to accept them
and to act boldly.
Because your body, this formidable machine the was designed to exert itself
and to move itself, is calling you.
Enjoy your trip!