End to End

"This is a very British selection for someone as American as I am. It’s an incredibly well-written book. End to End is about cycling from Land’s End to John O’Groats in Scotland as a timed exercise. It’s the entire length of the UK and the men’s record is somewhere in the neighborhood of just over 40 hours, the women’s record is just over 50. What Paul Jones does in the book is tie together really elegantly a personal narrative about what cycling means to him and mental health with the stories of a fair number of athletes who have tackled this end-to-end record stretching back 100 years. They do everything possible—the simple aim is to do it as fast as you possibly can. There is no set route. It’s not intrinsic to setting this record that one must take roads XYZ. There’s also a more leisurely approach; you can ride from Land’s End to John O’Groats without a time-obsessed approach. There’s something interesting about End to End when juxtaposed with a book like Higher Calling . Higher Calling and the mountain-focused, mass-start racing which so much of the book is concerned with is a very continental European approach to cycling, whereas End to End is British to the core. Within the history of UK cycling, stretching back to the 19th century, there’s an absolute obsession with timed events—with time trials and with racing alone. One could spend all day unpacking, culturally, why this is so in the UK psyche but there is a bit of an aversion to the continental-style mass start road racing. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . When I was a junior cyclist, there was a UK magazine that was essentially about UK time trialing called Cycling Weekly . It was always more interesting to me than what was happening in the Tour de France or the classics or what have you. In it there would be coverage of some guy who I’d never heard of on a wacky constructed low-profile time trial bike, riding a nonmetric distance, who became the 25-mile national champion. For whatever reason, I found it more compelling than what was happening in France or Belgium or Italy. End to End very much plugs into that quirky aspect of British cycling culture. But I don’t want to understate Paul Jones’s ability to write a beautiful sentence. He’s very concerned with the idea of journeys shaping meaning, and questions that I’m very interested in as well. Basic questions of not just life on a bike, but life itself. Why is this so painful? What does this pain have to teach me physically, emotionally, and so on—he does an amazing job on that front. There is also this element; the people that he speaks to come across as very authentic. They’re not trying to become top-level professionals on the cover of cycling magazines. They’re trying to be exceptionally good at this very niche thing that has its own delimited ceiling. Within the UK, you’re not going to be rich and famous for having the End to End record or the British 25 or 50 mile or whatever else it might be. There’s a certain intrinsic authenticity and beauty to what’s being described. Sports psychologists often talk about ‘intrinsic’ versus ‘extrinsic’ motivation. It’s far easier to tap into intrinsic motivation without delusions of sporting grandeur from the outset and it is this combination of factors which makes End to End so beautiful."