Monday Morning Motivation: The pale mountains road

Mountains were the cornerstone of Stephano’s life. Growing up in a family of skiers, he started competing at a young age. When an injury took skiing away from him he found solace in his offseason training activity, cycling. What he realised was a new way to experience the mountains that he loved. Cycling provided a challenge, isolation, and discovery just as skiing once had. Journal 3 – The Pale Mountains road from PEdAL ED is part of a series.

The mountains are my life, I live here, my house is here and my love too. The roads that surround my house they unravel into the woods until they reach the high silver-colored peaks and limestone summits that form a stone ring around the village. I know all of those peaks, I have been up there hundreds of times, I know all the paths, I know all the small lakes created from ice, I know every stone and I know how hard and beautiful it is to get there. When I look at those peaks my mind blows up into thousands of different memories related to them.

Head over to pedaled.com/#!/stories/the-pale-mountains-road for the full story

Transcript

When I think about mountains, I think about meditating, about the cold, about solitude, about achieving my goals, reaching the summit with skis or a bike it doesn’t matter how.

When I was little, I couldn’t wait for winter to arrive. As the air turned crisp towards the end of September, I began to dream. Winter is my life. I grew up in a family of skiers, surrounded by snow.

I began riding at 15. It was a way to train for the winter season, a way to get stronger.

When I was 18, at the beginning of my skiing career, I broke my femur during one of my first downhill training sessions. Surgery, metal plates, screws.

A few months later, I left home with my tent and my titanium Merlin to ride across Corsica. After that, riding became more and more important in my life. It was no longer only a way to train for the winter season. It became a new way to discover the mountains, to immerse myself in untouched wilderness, in complete solitude to travel and to discover.