Way back in 2008, only a few days before the start of my first crazy cross-continental Tour, I was standing at the Finish Area of the first of the short-lived¹ Ironman China and Ironman China 70.3 race series² with a couple of Olympic sailors³. Clapping at and cheering on every single person that approached the Finish, they were easily the most excited people in my vicinity. This is because they just couldn't conceive of the idea of unpaid amateurs intentionally pushing themselves for 15 and 16 hours of sport; and they were so impressed by everyone that it called for tippy tap heel bounces and jumping and loud yells of congratulations.

My couch potato type friends all act impressed about the bike touring. So do my "three times a week to the gym" friends and acquaintances. As for my cyclist friends, most of them are ultralight randonneur and brevet riders putting in what I think of as ridiculous distances while "enjoying" the comfort of bus shelters as their sleep points; they also Don't Understand that I do things like carry two moka pots and a grinder.

Even having been out of sports work for a very long time, I still have a smattering of pro and former pro athlete friends. Most of them are road cyclists (for whom a 170km day is normal), and they all look at my carrying more weight than a rain jacket and a granola bar or organizing my own food and rest points, and shake their heads in a complete failure to understand "why".

In point of fact, I can barely think of anyone I know in person who I know well enough to call "friend" who understands that this is more fun than it isn't and a whole lot less stress than it sounds like when I'm recounting stories about sucking mud, the smell of pig farms, mosquitos or police.

Chinese Boyfriend is among those who "don't really get it." He's gone touring, for multiple days even. But the multi-day bike tour experience has all been in highly developed parts of the world⁴ where he could guarantee a washing machine and a soft bed every night and he only needed to carry a phone and a patch kit. With the swimming, and kayaking, and kickboxing, and triathlon, and off-road motorcycling, he has enough tangentially related experiences that—just like Sugar and Jacky enthusiastically cheering the amateurs at the 2008 Finish Line—he can be very very Impressed in ways that all my other friends aren't.

Getting praised by Chinese Boyfriend over sports stuff is like getting praised by Coach Li⁵ over sports stuff. It doesn't make me all giddy inside because he's paying attention to me. It makes me all giddy inside because he knows and his praise is coming from a place of knowledge.

Which is a long and roundabout way of saying I easily could have stopped at 65km but I did 85km instead. 

The terrain was flat, the available roads were mostly boring, the placement of cities and train stations meant that taking an excessively long day today (matched by an oddly short one tomorrow), got me a giddiness inducing thumbs-up emoji from Chinese Boyfriend when I shared my smartwatch statistics with him.

Even having eaten and hydrated before going to the hotel, I was in a very rough condition when the shit hit the fan on account of the booking platform having inappropriately sent me a confirmation message despite the hotel neither confirming nor receiving my payment. This shitshow was further escalated on account of some Random English Speaking Dude who thought it was his god-given right to just walk into the lobby and insert himself into an argument that had nothing to do with him by repeatedly telling me "calm down lady⁶" and "this is China."

Random English Speaking Dude's ongoing presence (despite repeatedly being told in both languages "this is none of your business, now go fuck off") by the time the police arrived meant that they thought me and him were a couple and kept talking to him instead of me, cause shouty women yelling "I don't know him" and "talk to me, not him" doesn't generally involve a situation where the angry woman actually doesn't know the apparently helpful man.

Then, because I had been yelling at them, they yelled at me too.

And, maybe, just maybe, if I hadn't been chasing the high of Chinese Boyfriend's approval by doing those extra 20km, I wouldn't have had a pounding headache and a sore throat that, by morning, was also an infected sore throat.

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¹ Possibly also the first Ironman authorized triathlon in China, the organizers managed to hold the event three times before sufficiently pissing everyone off that they first moved venues to another city and then had to cancel and refund people's entry fees. 

² China has a lot of Ironman events these days. With names like "Ironman Xiamen" and "Ironman Chongqing," many of them are part of an organization that has a website at "Ironman-China.com". However, that's not their organization name, and they aren't the dipshits I worked for in 2008 and 2009.

³ By which I mean "sailors who competed in the Olympics" rather than "Olympic-class sailboats".

⁴ Highly-developed Chinese-speaking parts of the world that it would be politically inappropriate for me to call a country.

⁵ If I'd known who he was in 2006, I wouldn't have dared to join the bike club's training course. However, I didn't know who he was and my joining ultimately resulted in stories of the "fat, crippled American" being used as examples to his Olympians (at least one of whom medalled in 2008) for why they needed to try harder.

⁶  A phrase that has never worked to calm down any lady in any language at any time in the history of ladies or language.