I've had it up to here with the phony neo-romanticism of "epic" bike rides.
It started, as I recall it, with Rapha's monochrome marketing images of beautiful young men riding bikes and drinking black coffee in over-understated euro-chic clothing and without helmets, which spoil the look. The presentation always came with some implied or overt association with the history of pro bike racing and the heroism and torment of long hard bike rides.
The monochrome photography has become a mark of the genre. Its canonical form is film of Paris-Roubaix with soundtrack replaced by plaintive, soulful music to express the, passion and suffering, plenty of slow motion, maybe some amped-up contrast, images of muddy-faced cyclists, many of them disconsolate at the side of the road, out of the race due to a crash or equipment failure. The correspondence with Wagner or ETA Hoffmann disturbing: bombast, bogus mythology, Ach Weh, escapism and all that incoherent rot.
It quickly became—to what extent by clever engineering, I