Second week of starting SCA—a Tuesday morning—and I get hit by a car.

Car 1 – Me/bike 0.

Vrrrooom, vrrrooom, bitch.

Week 2 of trying to take everything on at SCA with speed to prove myself, and already I’m hit and down.

The bike was my “hockey” mountain bike. Given the schlep of biking kit to/from training/games as a goalkeeper, the tyres are thick, and seat just comfy enough to take the weight.

I get hit, the bike’s done, and I get the driver to drop back me to swap bikes. All so I can fight it into school for town hall and not lose any time against anyone.

My “backup” bike, it’s a house clearance find from a builder mate. It’s a speed bike with tyres only as thick as a finger. And the saddle isn’t straight, it doesn’t budge, and isn’t kind.

Did I mention the saddle isn’t straight, it doesn’t budge, and isn’t kind?

Give 20 minutes of riding on this seat, and you’ll know about it. Give it the 40ish I need to get into school—with the hills—and it’s borderline sadism.

Sitting in town hall later that Tuesday morning, ice-pack on my eye, I was grateful to not be dancing Marc’s “late dance”. What with a blown-up cheek, a dead arm and leg, rocked shoulder, and maybe concussion pounding though my cheek bone, yet also… my tailbone. My arse. Where your glutes meet your gooch meets your junk.

Your perineum. My perineum.

Yeah, that sodding seat.

Cycling back from school after a day of dazed learning, again, that seat. All the way back. My perineum, throbbing.

Cycling in for a another day of Master Classes, again. Throbbing. Every pothole. Thud-thud-thud.

That seat. Me. Riding with my weight spread heavy on the bike’s front drop bars.

Mid Kolb Cycle, that seat, wearing my taint to pieces. Like a Rocky punch bag.

All week, book-ending my day and stacks of taken notes, ol’ Balboa, grinding away and nearly blistering.

That seat. Ground and pound. Raw and sore.

It’s so bad, I gaffa tape foam to pad it out. Like some kind of crash mat.

It’s so bad, I consider a Plan B of sanitary towels if it gets any worse.

“How was your ride in?” my fellow SCA cyclists would ask most mornings.

Week after week after week at SCA of new skills, new info, new failings, my sphincter area gets thumped and pummeled. Every day, jab-jab-jab. For two months, I’m trying to keep pace with the learning and the standard I’d set for myself to career pivot into Adland with, and with the gristling. Daily, crushed cartilage and connective tissues, smashed together for length of a podcast here, for length of a podcast there.

“Yeah fine,” I’d lie right back.

Until one day, around Week 11, while riding back late one night after locking up the studio, I realised. Like something was missing.

Had I turned off all the heaters?

Had I locked the toilet door?

Had I kicked out the cat?

And I realised, mid-cycle, that my gooch, it didn’t nag anymore.

The saddle on my bike hasn’t changed; hasn’t got any kinder. My bag hasn’t got any lighter.

That after weeks of slogging, blood had flooded tissues to toughen up.

Around that same week, I’d looked at a creative brief format that I’d struggled with months prior, pre-SCA. And I could see between the client Goal, the Audience, the Human Problem, the Insight, the Proposition, the Reasons to Believe and Tone of Voice. Things maybe slotting into place.

Weeks of slogging, and new neural connections and pathways had flooded. And toughened up. Like a fighter’s cauliflowered ears, all pooled and clotted.

Back to that Week 2 Tuesday when I got hit and my cheek blew out, it wasn’t long before a tasty, plummy black eye shined itself up.

A classmate who didn’t know it was a car asked me, “What happened to the other guy…?”

As if to say, who was I fighting with?

Swapping bikes to get back into school that Week 2, who was I fighting with?

If you need to fight anyone on the course, it’s with yourself.

On the course, you are the other guy.

That’s the only person you can compete with and beat. To who you were yesterday. Last week. Last month. There’s so much talent in diverse ways, you can only compare yourself to you. That we’re all just hanging on and treading water in our own unique ways.

Often, you’re too close to judge your own progress. You compare yourself to everyone else and all the skills they have and you don’t. The Adobe stuff. The 3D stuff. The music stuff. The thinking stuff. The making stuff. The doing stuff. The stuff stuff-stuff-stuff.

Until one day, you just both forget and realise it in the oddest way.

Week 11, and I forget my perineum aches.

Week 11, and I feel like I’m maybe getting Propositions.

Week 11, out of of 45 at SCA, and I feel like I’m getting it a bit. Blood and knowledge, flowing and pooling and clotting, doing its Kolb Cycle thing.

Respect the cauliflowering.

And so when we go to war with D&AD New Blood in a few months time—and it gets tough, and it feels hard, and looks uphill—I’m going all in.

With my hardened neural pathways, and cauliflowered arsehole.

@terencejamese