The biggest problem with being a bike racer that writes is that, over time, you turn into a writer that races bikes, and being a writer is in many ways the antithesis of being a bike racer. For instance, many coaches will tell racers to employ a practice called “positive mental imaging”—a technique of imagining yourself to success by changing the way you “talk” to yourself mentally. You strive to eliminate or change the tone of the voices in your head, using mental judo to change these negative thoughts into positive ones. Twisting your negative thoughts into submission may help to make you a better cyclist—but it will make you a terrible writer, because listening to someone recap a race in which they thought nothing but positive thoughts to themselves is like reading a work of fiction, incredibly unrealistic fiction. 

To me, being a writer means describing things as they are, not as I wish they could be. If I get dropped from a break because I am a sneaky old codger and I know who to follow, but then I describe that situation in the rose-tinted details of unblinking positivity (“I was able to make it to the break today, and I lasted a long time. Now I only need to fashion myself a handlebar mounted time machine to take me back to 1998 for limited durations [I will have to be careful about battery life] during the race so I can lap the field.”), you would only have to look at the race results to find out that I’m a complete moron. Unfortunately, being a bike racing writer means acknowledging my shortcomings and failures, exploring the arc of my bike “career”, and as I get older, that stuff gets dark.

I don’t mean to bring everyone down here, but (if we’re lucky) we’re all going to get older and slower. I know this because the process is happening to me right now, in real time. As I explained in a post from earlier this season, my leg torpedoes are turning into something akin to propelled packs of limp pasta. I have moments of fastness, but they take a long time to bring about, and they take a really long time to recover from. This wasn’t always the case of course. In my earlier racing days if I was sick or injured, I would ask myself, “When will I be able to go fast again?”, but now with age that question gets darker with the elimination of the word “when” and morphs into “Will I be able to go fast again?”

God almighty this post is turning into a bummer. The previous three paragraphs make it sound like I’m going to ride my bike into a lake and leave it to sink to the muddy bottom, but cheer up, dear reader, I am not finished yet. There are moments in the life of a pretend bike racer that still sustain the delusion I need to keep turning pedals in—let’s not call it anger—let’s called a state of mild miffed-ness. I still enjoy the thrill of mild danger that come with hurling myself around a course with a pack of like minded knuckleheads. I still like turning an ordinary Thursday into a battle for survival as I try to get home before darkness after a thrash about at Rockleigh. I still enjoy smugly describing racing at the crack of dawn to non-racing friends and acquaintances and basking in the glow of my perceived dedication and athletic prowess (I somehow never get around to mentioning that I usually finish these races deeply embedded in the backside of the pack).

So that’s what sustains me: danger, survival and smugness (never underestimate smugness), and as long as I still have those three, I can survive longer.

I suppose I should recap the un-recapped races, but at this point it seems unnecessary. I didn’t win any of them. I tried my best to help out my teammates when I could, and I never once fell into the trap of thinking like a racer instead of a writer.