More Advice From a MAMIL

Dear MAMIL,

In my regular “non-cycling” life I like to think I’m a natty dresser. I don’t skimp on my cycling kit, either. And yet I get the sense that when I roll up to the coffee shop for a group ride, the other guys are kind of snickering at me. What am I doing wrong?

John D, Oakland, CA

Dear John,

Right off the bat, I’d guess this is all in your head. Your cycling pals could be snickering about anything, or nothing, or the snickering could be a figment of your imagination. That said, cyclists can be a judgmental lot so let’s proceed with the assumption that they’re actually judging your costume. Starting with your assertion that you don’t skimp on your clothing, I’ll advise that one can spend a lot of money and still look foolish. For example, you could be wearing a WorldTour pro team kit when you’re clearly not on the team, which 41% of a panel of veteran cyclists deemed “laughably Fredtastic” (i.e., demonstrating the tone-deafness of a newb). Or, you could be wearing Rapha in a cycling community like mine where we all shun that brand as overpriced hipster apparel too closely associated with Team Ineos and Chris Froome. Or, you could be underdressed or overdressed, or rocking arm warmers with a sleeveless jersey, or doing something similarly silly. But don’t sweat it. You’ll develop a sense of style on the road just like you have in your non-cycling life. If you’re impatient, go ahead and query your friends (however politely or bluntly you wish, from “Is there something untoward about my choice of apparel?” to “Fuck you starin’ at?!”). Or, consult this article, bearing in mind that “fitting in” is not a fundamental, necessary, or even commendable aspect of the sport.

Dear MAMIL,

I am somewhat new to cycling (in my late thirties) and have lately been doing group rides. A couple times I’ve heard this or that MAMIL talking about “digging deep.” I kind of have a sense for what this must mean, but can you explain it to me?

Virgil S, Louisville, CO

Dear Virgil,

As a former bike racer, I use this term to describe the kind of over-the-top suffering that we racer-types assume can only be achieved by the likes of us; that is, cyclists who have frequently found themselves in do-or-die race situations requiring the kind of massive effort that would frighten a recreational cyclist. Through trial and error we realize that we’re actually capable of more pain than we’d ever thought possible, because it means the difference between glorious victory and heartbreaking defeat. Do this enough times and you begin to think you’re special, and that casual cyclists couldn’t even begin to relate to what you can put yourself through. This is the essence of “digging deep.”

The problem with this expression is that if you use it outside your tight cabal of racer-types, and your audience doesn’t automatically feel included (due, perhaps, to not having raced), he or she or they may catch a whiff of arrogance in this usage. And then—depending on the pool of rapport available and/or the number of beers you’ve all consumed—he or she or they might give you a hard time about this usage, not just in the moment but repeatedly over time, almost as if to taunt you for your superciliousness. As you may have already guessed, this has happened to me with a pal who—though he hasn’t ever raced—recently completed a 400-kilometer ride. I don’t think anyone achieves that without digging deep. So use this term carefully.

Dear MAMIL,

You’ve gotta help me. I’m a teenage girl and the Lycra bike shorts my dad wears are disgusting. They’re so worn out they’re starting to become transparent in places! Some even have holes in the sides! It wouldn’t be such a big deal except he rides an indoor trainer and likes to parade around the house before and after his workout. My brother and I even chipped in and bought him a brand new pair of shorts but he doesn’t wear them, claiming he’s “saving” them for special rides. Would it be ethically wrong for me to “disappear” some of his worst clothing?

Lydia L, Portland, OR

Dear Lydia,

That really is a tough bind! Cycling clothing is notoriously expensive, and the Lycra often wears out before the chamois—so it can be difficult for a cheap bastard to part with them. Fortunately, there’s a modern solution: buy your dad a pair of baggy mountain-bike style shorts. I used to think these were pointless since they don’t have a chamois, but actually, that works in your favor: he can wear his thrashed old disgusting shorts under the baggy ones. A fellow mountain biking coach pointed this out to me … he is stoked to be getting a second life out of all his old road shorts. Give that a try!

Dear MAMIL,

I confess that I am officially a MAMIL, but I’m apparently still something of a “newb” since I’ve “only” been cycling for about five years. As difficult as this sport is, I thought I’d get some respect from the non-cyclists in my life. But instead they seem to cast aspersions. My sister-in-law said I’m at real risk for giving myself a heart attack, and a couple of people have said cycling actually reduces bone density. What’s the deal? Did I choose the wrong sport?

Jeff B, Columbus, OH

Dear Jeff,

I’ve been hearing rumors for well over a decade that too much exercise can damage your heart. Cycling sometimes gets singled out, because you can do it day after day. (Nobody runs back-to-back marathons, but lots of cyclists put in hundreds of miles a week.) I’ve written about this supposed cardiac risk here. The question for your sister-in-law is: if Tour de France type riders—despite making a living at this and being tough as nails—don’t tend to ride themselves to death, how could you? I mean, no offence, but if a recreational cyclist were actually putting himself or herself at risk for cardiac arrest, the pros would be dropping like flies. And would humans actually evolve to have the capability of working themselves to death? Statistically, the greater risk is when a middle-aged person who doesn’t exercise at all suddenly does something really rigorous. When I lived in Colorado we’d hear every year about some guy having a fatal heart attack while shoveling the snow from his driveway.

As for osteoporosis, it is true that very fit people, because they carry less weight on their skeletons, are somewhat more prone to it. Cyclists in particular can be at greater risk because it’s a low-impact sport, lacking the thumping-along of running that can help maintain bone density. Another issue is that you can sweat a ton during a really long ride, which deprives your body of calcium. So yeah, there’s something to this. But obesity is a far more common ailment among the middle-aged, so it’s not like cycling is unhealthy. Just add in some weight training to your regimen, and make sure your diet has plenty of calcium. Also, I once did a quick Google search on “is beer good for bone density” and apparently beer has boron in it, which is good for your bones. I’m not going to research this any deeper because I have the answer I want, and now you do, too.

Dear MAMIL,

What is it with the modern cycling sunglasses? They are so goofy looking! Have all you MAMILs (and MAVISes) lost your minds? Why not a tasteful pair of Ray-Bans or Maui Jims?

Julie D, Miami, FL

Dear Julie,

I agree. It’s hard not to find fault when you compare modern cycling sunglasses to classic styles like the Ray-Bans.

The problem is, as much as we’d like to blame the designers for deliberately making their product “edgy” (i.e., dorky), to some degree this actually form following function. I’m not in love with the looks of my own cycling shades, but they really do well at not letting light leak in from the sides, not fogging up, and being easy to stash in my helmet vents so I don’t drip sweat all over them during a long climb. A couple of times I’ve forgotten to put in my contact lenses before heading out for a ride, and instead of clomping through the house in my cleats I’ve just put on my prescription Ray-Bans, and I’ll tell you, they don’t work nearly as well. So maybe this is a matter of MAMILs choosing to feel marvelous vs. look marvelous.

Dear M. Hamill,

Can you put to rest the rumor that your car accident was a suicide attempt based on your humiliation over having starred in the “Star Wars Holiday Special” on CBS, a program so awful one critic suggested it could have been “written and directed by a sentient bag of cocaine”? I’m sure it was just an accident. And I know that TV special wasn’t your fault either.

Irving M, Irvine, CA

Dear Irving,

I think you’ve got the wrong columnist—I’m a MAMIL, not Mark Hamill. That being said, a quick Wikipedia investigation shows that the car accident happened before the TV special, and this article points out that during filming of the special he was still recovering from the facial injuries sustained in the crash, “under a thick coat of make-up and on heavy painkillers.” (Part of me hates to veer so far off my column's topic, but I don’t like the idea of you carrying around such a blatantly false misconception.)

Dear MAMIL,

Someone wrote in before about whether the real point of Lycra, for men, is showing off their junk. Your answer was totally unsatisfactory—you were clearly prevaricating. What’s the real story? Why can’t you admit feeling sexy is part of biking’s allure?

Kim G, New York City

Dear Kim,

I assure you, MAMILs and even their younger counterparts have no exhibitionist tendencies. In fact, I have seen widespread evidence of teenagers being as modest as possible. When I was growing up in the cycling mecca of Boulder, Colorado, a fad started among those teenagers lucky enough to stand on the podium after a race: they would put on regular shorts (Ocean Pacific brand, usually) over their cycling shorts, for modesty’s sake. After all, to be on the podium is to be right in the public eye. I myself partook of this tradition, but with my own spin: I would roll up the cycling shorts under the regular shorts, to be less nerdy, to buck (part of) the trend, and because I was actually trying to prevent that ridiculous tan line cyclists get. Here I am on the second place tier rocking that look.

I had some influence at that point, but not enough to start a new tradition, as you can see above with the race winner, Pete, sticking with the previous tradition. But later that summer, in the Red Zinger Mini Classic, he’d adopted my rolled-up look and—given his dominance of that 9-day event—had driven 100% adoption in the new style across the podium by the end. You’ll have to take my word for it that he and the second place rider, David, were still wearing their cycling shorts in the photo below. (I didn’t have a second pair of shorts handy this time as I’d ridden to the race, which goes to prove how unnecessary this tradition even was.)

The double-short tradition persisted until the bike clothing industry wised up and started extending the padding in cycling shorts in the name of modesty. Fortunately, this evolution was complete before I hit puberty. ;^)

Dear MAMIL,

What’s the deal with power meters and Strava? Why do we even use these? Sometimes I wonder if I’m just trying to make myself feel bad by scientifically tracking and documenting the decline in my strength. I know you can’t answer for me in particular, and I wish I could, but I can’t other than to say I’m a blind follower of trends. So: why this trend?

Larry M, Atlanta, GA

Dear Larry,

I think I can take a stab at this. Starting with Strava, surely it succeeds for the central reason social media in general does: repeated doses of dopamine through the social traffic of the platform—kudos, comments, etc. There’s also the gamification of it: the KOMs, the PRs, etc. I’m not on Strava myself, but a friend tells me it has age-group-specific leaderboards to encourage ageing athletes.

As far as power meters, to some degree it’s just a cool new toy which fits in naturally with all the tech that cyclists enjoy. Beyond that, I find that—since I’m pretty new to having a power meter—I appreciate how it actually helps me feel better about certain stretches I ride. There’s a particular part of Wildcat Canyon Road that always made me feel weak and worthless because it looks like a fairly steep downhill but actually isn’t; I always felt like I should have been able to go faster through it. Now I see that, though my speed is barely over 20 mph, I’m putting out close to 400 watts, which ain’t too shabby.

The other thing to bear in mind is that those of us who are middle-aged now didn’t have power meters in our prime because they hadn’t been invented yet. So instead of comparing my time up South Park Drive to what I’d done in my 20s or 30s, I’m comparing my power output on it to what I did just last winter. Not such a comedown!

Dear MAMIL,

At the coffee shop this past weekend I overhead a couple of MAMILs talking about “luft.” Apparently it’s to do with cycling caps. I’ve been at this sport for a couple decades but never heard this term before. Care to enlighten me?

Sarah B, Boulder, CO

Dear Sarah,

“Luft” refers to how a cyclist wears his or her cycling cap. It should be worn high on the head, not pulled down tight; the higher up and puffier it is, the more luft it has. Below you can see Miguel Indurain getting it right, and your humble columnist getting it wrong (due to youth and ignorance, I must point out).

Not long after the above photo of me was taken, my brother Geoff schooled me about the proper way to wear a cycling cap. He did not use the term “luft” but he got the point across, and I learned my lesson. To this day I always employ plenty of luft.

Dear MAMIL,

How do you veteran cyclists tolerate having practically no body fat, particularly on your butts? How do you survive and sit comfortably? I’m a regular guy and my butt hurts after pretty much every ride.

H.Z., Princeton, NJ

Dear H,

First off, not all MAMILs have low body fat … only the former racers who somehow tamed their appetites in retirement. It’s the huskier MAMILs that earn us the reputation for being the wrong people to wear Lycra. But even those of us on the skinny side are just fine, because the padding is in the saddle itself, and the shell of the saddle, made either of plastic or carbon fiber, is designed to flex in just the right way. The saddles may look barbaric and torturous because they’re so narrow, but really it’s just your “sit bones” that need to be supported. If there’s pain involved it’s either due to chafing, or the saddle being set too high, or perhaps the rider putting too much weight on his butt and not enough on the pedals. Invest in a nicer saddle and you’ll probably be a lot happier.

I say all this because even at the peak of my fitness I really suffered when I tried too hard a saddle. The modern ones seem to be a step forward. Some even have a big valley down the middle, which is supposed to spare your nether region, though I can’t tell any difference. Such saddles do provide a nice way to stash your sunglasses, though.

Dear MAMIL,

I’m not a biker and have resigned myself to witnessing it (and being baffled) as a bystander. And I’ve always wondered this: why don’t biking gloves have fingers?

Julie D, Santa Fe, NM

Dear Julie,

There are lots of official reasons. Many a cyclist would tell you the gloves are mainly for crash protection, to keep your palms from getting scraped up, without any need to protect the fingers since they tend to curl inward. Or you might hear that the gloves are to pad your hands but the fingers don’t bear any weight, and/or the gloves are fingerless so they’ll be cooler. But I’m going to give you the truth. The number one reason for cycling gloves is that soft fabric, almost like terrycloth, on the back of the glove, between the base of the thumb and the wrist, which is used for wiping the snot from your nose. Other than that, most cyclists wouldn’t wear gloves at all. And cycling gloves are fingerless to facilitate nose picking. I know this is gross but that’s just the way this sport is.

A MAMIL is a syndicated journalist whose advice column, “Ask a MAMIL,” appears in over 0 blogs worldwide.

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From the Archives - Portrait of the Young Cyclist: Part 1

Introduction

I thought I’d just about exhausted my archives—that is, old essays and stories I’ve been writing since the ‘80s—and then I stumbled across a folder called “True Stories.” Jackpot! One of them was called “Portrait of the Cyclist as a Young Man.” I vaguely remember writing this back in 2003, but I don’t remember why. The full story runs like 14,000 words so I’ll be breaking it into installments, which I’ll run about once a month for a while. Here is the first.

Portrait of the Cyclist as a Young Man – Part One: How the Sport Found Me  (written in February 2003)

Don’t let the working title mislead you—what I am about to write will share nothing with James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (except, I guess, being written in English). Joyce must have had time on his hands, because he wrote and wrote and wrote and never got to the point (that I could see, anyway) and I gave up reading after about 150 pages. As for me, I have only one night to write this, since I’m fighting a cold and can’t ride. My goal is to write the entire history of how I became a cyclist and why that is important. If my output is poor, it’s because I’m in an awful rush. If it’s too verbose, that’s because I’m pretending I’m being paid by the word, just like the pros. (Get it?)

It’s all my dad’s fault, really, because my first bike was a ten-speed. Dad must have worked hard to find a ten-speed, in 1978, in my size. It was a Fuji Junior and had 24-inch wheels. The fact of the ten gears wasn’t the point—my dad figured that any 9-year-old, or at least his 9-year-old, would be too stupid to work the gears without running into a parked car or something, and told me not to touch the shift levers. (I reckon this was supposed to be an interim edict, but he never remembered to rescind it or teach me how to shift. Maybe he figured youthful disobedience would eventually take over, in which case he was right.)

[This is pretty much exactly the bike I had, only mine was red.]

It was the dropped bars, mainly, that differentiated my Fuji from the bikes my friends had. With my three older brothers, who of course also had ten-speeds, I held a playful contempt for regular bikes. We even had a label for them, something like High-Rise-Handlebar-Banana-Seat-Small-Wheel-In-Front-Big-Wheel-in-Back-Streamers-from-the-Grips-Stupid-Schwinn. I’d have to check with my brothers—I’m sure I mangled that—but you get the idea. I remember asking Dad if ten-speeds were faster, just to make sure, or to get something juicy to quote to my friends, and he said in his professorial voice, “The dropped handlebar improves the aerodynamics of the rider, which would make the bike faster.” I didn’t know the word “aerodynamic”—heck, it wouldn’t enter even the specialized cycling vernacular for other couple of years, but it had “arrow” in it and whatever garbled version of that word I spewed for my friends made their eyes grow wide. I felt like a racer long before I ever entered a race.

So did my brothers. I remember Max, at 10 or so, asking our next-door neighbor Greg (no authority on cycling, of course, but a good six or eight years older, and thus an authority on Life) if he (Max) looked like a racer, and demonstrated his style by riding to the top of Howard Place and executing a U-turn through which he put down his inside foot and dragged it lightly as if for support. When Max returned and pulled up to a stop, breathless, Greg laughed and said, “Yeah, you really did look like a racer, except for when you put your foot down in the turn.” I took a lesson well and never did that.

It’s difficult to remember whether my first exposure to bicycle racing was the Red Zinger Bicycle Classic stage race or the movie “Breaking Away.” I don’t think it matters. They were both huge. The Red Zinger gave me a taste, or at least a smear, of the sport. Our mom would drive us out to the Morgul Bismark course, which in the late seventies was basically the middle of nowhere, and we’d screw around for half an hour or so waiting for the racers to come by. Why we didn’t hike up to the top of The Hump, the second hardest climb, is beyond me. Lazy kids, I guess; we watched from the base of the climb. The pack flew by too swiftly for us to catch more than the patchwork of colors, like an animated quilt, and the whirring of chains, mostly drowned out by our own cheering. We knew the racers mainly through the great program that the race had put out. George Mount—Smiling George—was our favorite racer. The way he grinned while suffering, he was a superhero.

Then there was the two-page section showing nothing but racers who had crashed, with lots of blood and such, and it was a natural draw for bloodthirsty young boys.

The program also had a section showing the racers’ legs, all shaved, totally muscular, vein-y, superhuman. I also remember that the racers had these really cool-looking hairnet helmets—we called them Bandinis, for some reason—and between the name and the obvious lack of real protection, we were completely enchanted. I also remember that one or two of the racers had the new Bell Biker helmets, like what our dad had. The fact of those helmets told me that it was possible, just barely possible, that a nerdy kid like me might actually be able to join that race someday, even if at the back of the pack—heck, even off the back of that pack. I would be honored.

While the Red Zinger aroused our interest, “Breaking Away” blew us completely away. It delivered not just a glimpse of the sport, but a real story—actually, lots of real stories, and the main story was of this being a European sport that an American could hope to have a tenuous piece of, but only if he’s willing to immerse himself in another culture. (This was remarkably accurate, if you look at what Jonathan Boyer and Greg LeMond had to do to make it in international cycling at this point.)

It didn’t occur to us to view Dave as an adult would, to find humor in his attempt to become Italian—we were completely with him, somehow identified completely. When the Italian racer put the pump in his spokes, sure, we hated the guy, but we were also in awe, and couldn’t really fault him because this was their sport, not ours, so the Italians were somehow exempt from judgment, like how a hockey player who assaults another player gets a couple minutes in the penalty box instead of going to jail.

Max taught me that Europeans were physically stronger than Americans, and less affected by pain. (When we had some new neighbors and wanted to try to convince them that we were from Europe, we demonstrated our heritage by pretending to fight, and being unfazed by the punches we landed on each other.) “Breaking Away” helped to teach us that as Americans we were not worthy of this beautiful sport. So complete was my awe of the Italians, I was as horrified as poor Cathy was when Dave gave up the Italian impersonation. Even his triumph at the end of the movie was only over a bunch of American college students, on crappy AMF Roadmaster one-speeds. Winning the race, and holding up the trophy, didn’t quite redeem him. What did redeem him for me was that at the very end, he had picked up a new French persona. For months after seeing that movie, I carried around a French/English pocket dictionary and made a horrible attempt to speak in that indecipherable language.

The other thing “Breaking Away” did for us was to steep us in the arcana of the sport. What we didn’t catch from the movie itself, we got from the Bicycling magazine article about it. For example, I knew that the cycling caps that flooded the marketplace as being identical to Dave’s—that is, yellow Campagnolo caps—were completely wrong. They weren’t the right canary yellow (they were too orange), and they had too many stripes down the middle (i.e., five, these being the World Championship stripes). Dave’s cap had just three stripes.

When I found the right cap, for a shocking $5.00 at Pedal Pushers (most caps were $3.50), I had to panhandle for the 30 cents I needed to cover the tax, having only a five on me. When a friend accidentally broke the plastic inside the bill, and refused to apologize appropriately, our friendship was over. I also had a really cool red Cinelli cap, with the old coat-of-arms logo. By wearing these to school instead of a baseball cap, I brought on myself the scorn of my peers, but took it as a natural part of the outcast role I’d need if I wanted to embrace this sport. Boulder, Colorado was something of a cycling mecca even then, but this did not trickle down to the elementary school level. That cap was almost a badge of courage. I was almost, I felt, a Cutter.

[With a cap that cool, it’s a mystery why I wasn’t totally popular at school, especially with the girls. As you can see below, my overall fashion sense was unparalleled. The t-shirt I’m wearing actually says “LAMBCHOP” on it. My mom sewed those letters on there; Lambchop was her nickname for me. At least I had the physique for cycling, though I didn’t appreciate that at the time.]

All my identification might well have stayed in the realm of unearned or false had it not been for the Red Zinger Mini Classic stage race put on by the Sandvold family—Eric and his dad Eddie—and three of Eric’s friends. I guess they’d done a little race in 1980, but I never knew about it. It wasn’t until 1981 that they put on what can honestly be described as a totally legit stage race for kids. They had published a program that was remarkably similar to the Red Zinger ones we’d seen, except of course it didn’t show a lot of crash photos. (Don’t want to scare the devil out of the parents!)

The race’s slogan was “By, for, and about kids.” It looked like an incredibly cool event, and my brothers and I got our registration packets all together, and a kid named Scott M—, who had seen me riding around and saw my caps, even recruited me to be on his team, along with his friend and next-door neighbor John Lynch. There was only one problem: getting permission from Dad. Remember, this is the guy who didn’t want me to know about gears, lest I ride headlong into the back of a parked car.

We were all terrified to approach Dad. He was often grumpy, especially when we wanted something. He also never “got” sports and so far as we knew had never tried one. Mom supported the idea of us racing, but either she wanted to teach us assertiveness or she was as terrified as we were, because she refused to ask on our behalf. We boys all discussed the matter together and decided that Max, being the black sheep of the family, was in enough trouble with Dad already that it wouldn’t matter if he pushed our old man even further. Max wasn’t in a position to refuse his mission, because if he did, either Geoff or Bryan could beat the crap out of him, so with the two of them together he wouldn’t have a chance. Heck, I would have happily piled on myself, to dole out whatever I could add to the beating. Okay, I guess I’m exaggerating about the threat of actual violence, but anyway the matter was decided. Max would ask that night at dinner.

What a solemn occasion that was. The room was deadly silent through the whole meal as Max attempted to summon his resolve. This was very strange, because normally dinner time was an open forum for just about any subject, or at least any scientific or technical subject, and normally our table was abuzz with conversation (or at least my dad lecturing us while we nodded our heads and pretended to understand). The whole meal went by in awkward silence, the rest of us boys glaring at Max while he sweated bullets. Finally, just after dessert was served, Max finally cleared his throat and took the plunge: “Um, Daddy, um, I was wondering, er, actually, my brothers and I were wondering if, um, there was any way that we could, um, enter this bike race, that’s just for kids, um, because it’s really good exercise and would be good for us.” (Something like that.)

Dad didn’t even hesitate. “No. You boys are too stupid to be bike racers. You’d get yourselves killed.” I knew it sounds improbable that he actually said this, but I am quite certain I have it verbatim. My brothers remember it as well, and all our versions jibe. That was it. Nobody said another word for the rest of dessert, and immediately afterward Dad went back to work and nobody ever spoke to him again on the subject.

I guess I was relieved at his refusal, because I’d been pretty ambivalent about the idea myself. Not so much because I’d get myself killed, though I’m sure that worried me too, but the fact is, I was no athlete. I’d swum for years, first lessons and then the swim team, and I basically sucked. The best I ever did was third in some backstroke event (that loss-leader stroke), and that was only third in my heat—I ended up fourth overall, and that was only summer league. I was as undistinguished a swimmer as ever floated on water (or, more to the point, practically sank). I remember when our coach, Paul S—, got some video equipment and filmed us so that we could watch the footage and analyze our stroke. His main criticism of me was that I didn’t stay in my own lane. I’d kill for that footage today: sure enough, halfway through a lap I actually wander out of my lane, under a lane line, into the path of an oncoming swimmer. I tried to explain that I had to swim with my eyes shut because my goggles leaked so badly. Maybe the only guy everyone laughed at more was John W—, who swam freestyle with a butterfly kick.

And yet swimming was my best sport! At school, in Track & Field, I was always dead last in everything. I wished I could throw like a girl—it would have been an improvement. Every aspect of PE class was a source of humiliation. It was assumed that every boy knew the rules of football and baseball. I did not. I had no idea what was going on. Football was the worst. Offense? Defense? I didn’t know the difference. As far as I was concerned my job was to stay out of sight. Baseball? Just sit there and don’t swing, I told myself: if you don’t swing, you can’t strike out, and might get to walk. And yet the teacher kept calling strikes! I thought it was because I wasn’t holding my bat still enough, that the teacher must have thought she saw it move. I had no idea about a strike zone. I just stood there, as motionless as a statue, as the strikes were counted. I was uncoachable; teachers assumed I knew exactly what was going on and was simply demonstrating my complete contempt for the sport. Utter humiliation. Why would cycling be any different?

I guess I have my dad’s prohibition—and moreover my mom’s reaction to it—to thank for the fact that I ended up becoming a bike racer. Mom all but insisted that we all sign up for the Mini Zinger, on principle. I remember this well. The day after Max crashed and burned on our behalf, I was in the kitchen, hanging out around the stove while Mom cooked, and she asked me if I was entering the race. I reminded her what Dad said, and right there on the spot she basically made me commit to signing up. It wasn’t a long conversation, and I don’t remember her argument, but after that I was fully committed. I submitted my application, and …

To be continued

Tune in next time for the wretched tale of my flunked bike inspection, and—worse yet—the bike racing clinic where, for the first time, I felt bad about being a talentless loser unwilling to make himself suffer properly.

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