Some Italian Wisdom…

It was the cover of the recent issue of Bicycling that got me thinkibng. I was obsessed once, too, and it rarely pays off.

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It’s been decades now since I learned some wisdom from a not-so-humble Italian. I’ve used it many times.

I used to race bicycles. I did anything: time trials, hill climbs, long road courses, short criterium sprints…anything. I rode a Kobe. You‘ve never heard of it. I bought it from a dealer in Tacoma. I’m pretty sure they’ve been defunct for a long time now, but the bike served me well. At least the frame did. I eventually and incrementally stripped the bike of everything and replaced these parts with mostly French components. Real racing stuff. I rode a lot – about 400 miles a week – and was a decent racer, but life was not complete. I wanted a Guerciotti. A real screw-for-screw Italian racer. I knew – I was positive – that with this thoroughbred between my legs, I could reach my true potential. I’d probably win the Tour de France.

I moved to Georgia and rode like a madman. Locals shook their heads. A man with long hair and tights is, um, not from Georgia. While there, dodging beer bottles thrown at me from cars doing 70mph on the back roads, I entered a 20-mile time trial. It was a local race, and I knew I’d be competitive. I won the race by six minutes. I settled into the grass to watch other riders finish, and I had an epiphany. A shock, really. Just like me, these were weekend warriors, guys and gals who raced around the area and spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on their hobby, and here they were now, passing the finish line riding Bianchis, Peugeots, Colnagos, and  – the mother of them all – a Guerciotti. And I beat them.

I knew these weren’t the fastest riders around, but really? I beat a Guerciotti? I was dumbfounded. Dumbfounded until I figured it out. At my level, the bike doesn’t count. It’s guts and the ability to inflict pain on yourself. Everything else is advertising. And I believed the advertising. That I had to have this, or that, or something else to really enjoy my time. I saw through it all, sitting at the finish line with my cheap bike lying beside me.

Ever since then, my advice has been to let them have it, and it’s true in almost anything. Never mind what people buy or how they dress. In almost anything you put your hand to, there are basics to learn, and you can learn those on just about any cheap knockoff. In fact, my Slovak brother, Peter Sagan, ‘borrowed’ his sister’s supermarket bike once to win the European Youth finals. Fitness always trumps tech.

Now, before you say anything, I admit to liking nice things. The only thing I’ve ever enjoyed driving more than my Saab 900 Turbo was my Porsche 911 Turbo. I love superbly built machines. What I’ve learned, though, is that Saabs, or Porsches, or Guerciottis guarantee nothing other than a nice ride. Anything more is on you.

There’s another side to this coin I saw about a year later. I raced in an early iteration of the Athens Twilight Criterium and was beaten so badly I wanted to go home. I was doing the same amount of mileage and still working hard on the bike, but this was the first time I raced with international teams. Even the US Team was there – Team 7-Eleven – and I met and stayed in the room across the hall from Davis Phinney and Eric Heiden. I didn’t wash my hands for a week after shaking hands with Heiden.

I did a very lousy criterium on Friday night and woke up early for Saturday’s 120-mile road race. These guys were in world-class condition and came with world-class experience. They amazed me in the criterium. I’m in the peloton, keeping up and going very fast, and some French guy stands up and sprints 35mph. Other riders keep up, but I’m lost, waiting for my heart to jump like a frog out of my mouth. The road race was more manageable. Pacing is key here, and I kept up for half the race. Then, someone hit a rainy patch, and when he went down, twenty others went with him. I pulled hard and brakes, and in the two minutes it took me to thread through broken bikes and downed bodies, I was lost. I looked up, and the Peloton was virtually out of sight.

What did I learn? What’s the takeaway? Just the opposite of what I learned in the local race a year before. When you are riding with the elite of the elite, every bit of muscle counts, and every decimal of VO2, and every tiny drilled-out fraction of a gram in your brakes. It all adds up, and it all counts.

Three things