Winning By a Hair
When I first gave up my running shoes for a road racing bike in 2016, I was confronted by a scroll of unspoken rules I would be expected to follow if I were to be taken seriously as a congregant in the Church of Cycling.
The edicts were compiled by the Velominati—an anonymous cycling cognoscenti that presents them as holy writ. Cycling shorts must always be black, though socks can be any color you like. The color of your saddle, however, must match the color of your handlebar tape and tires without exception. Which is to say, these, too, must always be black because tires only come in one color. And so it was for pre-ride coffees: black only, preferably espresso. Anything dulled by milk was purely for the unsaved.
Who was I to disagree? It was a demand of my new culture. I bought a razor and shaved my legs.
There were others. Never, under any circumstances, lift your bike over your head—it is undignified for the machine. If you are ever unfortunate enough to draw the number 13 at a race, it must be pinned to your jersey upside down. And speaking of bad luck, accidents are not to be spoken of unless they involved a visit to the emergency room. Road rash, scraped elbows, bruised hips, and other evidence of unexpectedly meeting the pavement are just part of the discipline.
Some rules were intuitive, like showing up for training rides on time because they start exactly when they are supposed to—and I have never known that not to be the case. Others were more bizarre, such as never putting a bike on a car’s roof rack unless the bike is worth more than the car—and you might be surprised at how often that is the case.
Helpfully, these rules were emailed to me by my first serious riding companion, a multi-time state champ who took his coffee black, drove a $19,000 Volkswagen, and dragged me for months along rural roads until I was strong enough to compete in our city’s weekend group rides.
Clearly, he told me, some of the rules are open to interpretation and
