Learning to Lose—Nationals RR

Virginia Woolf walks with rock filled pockets into a lake. She breathes no more air.

F. Scott Fitzgerald writes of unrequited love while nursing the drink. His heart stops beating suddenly.

Hemingway loads a gun. He pulls the trigger. Neurons fire no more.

And when Scott Rosenfield rides the Blue Mounds course, his dreams are dashed.

Were this any other race and were the results any different than they are, this would be an exaggeration—the emotional writings of a boy too close to the action to write objectively. But it’s neither an exaggeration

nor a fiction. For today, Spider Monkey threw his bike in rage. And Will pulled out. Clearly, all is not well in a world filled with suffering and madness.

But certain races require suffering. In order to achieve victory, one must be willing to lose all. Not metaphorically, but actually.

One must walk up to George Hincapie with open eyes and say, “I grant you my body and soul.” He will laugh, possibly shed a tear, certainly flex a varicose-vein-ridden calf out of habit and say, “Are you really willing to do all of that?” You will say yes. He will smile crookedly. And if you win—another part of your soul will be forever lost, consumed by the great GH.

And at Blue Mounds, suffering is requisite for mere completion. To cross the finish line without the abscess of a DNF, one must be wanting to suffer and be yearning to bleed. You must watch with glee as your own soul evaporates before your eyes.

Today, it was clear who was heartless and who fancied himself a man with soul and morals. As the road tilted down in rain and gravel to explode up in steepness and pain, the few who had paid their dues road away.

As they—they tormented but weightless—moved up, we moved back. There was no denying it. We were unwilling to suffer the suffering that victory, even mere completion required. There were no excuses.

An exploded shifter cable and slowly leaking front flat—neither an excuse, but the work of a GH rendering judgment from on high. If my steerer tube must sheer, He says, you will flat and your cable will certainly break, too.

GH is an uncompromising god. He has no mercy. There is only cold logic. But it’s a logic with rewards great and understandable. The rule is simple: If you are unwilling to hurt, He will be unwilling to grant you victory. And if you are willing to hurt, He will throw in bad luck just because.

So tonight, I do not march toward the lake or drink or pull the trigger. I laugh—for I understand His game.

Postscript—Yeah, it's more than a bit too emotional, but it was written right after my race and the emotion carries some currency, I think.