I cannot deny I am absolutely (morbidly) fascinated with the road-racing world of cycling but the more I remember my love for it from my younger years the more I am reminded of all the things that I absolutely despise about the cycling-bro culture. Davis Phinney’s story in the “what ever happened to Davis Phinney video” about being called by “his idols” to participate on their cycling team and turning them down and the reasons and disillusionment really reminded me of going through those same realizations. Davis is conflicted because so many of those people were and are his friends. But what he doesn’t say is as telling as what he does.
It’s pretty obvious Davis was just tired of all the I-have-to-be-fast bullshit besides the posturing and doping and all-around cycling-bro toxic culture. It has to be an internal conflict for sure. He loved it but has also become disillusioned by it and never wants to go back. He bikes for fitness now, period. He obsesses over music and art now.
The attraction to be fast as you watch yourself improve is definitely dangerously addicting. So many in different sports will trade their lives, health, livelihood—even soul—for the thrill of going faster than someone else. Armstrong’s seven years of doping and calling himself the best their is just starts the story of just how evil competitive sports can become. Pantani is another story that is just as bad. Anywhere there is tons of money and speed you get corruption and evil and cycling is fucking full of it.
Perhaps that’s why I really don’t want anything to do with road cycling groups at all. I remember naively thinking that people racing crits would be there to support one another in the spirit of happy competition. I was so wrong. It’s deadly. It’s mean. And it’s full of cheaters of all kinds. I remember being in a crit at BYU when I had that feeling overwhelm me. To be fair, I hadn’t been groomed by a professional team with hours of peloton tactics training. I was completely self-taught. I took a cycling class at BYU that I thought would help but it was just a big, regular group ride with no discussion of tactics at all. The final was just how much your 20 mile time had improved. And let’s face it, in America it is virtually impossible to find good cycling training (not unlike me trying to find anyone who would play Soccer with me in 1983, unlike today). Had I been raised by pro endurance athletes living in Boulder like Phinney, or raised anywhere in Europe, perhaps I would have done better.
Instead, I’ve been a middle-of-the-pack wanderer my whole life, more likely to talk to farm stock than to other cyclists. I crave lonely trails full of amazing sights and natural sounds which is why I’m returning to the gravel state of mind.
All you have to do is look at the most popular gravel products in the industry to immediately understand the gravel state of mind. Just search for “gravel shirt” to find 80 dollar collared gravel shirts just for riding bikes on gravel. It’s the polar opposite of the skin suit lycra clad roadies and I get the feeling they like it that way. Gravel people think roadies are mostly all white bro assholes and they’re not completely wrong. What’s really sad is how few people besides rich white dudes are even represented in either the roadie or gravel cultures. In fact, to get any diversity you have to look at the urban, fixie-obsessed cyclists. They have no more concern for danger than any roadie or mountain biker, just in a different way.