Pro Cycling on $10 a Day: From Fat Kid to Euro Pro

SILVER CITY IS NO PLACE FOR AMATEURS I left Colorado Springs the next morning and got back in the fucking car for another day of driving for the Tour of the Gila. I’d never driven in snow before, but I made it to Santa Fe and then Albuquerque in the afternoon, careful to dodge all the tumbleweeds on the highway in New Mexico. I hadn’t known that those existed outside of cartoons. Already exhausted when I got off the interstate, I was surprised when my GPS said “48 miles remaining, 1.5 hours’ drive time”—I was sure that couldn’t be right. Then I saw the steep climbs, bumpy cattle guards, and dangerous descents on the road into Silver City. I drove as fast as I could, sliding my poor car around hairpins in the dark. I made it to the host house, fell asleep, and found two flat tires when I went outside to unpack the car in the morning. They probably weren’t meant for drifting. My luck didn’t improve when the race started. I got a flat tire when I went off the road to dodge a crash, and I chased for over an hour to get back to the field. Between the dry air and altitude, I got a major nosebleed. My car was parked at the base of the finishing climb, and I got there several minutes behind the field, my new white Cannondale and all my clothes covered in blood. The course turned right to go up the climb, and I turned left, climbed into my car, and got the hell out of there. I might have made the time cut, but for the second time in two weeks, I opted to climb in the car instead. I got out of that town like I was about to turn into a pumpkin, and made it back to San Diego nine hours later. If there wasn’t a Pacific Ocean to stop me, I’d have driven another day, just to get farther from Gila.

I loved the moment on long rides when I was tired and sore, 50 miles from town, and all I could do was keep pushing, left foot, right foot, with the faith that it would take me home.

Summary of life as an athlete: You’re training and miserable, you’re lonely, you’re training and miserable, you won something, everyone loves you, it’s over.

Did an amateur cycling team help the company advertise its products? No, but two of the three founders of Sakonnet were cyclists, and that was a good enough reason to throw away $100,000.

You have to judge morality by someone's entire body of work, and one mistake shouldn't condemn an otherwise moral life.

A big goal like starting a business or writing a book can be daunting at first, but all you have to do is break it up into little pieces and keep working at it. You could eat a school bus if you ground it up and sprinkled some on your oatmeal every morning.

I ignored a slew of insults in text messages, happy that another bridge worth burning was sinking to the bottom of the river, and I could look forward to a year with a new team.

The truth is, the biggest factor in who made it to the next level wasn’t talent or work ethic. It was a willingness to keep plugging away through all the hard times.

Halfway through a massage, I asked to use the restroom, where I smeared Nutella all over my ass. When I returned and lay face-down on the table, she jumped in disgust.

If you never manage to watch the sunset over Torrey Pines, you’ve made a big mistake.

we were all itching for dick jokes and male bonding. The team took photos for the web site on an abandoned construction site (camp was in central Florida at the beginning of the mortgage crisis, so the area was filled with ruins, not unlike ancient Rome). The next day, we rode back to the same spot and took our own pictures, this time with our genitals out, and slipped it into the photographer’s slideshow. Someday, I’ll frame that photo and put it on the wall.

The guys showed me to ride on the far inside of the straightaways, swinging out at the last second to take the turns at full speed. Holding the inside made it nearly impossible for anyone to attack into a corner, and easy for the team to control the race.