Cycling is all about making sacrifices.  Cyclists will tell you that you have to sacrifice time with friends and family, drinking, eating out, making money, etc.  There are so many sacrifices that you have to make in order to be a successful cyclist.  But I am here to tell you that they are all wrong.  It’s not about sacrificing your time or relationships, it’s about sacrificing to the race gods.  And where do the race gods live you might ask?  Well, they inhabit the depths of race porta-potties, and in order to win races, you don’t have to train hard or race smart or have natural talent, you have to sacrifice to the race gods.

Scene One: I sit down in a porta-potty before a hillclimb.  I take a poo (yes, girls poo, too).  Then I turn around to look at the poo, and notice my nice gloves bedded in a poo sandwich. Poo beneath them, poo on top of them.  I burst out of the porta-potty and tell everyone in hearing distance that I s**t on my gloves.  I win the hillclimb.

Scene Two: I’m about to start a crit at the Tour of El Paso.  I go into the porta-potty and ask Kyle to take my seatbag off my bike.  Being the great guy that he is, he complies, and then walks into the adjacent porta-potty, seatbag in hand.  Kyle trips and falls towards the porta-potty.  He releases the seatbag into the depths of the porta-potty.  I win the crit.

Scene Three:  I pre-ride the last NORBA National course at Deer Valley, UT last Friday morning.  After the pre-ride, I go back to Kyle’s car to change.  Then I put the keys in one pocket and my cell-phone in the other.  I get on my bike to spin back to the team tent.  En route, I use the porta-potty.  About thirty minutes later, I need to make a phone call and realize I can’t find my phone.  Kyle and I search the tent, the car, my bag, the ground.  We call the phone, but it is nowhere to be found.  Suddenly, I realize where it is.  I go back to the porta-potty and stare into the murky depths.  There is no phone.  I peel back some toilet paper to look for the phone.  I am desperate because I have hundreds of phone numbers on that phone that I am too lazy to have recorded anywhere else.  I NEED those phone numbers.  There is the phone, in the porta-potty, looking up at me.  The phone is removed from the porta-potty and place on the ground in the sun for two days to dry out.  Hands are washed thoroughly.  On Saturday, I get 15th place at the NORBA - my second best NORBA result ever.  Needless to say, the phone numbers were not retrived, but it’s about the race result anyways.

So this is how you become a successful cyclist.  You must make sacrifices to the race gods.  But the sacrifices have to be unintentional.  You can’t just drop stuff in the porta-potty and expect to have a good race.  The greater the sacrifice, the better the result.  Hard work, training, whatever.  You must sacrifice to the race gods.