Padraig’s Cycling Aphorisms

I recently finished the novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin. It’s about a woman who is a video game developer. It’s a runaway best seller, which gives me hope because all of the characters are as weird as I am. 

Here’s the thing, I’ve read Chuck Pahluniak’s book on the craft of writing fiction, Consider This several times and one of the things he talks about in that book is the value of a good aphorism. Prior to Consider This, I’d never considered (see what I did there), just how valuable a good aphorism could be in establishing an author’s authority. But he’s right: a good aphorism can help convince you the narrator knows of what they speak. 

So why am I raising this? Well, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is full of them. It’s full of brilliant aphorisms. It’s chock full of them the way the Tour de France has skinny men. 

And that got me to thinking about all the great aphorisms I’ve heard in cycling over the years. I realized I want to record as many of them as I could. 

My first is one that became a shirt for Red Kite Prayer: There will be chaos, keep pedaling. The lesson there is that as long as you’re on the gas, you’re unlikely to go down, but I’ve written about it because it carries such a weight of metaphoric truth. 

Here’s one that I heard plenty but was hard for me to learn: Brake before the turn, not in the turn. That is, do all your braking before the turn. If you wait until you’re in the turn to brake, you’re going to have to brake more than necessary had you done it all prior to the turn. This is, in part, because when you hit the brakes it causes the bike to stand up and carve a straighter line. 

Here’s another about turning: Never apex a turn until you can see the exit. If you apex too early you’ll have to hit the brakes and be slower through the turn. 

This one strikes me as so obviously true I’m not sure it should count: A clean bike is a fast bike. Any time I think of it I think of a teammate of mine from UMASS who had a freewheel (yes, it’s been that long) that was so gummed up, it wouldn’t spin. And this was  maybe ten minutes before the start of her race. I sprayed degreaser on it so she could race. 

Now here’s something trippy. I have two contradictory ones: The first is one I learned as a Cat. IV: All it takes is one or two mistakes and you’re on the front. This is a statement about racing and how important it is to be mindful of your position in a group. You want to be near the front but you don’t want to make the mistake of being at the front and having to take a pull. 

Its mate is: Don’t be afraid of the front. I learned this when I started racing with/against experienced Cat 1s and a few former pros. They all had experience enough to know that you can’t escape winding up at the front and you want to be seen taking a pull, and they also knew how not to take a pull that was too long. The first is junior varsity, the second, varsity. 

Here’s one from mountain biking: Most of your problems can be solved by going faster. 

A flat back is a fast back. That’s a statement about aerodynamics, but in my case it’s also a prediction of spinal stenosis. 

Here’s one of mine I’d like to finally see make it to the big time: One flat is a bummer; two is a disaster. How many of us carry two tubes on a ride?