Style Points
I am an enthusiastic cyclist. I tell many people about the virtues of bicycles. I ride with aplomb and energy. After rides, I earnestly effuse about how happy I am. About the good time I’ve had.
I’m a strong cyclist. I can ride for hours, and often do. Indeed, I have occasionally ridden for more than a day, just to prove a point. I no longer remember what that point might have been, but let’s agree that whatever the point, I have made it sufficiently.
I am a committed cyclist. I have been riding for more than twenty years. Not contiguously, but darned near close to it.
Enthusiastic. Strong. Committed. When it comes to cycling, I am all those things. And all those things are good things.
Sadly, however, I have no cycling style. No panache, as it were. At all. My riding is as boorish and ham-fisted as it’s possible to be without calling the authorities and hiring a lawyer to draft a cease-and-desist notice.
I shall elaborate.
Technical MTB Style
Some people are a pleasure to watch as they mountain bike. They glide up and over ledges. they lightly hop over rocks and roots. They carve hairpins cleanly and precisely. They climb with economy and grace.
They sail from jumps in a perfect and mathematically elegant arc, landing so smoothly that you’re not precisely sure of the moment they returned to earth.
I do none of these things. Or to be more accurate, I do the opposite of these things.
When I try to bunny hop, I pull my shoulders out of their sockets — so great is my effort — but my bike remains on the ground.
When I get to a ledge, there’s even odds that I will jam either my front wheel or my chainring into the lip of the ledge, bringing my bike’s forward progress to a sudden and traumatic halt. I will then either flip over the front of the bike, crush my snipe into the stem, or fall over backwards onto my tailbone.
Sometimes — and I know this should be impossible, but it’s true — all three.
I approach hairpins so slowly and tentatively that a case could be made that I never reach them at all.
When I try to clean a technical ascent, I seem to be wrestling my bike — as opposed to riding it. Furthermore, it is quite clear that I am losing that wrestling match.
I seize up and stiff-arm my bars during descents. Steep drops ending in flat runouts terrify me, and wheelies are right out.
In short, while I love mountain biking, I am possibly the ugliest-riding cyclist who has ever donned (and then crookedly worn) a helmet.
Climbing Style
Here’s a nice little piece of irony for you: I think of myself, above all else, as a climber. But I climb terribly.
Rather than sit and find the correct combination of gear selection and high cadence, I stand up as soon as the road turns uphill. I hang my head down, so all I can see is my front hub, mocking me with the slow repetitive rotation of its logo: DT Swiss, 240s. DT Swiss, 240s. DT Swiss, 240s.
My mouth hangs open; I drool. Sweat and snot — a “snotulum” I call it — combine and sway from the tip of my nose.
Spit, sweat, snot. And, frankly, tears. Honestly, it’s astonishing how many fluids drip out of my face when I’m climbing.
So gross. And that’s just what’s going on at head-level.
I lack any form. I have no upstroke, I have nothing that resembles a cadence. I look, essentially, as if I’ve somehow mistaken my bicycle for a rowing machine.
The moans of pain aren’t very attractive, either.
Finish Line Style
I am pretty sure I’ve never had the good fortune to win anything, so developing a victory salute style isn’t something I have needed to spend a lot of time on.
But even if I were much, much faster — so much faster that I could dream of winning in a less non-fantastical way — I would never even attempt a victory salute.
I know myself too well, that’s why.
I know that if I were to win and raise my arms to the air, I would immediately veer hard to the left (not sure why, but if I’m going to veer, it’s always to the left), plowing into timing equipment, race officials, and spectators.
And if any of those spectators happen to be small children or frail senior citizens, you can bet I’d manage to single them out.
The carnage, the humiliation, the complete clumsiness of it all, would be too much; I’d have to impale myself (if I hadn’t already) with my handlebar in order to escape the shame of it all.
Of course, all of this would happen before I even crossed the actual finish line, and so I’d wind up being a DNF.
In summary: should you ever see cross my path whil we are riding, look away.
For your own good.
Comment by Sam Morgante | 06.6.2016 | 11:49 am
I suspect that we are genetically related. Although I veer to the right, in all circumstances, and I continually fall over at slow motion hairpin turns, particularly when large, jutting rocks are present.
Comment by David | 06.6.2016 | 12:09 pm
For the 2012 Leadville 100 Single-speed champion to suggest he’s never won anything is to so mangle the notion of winning as to render the concept meaningless. You sir are a champion.
Comment by Tom in Albany | 06.6.2016 | 12:15 pm
“Look away! I’m hideous!”
Comment by Jim | 06.6.2016 | 12:29 pm
Those last few paragraphs about the finish-line salute were starting to feel like Fatty-cliffhanger/foreshadowing. Congratulations?!
Comment by Jeff Dieffenbach | 06.6.2016 | 12:39 pm
1. @David, yeah, what you said.
2. All of Fatty’s lack of style points apply to me as well, except that they apply with even less style.
3. I’m pretty sure that the reason I’ve never won a race is the knowledge that in the process of removing my hands from the bars to zip up and then point skyward (perhaps while making a signature gesture with one or both hands) would result in my crashing so swiftly that both witnesses and cameras would not have recorded even the removing of my hands from the bars.
Comment by Arizona Guy | 06.6.2016 | 12:43 pm
I share your lack of charisma and talent, but perhaps not your humility, because despite all of the above symptoms I still like to think I am looking like a pro.
One race in Virginia I was so far over my head ( I realized only later it was the Mid-Atlantic MTB championships or something) I came to the finish line that had the distinct odor of “just one or two more and we can pack up” and decided I had to show a bit of style. Despite never having attempted this before, I decided to do a little fishtail / power-slide across the finish line. It was a total FAIL and on a smooth grass field, I suddenly fell over sideways 5 feet from the line – still clipped in!
Comment by centurion | 06.6.2016 | 12:58 pm
You want poor style, I can crash on a MUP. A straight, flat, smooth bike path. If I had to go over a root or rock, I pre-dial ‘91′.
Comment by Doug (Way Upstate NY) | 06.6.2016 | 1:47 pm
I’m willing to win a race just to see how bad the pile-up would be at the finish :)
PS. Elden, you will never be able to live down the “I never won” comment. Ever.
Comment by Bart the Clydesdale | 06.6.2016 | 2:04 pm
At least you look the part of a cyclist. I on have sworn that I will never take part in a cycling group picture again. In every single group picture I have ever been in I stand out like a giant. I have become a touch self conscious about my size.
In everyday life I don’t stick out too much, but put me in a group of cyclist and I standout, and not for my riding skill.
Comment by miles archer | 06.6.2016 | 2:37 pm
Your jersey got a complement as someone passed me up the hill on Sunday. So at least you can produce jersey’s with style.
Comment by Ricky | 06.6.2016 | 4:34 pm
I didn’t think that there was any other cyclists like myself out there until I read your article. my wife often asks me why I like cycling so much, I guess that I simply like to torture myself like you obviously do.
Comment by PNP | 06.6.2016 | 4:48 pm
@Arizona Guy: I must confess, I laughed out loud at your comment. That’s just the sort of thing I would do, crash with an audience. Oh wait, what am I saying? I have crashed with an audience, and more than once. You still get points for a valiant effort.
Comment by leroy | 06.6.2016 | 5:26 pm
I don’t mean to brag, but I get tons of mail informing me I may already be a winner.
Of course, my dog assures me I’ll always be a winner to him. It sounded like he said wiener, but I know what he meant.
And real winners don’t mock canine accents.
Comment by Corrine | 06.6.2016 | 10:15 pm
@Arizona Guy, too funny. Must have been hard to live that down. I have no style but luckily I don’t have to watch myself bike or ski or walk so I can still feel like I look great and have a lot of style. Unfortunately my husband usually takes pictures where I look like a total dork. I try to delete all of those photos so I can still have my fantasy.
Comment by Donna | 06.7.2016 | 6:38 am
….and then there was the time that we were approaching a road on mountain bikes. We had just made the turnaround to head home using a trail and a road that we’d ridden for years. But., this time….I decided to pull alongside the road and put my foot down to wait for any oncoming traffic (yah, there wasn’t any traffic to wait for)….and it happened. Gracefully and with Fatty balance,I unclipped my right foot and fell over…on my right side. Wait, it gets better. The only chunk of ‘brick’ in the entire area found my elbow. I was travelling at -12 miles an hour. It was like the ‘brick’ and my elbow were eyeing each other up..the ‘brick’ saying “find me”…”fall on me”….my elbow answering, “ok, sure, break my elbow” ….which it did. But dang, I stuck the finish and won the ’style points’ for that ride.
Comment by leroy | 06.7.2016 | 10:26 am
Dear Mr. FC — The classics never go out of style.
Although my dog suggests they may be getting a little funky from a laundry perspective.
Any chance of a reissue?
Comment by Jacob | 06.7.2016 | 12:02 pm
I you would like to see ungracefull dismounts and crashes with People still clipped in – then come and see sommer cyclocross racing – especially the muddy and sandy ones we do in Europe.
I support Leroys suggestion on a reissue.
Comment by Alex | 06.7.2016 | 12:03 pm
Wow, I though I was the only one.
Comment by Jacob | 06.7.2016 | 12:05 pm
Hate that autocorrect changes english words to Danish. The first I should have been If and sommer = some.
Comment by bart | 06.7.2016 | 12:17 pm
you may not have style but you have speed !
I myself, I’m afraid, am the opposite, hence my motto :
look pro, go slow!
Comment by wharton_crew | 06.7.2016 | 4:32 pm
@Leroy, if you’re going to request a re-issue of a jersey, I vote for a pink one, so I can pretend to be a Giro d’Italia winner.
Comment by rb | 06.9.2016 | 9:26 am
Your style is Vitesse bien sur.
Based on a cursory reading of your climbing prowess and your *ahem* shapely legs, I am sure anyone who has tried to climb with you would agree.
Comment by LoPhat | 06.13.2016 | 10:59 pm
Can you help me? I’ve been looking for a plomb, but I haven’t been able to find one that I like…