Winning doesn’t always look like finishing
On the 22nd March 2022, Danielle joined our online workshop “How to Dismantle the Patriarchy One Group Ride at a Time.” Being based in Australia, Danielle had set her alarm for 6:00 am so she could join us.
Over the course of the evening, we heard from all attendees about their various experiences riding bikes. Group rides, riding solo, races. Danielle spoke about how she enters bike races for a great day out and how other peoples perceptions of what winning looks like differs from her own. It resonated, deeply.
Danielle kindly took the time to add more colour to the story she shared online that night. You can read it below.
“Recently I came across an old photo of myself midway through an organised bike event in Japan back in 1990. It made me literally laugh out loud. Very long and very loud. In the photo I am 21 years old. I am wearing the one pair, awful of knicks that I owned, a Fiorucci t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, a pair of very shabby brown leather sandals, a giant purple bum bag cinched round my waist (despite the giant, heavy canvas panniers on my flat-bar, 7 speed, commuter Bridgestone leaning behind me – what on earth was I carrying?) and wrapped around my head is a white, hand towel that one of the delightful and obviously amused Japanese ladies seated beside me had just dunked in a bucket of ice. Seated demurely in the back of a support van they were providing ice and cans of Pocari Sweat to the riders who had made it up a steep, southern Japanese mountain side on a ridiculously humid, hideously hot summer day.
I laughed because until that moment I had completely forgotten that event, but it completely encapsulates my approach to every cycling race in my life right up to this day. I don't remember who invited me to that race. I have no memory of registering. A Japanese friend must have invited me, and I would have thought "Sounds like a lark! I'm sure I'll be the slowest one there, but I'll get to see a whole new route through some mountains I've never been into".
More than three decades later I still favour sandals on summer rides (hash tag teamnocleats forever!). I still stumble out on race mornings without any actual training, usually unprepared, completely unaware of who else will be there, and still often wearing old t-shirts and sandals (Converse sneakers if it's cold). I usually come in dead last or at least in the last handful of riders.
Around 20 - 30 percent of the time I do not even finish the event. And not finishing never worries me in the slightest. I am now 53 years old and to this day I still see every organised bike event as a chance to have an amazing day out, on a custom course mapped out for me, where I can sail at my own pace, possibly even with the option of catching the "sag wagon". Because I may decide at the 64km mark of an 83km race that I've reached peak fun and am ready to head for pizza and beer.
I have a couple of other photos taken at that Japanese race and they all show slim Japanese men in serious lycra and meticulously selected European cycling caps, riding expensive looking, sleek racers. All of them are scowling. At their bike, at their equipment or at the photographer. And this is the mood and attitude that has always bewildered me. Bikes are fun. Riding is SUPPOSED to be fun. It's like flying and immediately connects you with your body, the momentum of the earth and your inner child. Riding bikes has been bringing me nothing but pure joy since I first started stealing neighbours' bikes before my mother bought me my first when I was 10. So if I have the chance to ride any distance at all with people who are also out there experiencing that joy, why would I care whether I had completed 32, 64 or 83km on the day? The distance and an arbitrary finish line become irrelevant if you are prioritising joy.
On some of the races that I haven’t finished I’ve still been amongst the last across the finish line and arrived to an empty field of tents and marquees being packed away. On one of the most recent races I rode the organisers of the event (in its inaugural year) were incredibly, excruciatingly apologetic about sweeping me from the tail of the field and diverting me to a short cut so that the event could finish on time. Unbeknownst to them they ensured that I had the best race experience of my life that day. I ended up riding 39km of a cold, hard, 50km route, skipped the rugged, creek bed sections that riders afterwards said were hellish, and arrived at the finish line in time to sit beside an open fire, sharing a beer and laughs with friendly people and for the first time ever got cheer my friends across the finish line. It was magic. At some point in the midst of that fun someone handed me a custom printed, event chocolate bar that I tucked away. It was only at home the next day that I noticed that it had a gold sticker on it reading “THIRD 50yrs+ women”. Hilarious! I know that I very definitely was not ANY sort of place winner that day. But I keep that chocolate wrapper stuck on my fridge as a daily reminder of how fun it was to not finish that event.
Finding that old photo from Japan triggered some deep memory of a Japanese certificate also buried somewhere in my old photos. I went fossicking and pulled it out to discover that yes, it was a finishing certificate for that Japanese race. On 22 July 1990 I had cycled 80km in 3 hours, 53 minutes and 52 seconds. It was a good day. So that certificate is now taped to my refrigerator door too. It’s in company with race numbers from a mix of recent events that I have and haven’t finished, as well as that chocolate wrapper. And I’m as equally as proud of all of them. Every one of them represents a win to me. Because winning doesn’t always look like finishing. It can look like just showing up.”
You can find tickets for out next online events here.
