Last year, I DNF’d a difficult bike race.

It was painful for me in many unexpected ways and I wrote about it a lot.

I compared it to a temper tantrum:

You kick up a big fuss because things aren’t going your way.

I got existential:

You start questioning yourself. Why am I here? What am I doing this for? When all you need to do is ride your bike to the finish line, asking “what’s the point?”, is not very helpful.It’s the type of question that invariably creates more questions. Do I even like this? Why do I do this to myself? Who do I think I am? What am I getting out of this?

I blamed my ego:

It was dramatic (I’ve lost the love, I’m quitting.) It was proud and sought validation (I’ve done a lot of training, but it wasn’t enough). It was dismissive (Things change. I’m interested in different things now. Cycling is not for me)

I blamed my body:

When we run low on water or nutrition, our mind goes crazy. I was bonking, dehydrated and out of carbs. I hadn’t planned enough, paced enough or trained enough, and paying the price.

I blamed masochism:

No one told me to grit my teeth. Although it gives me a certain kind of energy, it doesn’t feel very pleasant. And if I’m honest, it rarely helps with whatever I’m trying to do. It doesn’t make me smarter, faster, funnier, kinder.

Even in my dreams I was questioned, prodded and mocked by satisfied race finishers who demanded I take responsibility for my result.

Once the psychic dust had settled, the diagnosis was blindingly obvious. I hadn’t prepared enough.

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A year later, I was back and ready to ride again. My determination was still there to finish the job.

But this time, I had a plan. I mean, I literally had a training plan, a single PDF page which told me very simply what to do and when to do it. On Monday I rested. On Tuesday, I rode my bike.

I had one rule. Stick to the plan as best as you possibly can.

As the race loomed closer in my calendar, I noticed how much I resisted following a structured plan that was almost guaranteed to help me.

I started to resent ‘grinding‘ through it day by day and wanted to invent my own approach. I hated to defer to a ‘stupid’ ‘rigid’ instructions and wanted to ride with vengeance, ‘destroying’ my previous time. 

Famed San Francisco 49ers coach Bill Walsh calls these distracting ego-traps ‘faulty reasons’. It’s when “your logic is skewed by emotions, pride or arrogance.”¹

In other words, when your ego gets in the way and tries to run the show.

Like what happened last year to me.

He noticed early in his career that he consistently got into trouble when he was “trying to prove you’re right and trying to prove someone else is wrong. Of course, they amount to the same thing and often lead to the same place: defeat.”²

Outside of the football field, Bill points to Ernest Shackleton as an example of the ego trying to “force a plan past the point of reality.”³ Before Shackleton set off on his mission to cross Antartica by foot, whalers told him that the Weddell sea was unusually packed with ice that season and advised waiting. Sticking to his plan turned into an epic disaster.

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On race day, I rode with a clear head, fresh legs and surprising ease. My boring plan and preparation freed a huge amount of bandwidth to enjoy the car-free roads, nature, meet strangers and help teammates.

I reigned in all point proving, theatrics or anything else stupid.

My ego suffered, but I finished the race.

It’s not a surprise that decent planning and preparation helped. Of course it did!

But sticking to the plan rather than the tempting demands of the ego, meant that even if I had failed, I would have failed for the right reasons.

This journal is also published on Substack.

1. Bill Walsh, The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership  ↩︎
2. Bill Walsh, The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership ↩︎
3. Bill Walsh, The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership  ↩︎