[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
. So we simply drifted on, doing our best.A far more difficult test of endurance than a bike race is how you handle thesmaller, common circumstances of your days, the more mundane difficulty of tryingto make your life work.It s a typical assumption that the lessons of athleticcompetition are transferable.But the truth is that sometimes they are, andsometimes they aren t.How do you measure whether you re being a good mate and a consistentparent? If other versions of success aren t as clear-cut as a bike race, frankly,they re also harder to come by.They can t be measured with data.They alsoprovide an immeasurable satisfaction.I was a beacon of survivorship but I wasn t immune to its effects, and one of theemotional traps of survivorship is arush to happiness.You race toward joy,exhilarated, and tell yourself that you don t have a moment to waste on anythingthat feels wrong or unpleasant. Why am I doing this? I d say.But a rush tohappiness is impossible to achieve.Pure happiness is a rope slipping through yourfingers, a silky sense of something passing from your grip.It s replaced byexigencies, hard work, renewals, chores, obligations, and another day.CHAPTER 6Blue Train (Le Train Bleu)Picture it: two hundred riders flying down a narrow road at 45 miles an hour, all ofthem trying to ride in front, bumping, jostling, punching, cutting each other off, andeven jumping curbs in an effort to get ahead.Some of them will leave tire tracks onyour back, if you let them.It s just one of the ways in which the Tour de Franceaccurately imitates real life.It takes eight fellow U.S.Postal Service riders to get me to the finish line in onepiece, let alone in first place.Cycling is far more of a team sport than spectatorsrealize, and it s an embarrassment worth cringing over that I ve stood on thepodium of the Tour de France alone, as if I got there by myself.I don t just show upthere after almost three thousand miles, and say, Look what I did. When I wearthe yellow jersey, I figure I only deserve the zipper.The rest of it, each sleeve, thefront, the back, belongs to the guys.The Tour de France poses an interesting question about the nature of teamwork:why should eight riders sweat and suffer for three weeks when only one man, me,will get the trophy? This is asking for an extreme degree of self-sacrifice, perhapseven an unnatural amount.But the smart athlete, and person, knows that ifself-sacrifice is hard, self-interest is worse.It dooms a team; you wind up a bunchof singletons that just happen to wear the same shirts.A great team is a mysterious thing, hard to create, much less duplicate, and thereare a lot more bad teams in the world than good ones.Just look around.Manygroups who go through hardships togetherdon t bond all you have to do is surveythe NFL, the NBA, and corporateAmericato see that.People talk about teamworkall the time: it s a shopworn and overused term, experts try to explain and define it,charlatans write books on the subject, but few really understand it.And no wonder: teammates have an odd relationship; they float somewherebetween acquaintances and relatives.But I contend that people are meant to worktogether in groups, not alone, and that a certain amount of self-sacrifice is notunnatural, but natural.Think about it: people have been gathering together in groupefforts throughout time.If you truly invest yourself in a team, you guarantee yourself a return on yourinvestment, and that s a big competitive advantage over other less-committedteams.On the Postal Service team, we invest in each other s efforts and the resultis that we often have the sensation that we re racing against teams that merelyspendthemselves.What s smarter, to invest or spend? Investment implies alonger-term commitment; it s not shallow or ephemeral; it s enduring, and itsuggests a long-term return.There have been times when I ve practically lived out of the same suitcase withGeorge Hincapie.In cycling we re on the side of a mountain for weeks, in smallhotel rooms, sharing every ache, and pain, and meal.You get to know everythingabout each other, including things you d rather not.For instance, I know that George has such heavy stubble on his chin that he hasto shave about every hour.I learned that one August when we roomed together onthe road.One morning, George was in the bathroom shaving, when I heard himyell. Goddammit.It happened again!I went running toward the bathroom. What happened?He stepped around the corner, beaming and clean-shaven. I just got better-looking, he said.You can t always tell what makes a good team but you know one when you seeit, because the team members like each other.Sometimes we ll stay at a hotelwhere two or three other teams are lodged, and we all end up in the dining roomtogether.Our Postal team sits around the table laughing, and chucking dinner rolls,and even after we re done we linger over our plates, enjoying each other scompany.But across the aisle is a team that s full of free agents, with no oneworking very hard in anyone else s behalf.They eat with their heads hanging downover their plates, not making conversation, and as soon as they finish their meals,they go to their rooms.And in a pack sprint to the finish line, a solo rider withoutallies or associates is a tired and losing one.The 2002 U.S.Postal Service team was one of the best cycling teams that everrode a road.What made the personalities of nine different men on bikes meld into asingle agreeable entity? Reciprocity is the answer.Too many people (especiallybosses) demand or try to foster teamwork without grasping its most crucial aspect:a team is just another version of a community.The same principles apply to anycommunal undertaking, whether you re talking about a community garden, aneighborhood watch, or racing aroundFrance: if you want something, first you haveto give it.You have to invest in it.If I don t want to get sideways with the guys on my team, it s important to makethem feel that when I m winning, they are, too.One way to do so is to ride on theirbehalf in several races a year.I spend a portion of each spring working as asupport rider and trying to help my teammates win races.I act as a domestique,shield them from the wind, protect them in the pack, and carry their waterbottles and it s one of my favorite parts of the season.And you know what? Itfeelsgood.I don t just do it so that they ll do the same for me in the Tour de France
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]