A Narratological Slant on Recounting Cycling Experiences

In an effort to explore the potential effects that various narrative techniques have on the conceptualization of cycling performance and the decision making process employed by cyclists, I am writing this blog as the beginning step toward a coaching/riding method that relates memory, performance and decision making. Remembering Cycling does not refer to a distant epoch (at least not exclusively) nor does it refer to an abstract mental process. The premise surrounds the idea that if coaches could supply cyclists with the proper story telling techniques then their athletes’ performance (in the sense of race results) could actually improve. By allowing cyclists to better relate to their own past experiences while supplying them with tools that allow them to make better decisions on the road, narratology, the study of narratives, could have a lot to offer the athlete or coach preparing for road racing. The detailed points that will be analyzed further include remembering/narrating/telling what happened in a race, what events in a ride/race are important, how detail oriented does a valuable account of a ride/race need to be, creating the story of how the ride/race developed up to a certain point, and comparing and contrasting the cyclist remembering and the narrator telling.