What Happened in the Race?

In order to sum up the development of the main thesis of this blog, it should clearly be stated what is important in telling the story of riding a bicycle. If a cyclist wants to tell useful narratives that permit qualitative analysis, she must have a keen awareness of the varying degrees of consistency from one story to the next, especially in regards to the variation in audience and the distinction between real beings and narrative constructs. So, what events should one include in a cycling narrative? The results seem like an obvious one, but in an amateur race won by a break-away you might not know who won. It might even not be important to your story. The same goes if you crash. If something as obvious as the results are not always relevant then is there anything that must has to be included? The potentially uncomfortable answer is no. This is the degree of freedom and responsibility that the cyclist accepts in telling a story. She accepts this even when she tells the story to herself. In fact, this same freedom applies to all instances of converting memories into discourse. The ramifications of this are such that, with the exception of a completely non-reflective and thus non-remembering cyclist, the authorial choice of the cyclist is indicative of their emphasis on certain parts of the race. It is a question of relevance. But it is also a question of revealing. As the obvious events are elaborated upon, they become less central to the story until the details outnumber them and something like who jumped off the start line first becomes obscured. With the obvious events taking a back seat to smaller pieces to the puzzle of what happened, the whole of the story can begin to reorient itself around different events. Ideally this shifting of importance to the narration of smaller less evident events leads to the revelation of a key that can help understand what happened in the race. This understanding is still not the story. But it is definitely more thought out than the simultaneous narration of the NBC Sports network. A carefully constructed, detail oriented narrative as such, would be more on par with Cosmo Catalano’s “How the race was won” and it would have a desirable effect of the qualitative analysis of what happened in the race.

Telling Different Stories of the Same Race

If the story of a single race can have a variety of audiences, then one can conclude that there are a variety of authorial situations in which the cyclist remembering the events can find herself. What is suggested here is intentional variation of the narrative itself. That is to say that you should tell a different story to your cycling friends than you do to your non-cycling friends, not that one version exaggerates and the other does not, even less that one is a lie and the other is the truth. This is particularly important in the age of online coaching. It is very important to know what stories to tell your coach. The race results do not tell a story at all. He needs to know what happened, not who won (unless of course it was you, in which case he would still needs to know how). Second place could mean that you got beat. It could mean that you lost. Or it could mean that you ran out of road. How are these three different? There is a subtle yet important difference between being at the front of the sprint and being overtaken. It is not the same to finish second when you are coming up on the person at the front. Gaining space in the sprint and not winning could result from crossing the finish line before you could overtake the leader or from not having enough space to get around them. The story of cycling is less about who won and more about how. It is not wrong or embellishing to treat a second place finish like a “result” to your non-cycling friends. This multiplicity of narrative allows the cyclist to be critical and self-congratulating about the same race. This keeps morale high while not ignoring the need for improvement. A cyclist who can tell stories with these aspects in mind will profit more from her coach more than the one who simply uploads power data and race results in order to have them analyzed by an “objective” professional.

To Whom One Tells Cycling Stories: Real Audiences and Fictional Audiences

There can be several uses for the story of a bicycle ride. A cyclist might tell her coach about what happened. She might tell herself what happened in order to overcome a loss or refocus after a win. You might even want to tell your spouse about the existential crisis you just experienced, a deeply personal experience that you may want to share. A cyclist might want to remind herself that this race is no different from the difficulties she has already experienced on such and such ride, carefully selecting details that allow for such an optimistic conclusion to be made. The focus here is the recipients (real or otherwise) of these narratives. If the cyclist who remembers a race is not the narrator who tells her memory, the real recipient of the story of a bicycle ride/race opposes the author not the narrator. In opposition to the narrator is the narratee. This means that one should not confuse one’s coach, one’s teammates, one’s wife or oneself with the recipient who is bound to the story. You might tell the story to your coach differently than you tell it to your wife. His version might contain more data (speed, power, etc.) whereas hers might contain more description (of the experienced situation). Neither story is the objective account of what happened, meaning neither recreates the totality of the race. They are both equally incapable of recreating the past. Memories, and in effect stories, are not related to the past except that they may be about them. In fact, there is no objective account of what happened. Even the camera does not capture every crash in the Tour de France just like it cannot show Gilbert, Cavendish or Contador on every camera shot. The impact of recognizing the difference between various real audiences (coaches, teammates, television viewers, or even friends who do not cycle) and still being able to differentiate them from the narratee is two-fold. On the one hand a cyclist can tell the same events employing a variety of narrative techniques, taking into account the plurality of telling stories. This aspect of the story might take into account how much cycling knowledge the audience has. The second effect is related to the narratee not being a real audience. The narratee is the audience that develops its understanding in the narrative. This fact allows the cyclist to remember events in a somewhat malleable and modifiable way. The discourse that is developing the narratee’s distinct perspective  can be changed as a way to take into account previously ignored narrative features.  The importance of remembering in a way that allows for change will be further explored in a future blog. For now, keep in mind that your mom is not your training partner; she needs a different story to want to listen to you recreate your memories out loud. Also, the “true story” is an impossibility because there is simply too much potential variation in the narrative of what happened in a bicycle race.

The Relationship between the Act of Remembering and the Study of Narrative

The immediate critique of the premise of this blog will undoubtedly be that not everyone remembers in story form or some other abstract exception-to-the-rule kind of objection. The point is that once a memory is shared with someone else it becomes final. It is in this final form that memory is synonymous with story. This means that explaining what happened in a race you saw on TV does not really differ from telling the story of a race in which you participated, a race that was not televised to anyone. In both cases the past experience becomes a narrative in its final and communicable form. To an important extent this also happens when a memory becomes thetic in the middle of a race. Even when a cyclist is not telling a/the story to a spectator, teammate or coach, she is telling it to herself. Coming into the last ten kilometers, it becomes necessary to evaluate what remains in the tank. You have to review what has happened in the race. Choices are made in regards to the narrative that do not make any material difference in the race, but it’s no secret that what happens in your head on your bicycle manifests itself in your performance. What events are worth remembering in the heat of the moment when a split second decision could decide the race? Which parts of the race were left out of the story? From what perspective is the story told? While these aspects of the remembered story do not directly affect the outcome of the race, they do have an immediate effect on the decisions making process of the rider.

Consistency in the Story of Cycling

It is evident to any cycling barb that the story of what happened can vary a great deal from person to person. It can also vary from ride to ride or more pertinently from ride to race. It seems a reasonable conclusion that like any mental habits employed in training, those used to tell yourself or others the story of what happened are the ones you’ll likely employ in a race. This does not mean that you need to conceptualize every ride like a race or embellish its importance or difficulty. The idea behind consistency is rather to highlight what aspects are similar between the story of a ride and the story of a race. There is no problem with forming stories that differ. In fact, I would argue that it is better to understand the multitude of narratives that could be told of the same events. This allows you to create a common thread between a training ride and a race, allowing you to analyze details regarding the decision making process as well as better recreate, and in effect, understand the situation you faced on your bicycle. This common story should not serve as the objective account of what happened. It does not hold any status superior to that of your epic narrative of adventurous exploits on a bicycle or your journal entry of suffering in your diary of pain and “just not feeling it today”. What is suggested here is a compare/contrast of various instances of telling stories in cycling, from recounting what has happened so far in order to calculate how many people are still up the road to deciding how hard to go on an effort the goes out tail wind. In all accounts of what happened, there are noteworthy consistencies and/or inconsistencies that could be modified or emphasized in a beneficial way.

The Difference between the Cyclist Remembering and the Narrator

In order for a cyclist trying to narrate stories of rides/races to fully understand the extent of her authority as author of her own narrative, she must be able to distinguish herself from the narrator. As author the cyclist who remembers past events (or the one who imagines future ones) has complete control of the creation of the story. However, even if the story is told from a “first-person” perspective (that is to say that the story contains the pronoun “I”) the author never becomes the narrator. This distinction is paramount in understanding the effects of storytelling on the conceptualization of cycling experiences. When remembering, the cyclist (who is a real person) may no longer be taking part in a bicycle race. The “I” in the story (who is a narrative construct not a real being) has no decisions to make or goals to achieve. For him everything is already accomplished in a perpetual completion. The cyclist authoring her own story can alter it as need be. Her role is creative. The narrator, on the other hand, serves as a distance marker making more clear the distinction between past and present. He stands in for the cyclist writing the story so that the narrative may be analyzed, not simply experienced again. It could only be beneficial to be able to distinguish from the hypothetically constructed story of what you would have said immediately after the race and the more analytical and less impulsive story you tell about the same race six months later, in the middle of the off-season. It is this multiplicity and variety of these “memories” that needs to be examined in order to improve mental habits and performance analysis.

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.