Winning Isn’t Everything—Progress Is the Real Reward
Even before I signed up, I knew I wouldn’t win this year’s Zwift Academy competition. This worldwide virtual riding contest would award one man and one woman—out of 68,603 participants—a spot on a pro team, based on measured performances. And sure enough, when the list of 10 women who made the semifinals was announced, I wasn’t on it.
“I hate being average,” I said to a friend when the results came out. Average is boring. Being average doesn’t get you praise or external validation.
Bike racers like Marianne Vos, who’s known as the finest cyclist of her generation, and Katie F’ing Compton, a 15-time national cyclocross champion, and Jolanda Neff, a 12-time cross-country mountain bike World Cup champion, will go down in the history books. Meanwhile, as a Cat 3 racer, I feel like I have nothing to show for my 30 years of living.
“We all have dreams,” my friend said. “Sometimes they come true and sometimes we make peace with them. But the desire to be the best at whatever you do is never a silly thing.” It takes a special kind of person to dedicate time to something knowing you probably won’t win.
I think having the desire to win is externally motivated, whereas the desire to be and do your best is internally motivated. I’m sure it’s partly society and partly me that makes me think I’m nothing if I’m not “the best.” People notice you more when you’re standing on the top step than when you beat your own personal record. On the other hand, striving for your best doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to land on the podium at all. It could just be knocking off a minute of your best time or increasing your FTP.
You may never be the greatest, but eventually you’ll get better. You’ll never be perfect, but you can be good enough. It’s been said countless times before, but it’s still true—you need to cherish the process. Let’s celebrate the mediocrity of training, not just the wins.
Lindsay Goldman, co-owner, manager, and rider for the former team Hagens Berman-Supermint, explained it in a great way once: “Winning isn’t everything,” she said on an episode of the Dirt Field Recordings podcast. “I thought winning would validate all my hard work and make me feel like my life was going in a good direction that I wanted...that’s the crazy thing about cycling. Whoever won last weekend is irrelevant by the time this weekend’s race starts. So you can win everything, but unless you never stop winning, people are going to forget about you, so you better make sure your life doesn’t suck when you go back to it.”
What she means is that if you win a race, the same people wouldn’t care and the same people would. You’d get some high fives, go out to dinner, and pick up double-digit likes on social media. But most people would keep scrolling through their feed for something more interesting.
Cyclists like me are not “special.” We don’t get paid to race. Quite the opposite, in fact. We pay a ton of money to race. We pay for our team kits, team fees, race registrations, bike upgrades and fixes, and transportation.
We’re the average cyclists working full-time jobs and racing on weekends. We train for what? What are we trying to prove? That we’re worth it? Would winning validate us as a person? Would it prove that all the training we completed was worth it? That we showed our competition we can handle pain? Does winning make our lives meaningful? Does it make us relevant?
As Lindsay said, it is worth thinking about what we, who rarely win, have when we don’t win.
For me, that answer is: To be my personal best. I knew my odds of winning Zwift Academy were zilch. Knowing I wouldn’t win but still joining and completing it wasn’t silly, because if anything, I gained fitness. It introduced new workouts that pointed out my weaknesses, which I know can only help me in the long run. It helped me see where I currently am and what I need to do to get where I want to go.
I’m not sure if I want to keep cycling as my passionate hobby or continue to strive toward a dream that seems ridiculous at my age. But for now, I’m going to focus on enjoying it and becoming stronger than before.
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