Lessons from the Road: The Danger of a Subtle Surrender

Decades on the bike have taught me a great deal about performance, persistence, preparation and the art of moving forward.

Some lessons come from the races themselves. Others emerge from the miles, through experience, reflection and observation.

In this series, I share a few of the lessons the road has taught me, and what they might mean for life on two wheels and life on two feet.

The danger of a subtle surrender

Come with me for a few minutes to 2017 and the Silverstate 508, a 500-mile race outside Reno, Nevada.

It’s a great race, with magnificent landscapes and a wonderful community. 

I knew I was up against several racers with extensive knowledge of the route, so my strategy was to surprise them from the start and create the race from the front.

The route lent itself to that approach, with a big climb in the first 10 kilometres followed by an even faster descent. I came out of that descent in the lead and intended to stay there.

Creating a race from the front means being willing to push your speed to the edge of what you can sustain. You need to find out quickly who can hang on to that edge, and for how long. Once you’ve started to separate the field, the race becomes easier to manage.

But it takes experience. Staying on that performance edge requires you to teeter physically and emotionally while maintaining a rock-solid mindset.

One by one, the riders dropped off the pace. But one didn’t.

That one competitor

A young Californian, Charles Bell, was an immensely strong rider who could consistently turn over an impressive gear on his time-trial bike.

At around 200 miles, he passed me on a flat section of road.

I could hear him coming, that big gear turning over. As he passed, his powerful legs were tapping out a rhythm like a metronome: steady, consistent, relentless.

It was an image of effortless power.

And in that moment, my mindset wobbled.

Before I could catch myself or hit the reset button, the teeter became a step backwards. That single step was enough to lock my mindset in place.

I surrendered, subtly and almost imperceptibly. It happened in the blink of an eye.

A subtle surrender is still a race, by the way. I continued to fight, but the ferocity of the battle dropped by just one notch.

I remember thinking at one point, “Second place is still a great result.”

And so it was. But that wasn’t the point.

The lesson came afterwards

Silverstate 508 hosts a post-race breakfast, and I had the pleasure of chatting with Charles about the race.

We talked about the freezing temperatures during the night. It was the only time in my racing career that the fluid in my bottle had frozen!

Charles told me how cold he’d been. He’d been trembling involuntarily and had come close to being forced off his bike.

What struck me was just how close he’d come to teetering over his own edge.

The image I’d carried of his legs turning over that big gear like a metronome for all 500 miles was simply wrong. I’d seen the effortless power, but I hadn’t seen the struggle behind it.

I realised that Charles had beaten me in the moment he passed me. Not necessarily because he was stronger, but because of what happened in my head.

The sound of that big gear, the image of effortless power, got to me. My mind surrendered, and I downgraded my fight.

I’d allowed what I imagined about my competitor to influence what I believed about myself.

The danger of taking it down a notch

There are many ways to be beaten, in a race or in life.

You can be beaten by someone better or stronger than you. You can be beaten by complacency, by taking your eye off the race, or by a wobble in your mindset that leads to a subtle surrender.

That last one interests me most because it can happen without us even recognising it.

We don’t necessarily stop trying. We don’t walk away. We simply take the intensity down a notch. We start making allowances for an outcome we haven’t yet earned, and gradually, almost without noticing, our actions begin to reflect that change in belief.

If you put me back on that flat section of road with Charles, I’d probably have to concede the lead again. But I wouldn’t concede the ferocity of the fight.

I’d have come back at him with more.

That’s a lesson I’ve carried forward, and I have Charles to thank for it.

Because there’s a difference between recognising that someone has the upper hand and deciding that the battle is already lost.

And I’ve learned that there’s nothing more dangerous than a competitor who refuses to be beaten.

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These are the lessons Joe brings to his coaching, learned through a lifetime of racing at the edge.