On the Bike Is Not the Time to Warmly Embrace Failure

By Kevin Kolodziejski

You don’t know her well, but well enough to know she just rode far better than she’s ever ridden before on this group ride. So you pedal over to her car afterwards to tell her so.  And yes, you do have an ulterior motive — if she appears to be single.

As you approach her, though, what she appears to be is distraught. Your compliment doesn’t change that, so you ask her what’s wrong. You find out six months ago, she the pulled the plug on a promising career to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a lawyer. And moments ago, she checked her phone and found out she failed the bar exam.

Now What?

Now what in the world do you say to her? To study some more and take the exam again makes sense, but provides no solace.

So you channel your inner Tony Robbins and start a TED-like pep talk by telling her this failure is what C.S. Lewis calls a fingerpost on the road to achievement. That Napoleon Hill believes every heartache, every adversity, and every failure carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.

You urge her to see this setback as what any setback can be if you let it: a great teacher, a great motivator, and — a saying you actually create in the spur of the moment — the 125-octane fuel needed to rocket you into the rarified air of supreme success. You’re pleasantly surprised when that phrase just pops out of your mouth — but not with what pops out of hers next. “You sound like some failed self-help book author,” she says.

“And no, you’re not getting my phone number.”

The Morale to the Story

The morale to the story: That there are times when you can’t be faulted for not warmly embracing failure. The point to telling it here: I’m about to argue that on the bike is one of those times.

To Begin the Argument

To begin the argument consider, “The Exaggerated Benefits of Failure,” an article found in the July 2024 issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology that questions the commonly held view in our culture promulgated by “commencement speakers, business leaders, and the popular press.” That if it happens to come your way, failure’s more than okay, for it’s the “steppingstone of success.” As a matter of fact, it should be warmly embraced.

While the paper grants “many failures are so important that they command attention and some degree of learning,” it cites 11 studies where people in all sorts of professional, educational, and real-time situations overestimated the rate at which failure lead to success. More importantly, it highlights two studies that found failure to be “ego-threatening” and “demotivating.” Is that what you want your cycling to be?

Of course not, for we both know what happens if it is. You’ll cycle less and less and then, perchance, not at all. Which is why it’s now suitable to make reference to a well-known English fairy tale.

Remember How Goldilocks Went Through the Bears’ House?

You, my friend, want to be like Goldilocks going through the bears’ house every time you ride. You need to assess how you’re feeling physically and mentally; establish an objective for that single session that’s simpatico with your long-term goals; and then, during the workout itself, give an effort you find to be just like Baby Bear’s bed, chair, and porridge: just right. But all this can be (pun intended) a real bear.

Enough of one that I’m willing to tell you about something I foolishly thought would never happen to me. But if it somehow did, that I’d certainly be too ashamed to write about.

What I’m Now Not Ashamed to Write

That I no longer do the race segment of the Sunday morning training ride I’ve done off and on since I seriously started cycling about 35 years ago. In part, it’s because I’m stubborn and want to ride long and hard on Saturdays. But the much larger part is that it’s becoming harder and harder as I approach 65 to ride hard on back-to-back days.

So now when the Sunday group turns left and the pace gets hot, I turn right and find a pace that meets Goldilocks’ approval. Initially, I felt shame about doing this, for I saw it as cowardly.  But soon I saw it made sense.

Not Cowardice, But Common Sense

That a rider soon to be 65 can’t expect to do he what he did at 35, 45, and on rare occasion even 55, which is in this case finish at the front of a large ride that becomes a race and includes some top-tier guys who are 35 and 45. Yet when that expectation wasn’t met, which eventually became about 95 percent of the time, I’d feel — foolishly enough, I know — like a failure every time I gave thought to the ride. Which would happen more than a few times throughout the afternoon.

And feeling like a failure repeatedly is surely not a steppingstone for success.

But going relatively easy on a Sunday has turned into one for me. It allows me to be fully recovered by Tuesday, which is when I usually do a portion of a ride at an effort that’s just about all-out with the help of the indoor cycling app, Rouvy.

Two weeks ago, for example, that portion was an 8.6-mile climb of 3,399 feet that’s been used in the Tour of Slovenia. My time of 58 minutes and 23 seconds is the fastest posted so far by any rider over the age of 60.

Not a half bad way to end the argument, you might say, but now I’ll whittle a quarter of it away in the name of full disclosure. Only 50 riders over the age of have done the climb, and overall my time is only 33rd out of 650.

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Kevin Kolodziejski began his writing career in earnest in 1989. Since then he’s written a weekly health and fitness column and his articles have appeared in magazines such as “MuscleMag,” “Ironman,” “Vegetarian Times,” and “Bicycle Guide.” He has Bachelor and Masters degrees in English from DeSales and Kutztown Universities.

A competitive cyclist for more than 30 years, Kevin won two Pennsylvania State Time Trial championships in his 30’s, the aptly named Pain Mountain Time Trial 4 out of 5 times in his 40s, two more state TT’s in his 50’s, and the season-long Pennsylvania 40+ BAR championship at 43.