PavedMag: The exquisite agony of bike racing in America

A remarkable story about the life of pro bike racers on the circuit in the U.S.:

Somewhere between a mid-pack finish in a local Tuesday-night circuit race and the perfectly choreographed, raised-arm salute signifying a win in Belgium or France or Italy, lies years of racing. By racing, I mean work. And by work, I mean harder-work-than-many-of-us-can-imagine work on a Division 2 team in America. 

Sam Johnson racing the USA Pro Cycling Challenge/pavedmag

It’s a good job too, if you want to work for free. Or if you’re lucky and physiologically gifted, you might work for cheap.

You’ll work on your own bike—still. Sleep for three humid nights in a stranger’s house in a suburb of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in a 12-year-old girl’s purple bedroom on a canopy bed surrounded by stuffed animals, schoolbooks, homemade pillows and posters of unicorns and David Beckham.

You’ll train on the sides of unfamiliar freeways. Race a nearly spectator-less criterium at night in a tropical thunderstorm in a dark, bankrupt town whose name you’ll be quick to forget if you ever bothered to learn it.

You’ll cross the finish line in 3rd, maybe, but probably more often in 17th—or 33rd. Stand around in a random parking lot, still dressed in your race kit, and shovel tepid spaghetti off a paper plate into your still-salty face, and call it dinner.

Read the rest here.