Super Saint Louis
IT’S SEPTEMBER! I’m done with the road season. I’m taking two full weeks off the bike and after that only riding my bike when I feel like I want to (and probably only on the dirt for a little while). I’m reflecting on the 2018 season, the good and the bad, and I’m starting to think about goals for next year and getting REALLY excited about 2019. After a year of racing on an elite team, I'm taking some time to process all the new experiences I've had with cycling.
After spending maybe a little bit too much time and energy competing, I could tell you a lot of things about cycling that need to change. But, racing my bike has taught me that while it's important to know how to improve, it's even more important to appreciate what's already here. Races aren't won on marginal gains that haven't yet been achieved, they're won by focusing on the strengths we do have and harnessing them appropriately -- just like the City of Saint Louis.
I've procesed a lot of my feelings about the sport of cycling by riding my bike around Saint Louis. Saint Louis isn’t a city you actually see at first. It's actually pretty bad at first impressions. The city looks beat up and run down. There are more buildings here that are over a 100 years old and falling apart than there are new ones. There’s evidence of what once was a great industrial center that is now in decay. There’s also evidence of poverty, crime, racial injustice, inequality, and corruption almost everywhere you look. In general, there’s a lot to be sad about in Saint Louis city. But if you look closer, there’s a character and a charm I haven’t found anywhere else. There’s beauty in the old brick and broken facades, and there's art in the street paint covering ruins of old factories.
When I’ve ridden my bike through the city, I see traces of the positive aspects of humanity. I could see the city as a crisis of impending loneliness and decay, right at the place where existence meets neglect and purpose is lost. Or I could see it as history re-purposed to something oddly comfortable and cozy. Most neighborhoods in Saint Louis aren’t trying to hide their past with shiny new name brand locations that are attractive, but expensive and untrue to community values. Saint Louis neighborhoods are often making the best of what was there to start, and preserving the city's history. That's the part of humanity that I like. The one that isn't focused on outside impressions but rather finding ways to love what's already here.
I think Saint Louisan's see the beautiful parts of our city, and focusing on those aspects is how the city is going to improve.
Perhaps that's the answer for success in cycling also, for the sport and for athletes in general. There's a lot about cycling that could be better, but to get there we should start by focusing on the aspects of the sport that we love. Like the way entire communities adopt bike races to the point of housing racers on their living room couches. Or the way some riders pull out of their race to make sure a competitor that crashed doesn't wait for EMS alone.
As I start to go on short coffee rides and stop structured training, I’m going to show you the Saint Louis that I see on an Instagram series #superstlouis. The buildings, the street art, the original structures. It’s not sad, it’s super. It's history. Sure, there's a lot in Saint Louis that needs to improve, just like there is in the sport of cycling. But if you change your perspective, there's beauty in the existing structure as well.
A little history on the photo above. Adam and I saw this house, grafittied with the word "SUPER" while driving down the interstate three days after our first date. We stopped, drove back, and did our first photo shoot together at the Super house.
I did a little research and found out that the grafitti artist responsible for the many "SUPER"s tattooed on Saint Louis buildings was sentenced to ten years in jail for property damage.