The End

At the end of the 1988 racing season I was at a crossroads. For three years I had focused my life on mountain bike racing, and I didn't have a whole lot to show for it. I was drained, disenchanted, destitute and my knees hurt. It didn't have to be that way.

In late 1987 I met a guy named Don McElfresh. We worked together at Frank's Bicycle Lane in Roseville, and we quickly became friends and training partners. Don was a very good Category 1 road racer, and he greatly influenced my training for the '88 season. At the time Steve and I had conflicting work schedules, so our riding time together was more limited than it was before. And when you start riding with a road racer, you need a road bike.

I had already purchased a beautiful orange Colnago from my manager Tony shortly after I started working at Frank's, but even back in 1987 it was considered old (I think it was a 1974 model). Don convinced me I needed something new.

I bought the Faggin and before I knew it I was spending far more time on a road bike than my mountain bike.

When Don and I first started riding together, I thought it would make me faster. He was powerful, and just staying on his wheel in flat terrain was nearly impossible at first. It was only on climbs where I could hold my own. Even going downhill it was very difficult to stay with him because he had such a huge engine. In fact, my all-time max speed record of 60.5 miles per hour was sitting behind Don on a descent into the American River Canyon. We didn't wear helmets in those days, either.

Emulating him was a huge mistake. I figured a guy getting numerous top-5 placings in big Pro/1/2 road races knew what he was doing. He did not. I realize now that Don was simply very gifted and did well despite his horrible diet and terrible training habits. Even back then we knew Don rode too much. The guy just loved to ride his bike. In hindsight, given my current understanding of training practices, I know he rode WAY too much.

We did some long rides, man. Sometimes we rode from Citrus Heights to French Meadows and back, which was 150 miles. Other times we would ride in the foothills for 6-8 hours. He knew all the quiet back roads in the region and some days it felt like we rode every single one of them.

On weekdays when we worked at the bike shop, it wasn't uncommon for us to ride before work and again after work. I remember a number of occasions when we rode over 100 miles between the two rides in one day.

For Don there was some justification for doing these long rides. Many of his races were 90-120 miles, so he needed that big base to train his body to still be firing at the end of those long races. However, I was a mountain bike racer. My races were usually around 25 miles. I needed to go really fast for a couple hours, and that's it. There was really no reason to go on a 12-hour slog up to French Meadows and climb 15,000 feet. I would have been much better served by riding 2-3 hours with some intermittent speed work. This is exactly what Steven and I were doing on our typical mountain bike rides in 1986 and 1987.

And I needed a little rest.

I just didn't rest that year. I was young and stupid and I thought that more training was better. I know without any doubt it was by far the highest mileage year of my life. I didn't start documenting annual mileage until 1995, so I don't have data from the big racing years from 1986 to 1988. But I do know I cracked 6,000 miles in 2024 for the first time since I started keeping track. I arrived at that number by doing lots of rides in the 25 to 30 mile range, and almost all of them were on a mountain bike. In 1988 we were doing lots of rides in the 60-90 mile range on road bikes. I believe I rode over 12,000 miles in 1988.

When races came around, I was terrible. Although I was in the best shape of my life in many respects, I wasn't fine tuned for mountain bike racing, and I was probably suffering from fatigue and nutritional deficiencies. On most training rides I felt great, so I didn't understand why I wasn't seeing results. The self doubt creeped in. I started coming to terms with not being good enough. I wanted to be a professional racer, but I wasn't even cracking the top ten as an expert.

As I alluded to in the first sentence, I finished the season at a crossroads. I felt internal pressure to succeed at racing, and plenty of external pressure to move on. I was 21 years old, poor and undereducated. I saw the disappointment in my parents' faces whenever the subject of my future came up.

In November of 1988 Don and I went to the Interbike trade show in Reno. All the big bike and component manufacturers and distributers were there showing the latest and greatest equipment. We were supposed to be representing Frank's Bicycle Lane, our employer, but we had other ideas.

Don produced a polished racing resume and cover letter (which I still have) to pass out to prospective sponsors, and he encouraged me to do the same. Don's was an impressive collection of top-5 finishes in many races—three whole pages of them. Mine was half a page of mediocrity.

(This is a 1993 edit I used to help get a "sponsorship" from Dean/Adventure Mountain Bikes.)

I can't find my cover letter, but it was equally pathetic. Each time I handed one to somebody at a booth, they would scan it and try desperately to say something kind or encouraging. A lot of them weren't very good at hiding a smirk.

The phone never rang. In that silence the message was loud and clear: "You are not very good."

I quit racing.

While the year was pretty horrible from a racing standpoint, 1988 still produced many great memories. Don and I had an absolute blast working at the bike shop (when Frank wasn't around) and I did some absolutely epic road rides. Some of the ones Steve, Don and I all did together will forever be some of my favorites. (One particular French Meadows ride deserves its own post.)

It was also a year that caused so much regret as I grew older. I still wonder even to this day what might have been if I had a mentor or coach who really understood what I needed at that time to achieve success. I'll never know.

Later.