Racing Toward Clarity

From The Triathlete’s Tao Te Ching:

The Will to Race is nameless and unchanging

And though it is perfectly simple and small

nothing can contain it

When racers embrace the Will to Race

the focus and energy to train come naturally

The Will to Race connects all racers to the Source

With it a racer need not be accountable to a coach

because her motivation comes from within

Training plans are necessary for race preparation

but planning cannot prepare you for everything in a race

Know when to stop planning

and rely on the Source

Lance Johnson was in middle school when he learned about cycling’s hip factor. His friend’s older brother was cool; he was into cycling, which then became cool. So the kids tagged along. In college at the University of Illinois, he crashed, damaging his bike, his knees and his ego. That’s when, he says, he went “down the rabbit hole.”

“I took some time to recover,” he said. “The time I’d spent cycling then turned into time drinking beer and eating pizza. I didn’t have motivation. I didn’t have focus. I was sort of floating through life, more or less.”

But then, there was a moment of enlightenment. Like a movie scene, Johnson awoke one morning, looked in the mirror and asked himself, “How did I get here?”

“How did I end up so lost and so far away from something I should be doing,” he said.

That something was cycling. In the months and years to come, Johnson turned his focus to endurance sports. He started training and founded a university tri team. He ran the Chicago Marathon.

“I found a sense of clarity and purpose,” he said. “It grounded me.”

Then he moved to Boulder: “It was a holy land for me.” He lived in a house with a bunch of endurance athletes. He began training four to six days a week with a group of local pros.

“It was a ‘go big or go home’ mentality,” he said. “From where I started—riding through cornfields—to being in Boulder and training with some of the best, it was unbelievable.”

That’s when two major injuries, caused by a congenital bone disorder, left him unable to hang with the big boys. Johnson, in recovery, began to find other interests.

“Basically, I was more into a girl than in training,” he laughed.

That girl became his wife, and work required his presence in the real world outside of the bubble.

About a decade later, Johnson returned to Boulder and wrote The Triathlete’s Tao Te Ching. It’s been an opportunity to redefine how he approached training and competition. It’s been about finding the real purpose.

“I got into triathlons to find clarity and for that meditative aspect,” he said. “In the ’90s, the sport was different. It was less mainstream. A triathlon was a bunch of nuts running around in Speedos. It’s changed.”

The money and media have made triathlons a fast growing sport.

“At some point triathlons took on a bucket list quality to them,” he said. “There are a lot of people racing for the heck of it. The sport has become more open and at the same time it’s become more elitist.”

And that’s fine, he said. The book isn’t about judgment. It’s about contemplation. It’s about being there to offer a bit of clarity for those who may need or want it. And it’s not about Lance Johnson.

“Every time I read (The Tao), every time I read a different translation, I think I get more clarity out of it,” he said. “It’s not about telling you what to do. It lays out a theory. You are on your path or you are not on your path. It’s just the way you interpret it. It’s just about considering it.”