The Empress of Maybe

May 2012

Moriah attacks first. She launches from the left side of the road, her momentum clean, confident, and steady. As she comes around the international peloton of cyclists, a Brazilian rider jumps to go with her. Sprinting away from the bunch, their bicycles rock from side to side with the torque of their frantic effort; two metallic metronomes visually keeping time to a private rhythm of hope and maybe.

Here in San Salvador, the peloton — 82 women in total — will pull them back within minutes, its largeness far more efficient than the two cyclists trying to break away from its formation. The peloton is the lion, Moriah the lamb — albeit a lamb who wants to survive. Moriah knows her fate; her daring hustle is part of our strategy. I ready myself for the counter attack. Moving over to the right-hand side of the road, I watch for the deep-set rivets and cracks that run through El Salvador's ancient pavement where bony fingers of tar-encrusted chip seal reach out for our tires, as if to seek hold of our Olympic dreams. Seven days, eight stages, temperatures in the high 90s — the Vuelta El Salvador is a mighty beast of an endurance event.

The moment Moriah is reeled in by the peloton, I surge. Away from the bunch with frenetic adrenaline, I sprint alone up the road. The lion watches but does not react. Not yet. I am simply being stalked, and we both know it. Logic tells me I, too, will be brought back to the peloton, as the 80 women behind me are in no mood to let anyone get away when qualification points for London are on the line. Still, a breakaway is my only hope.

"Only the sprinters will win at the line," Moriah reminds me. "If you want any shot at winning, you need to break way well before the finish. If you go early, they might not chase you."

"Might" is all I need to hear. I have built an emotional empire on might, this strange word that yields definitions of both strength and chance, as if it surreptitiously knows they're the same thing. I used to be paralyzed by Mights and Maybes, unable to see how either could result in anything but should-haves and if-onlys. During the five prior years I spent competing as a bike racer, I grew comfortable at the back of the peloton, reacting to the moves of others instead of initiating my own bouts of chance. I lingered in the realm of "good enough" all the while knowing it wasn't. This attitude would not get me on a professional team, and at 36, there was little time for second chances. For years, coaches and competitors taught me to "push myself," but that term wasn't right for me. I knew exactly how to push and drive and kick and force myself, to physically fight for the elusive next level. The push was ingrained in me. What I needed was the opposite: I needed to understand how to let go. To relish the unknown. To risk blowing up, getting dropped, being left behind, or passed by a lesser athlete. Patience and calmness, these were the lessons that eluded me. I needed to find the strength to be okay with nearly, at one with almost. I had to forget about watts, lactic thresholds, power zones, and intervals and instead train and race toward a new objective: to find strength in chance. To see what happens if I chase down a world champion or attack an Olympian or experiment with emptying my physical and emotional tank before the climb instead of during it. These were the risks that might work, if only I were comfortable with "might." As someone who prefers control, the notion of chance was as frightening as it was foreign. Yet I knew in order to progress, I had to build an empire on might and crown myself the Empress of Maybe. Only then, I finally figured out, could I get where I wanted to go.

I stand on the pedals and dash toward the open sea of pavement. No one comes with me. Moriah is resting in the middle of the lion's belly, protecting herself from wind and exertion as the beast of the peloton breathes its collective breath. I know what the peloton sees up the road is not the Empress of Maybe. They see the white and blue kit of some woman on a local team advertising an El Salvadoran bakery; they see the race number of a rider not on their radar for winning. "Le Croissant," my jersey reads. I am not a threat. I am not even a name. I am, at best, a pastry with gumption. Let her go, they think.

Yet a few women in the peloton know my story of trying to make the Beijing Games and assume correctly that I am here again in 2012 to seek enough qualification points to earn a berth to the London Olympics. None have seen me breakaway before, and I feel their eyes on me, assessing my level of potential. It is both a compliment and a curse when a Brazilian domestique — a worker bee for her team's queen — is sent to fetch me. She is the younger cousin of the Fernandes family, a sister-cousin contingent of four riders from Brazil. She sits in my draft, tailing me, not wanting to share the work and help us both get away from the lion but to slow down my pace if I get too far away from the field.

The move is a frustrating one, as the young Brazilian is a strong rider, and perhaps with tandem effort we could escape for a while. But she is working for her cousin, a cyclist just back from a doping suspension. Here, in El Salvador, there is no doping control. While very few of cycling's pro women go down this path of cheating, sometimes in the untested races in faraway locations, the occasional dirty riders mix in with clean ones. But there is no emotional energy or time available to ponder these injustices in the middle of a race. What another rider does to her body is beyond my control. All I can do is use my own and take charge of my Maybes.

The peloton makes its way to the Brazilian and me, and I slide into the middle of the bunch, absorbed into this rolling, shape-shifting amoeba of wheels and lycra. I catch what is...