"Bread and Water". My Career as Pack Fodder

“Pane e acqua” (bread and water)

There’s an Italian term, “pane e acqua” (bread and water) that is used to refer to pro cyclists who didn’t dope. I’m a bread and water rider. "No one is going to confuse me with being a world-class cyclist, but I had some successes in local Northern California mountain bike races. Like a lot of riders who are merely pack fodder, I spent a lot of time training, but I consistently got blown out the back like a fart.

Sure, I was frustrated because I sacrificed a lot of schooling and took many low paying jobs just for a chance, at a chance, to make the leap to the next level.  I knew a local rider who was kind of a chunky guy and who was at about the same performance level.  He and I were just mid-pack riders. I didn’t know him any more than merely by sight but when the next race season rolled around his body shape was clearly different, he was lean, muscular and was now getting top five race placements. A pretty stunning change within a six month time period. While no one could confirm it, the speculation was that the guy was “juicing” on steroids.

The "Juice"

I’d like to say I wasn’t tempted to go that route, I was, but after thinking about it for about thirty seconds, I decided, no. If I was going to podium I was going to do it clean.  During the early nineties there wasn’t a lot of information concerning performance-enhancing drugs particularly for low-level schulbs like me.  There was some buzz concerning body builders who were taking steroids in order to bulk up and one of the more serious side effects that people were talking about at that time was uncontrollable anger exhibited by some steroid abusers. It’s known as “roid rage”. 

Granted the direct link between steroid abuse and murderous rage is tentative at best, but I didn’t want to take any chances because I was already suffering from substance abuse and anger management issues.

I was pretty unhinged when I was busting my butt in the amateur ranks but at least I was clear-headed enough to not to go down that road.  The other determining factor was that I hate needles.  Let’s say I had decided to start juicing what would have been the best-case scenario?   My best-case scenario is I would have moved up to the top ten in the lower divisions of amateur racing and received a nice t-shirt.  The fact of the matter is there are simply not enough drugs to turn me into a world-class athlete.

Although my physical abilities didn’t match my desires I’m happy with my moderate success, and more importantly, I did it clean.