One of the stages of any cycling career involves “paying your dues”. No matter how strong or fit you are there is no getting around the fact that when you are new to cycling there is a lot to learn. The basic structure of the sport is designed on the basis of paying your dues. Everyone starts in the bottom category and only by performing and proving your worth do you earn the right to move up into more competitive and prestigious ranks.
When describing the payment of one’s dues words like: dedication, desire, drive, hard work and even luck are used. It may sound cliché but the fact is that achievement in sport at any level does take hours and hours of hard work, full of early mornings and loads of sacrifice. This is undoubtedly the reason we can all relate to achievement in sport. I have never launched myself off a 120m ski jump but I can relate to the achievements of Eddy the Eagle because I can understand the inherent “paying of dues” that went into his success.
To achieve anything in life requires the payment of dues. When I think of my success it’s all about hard work.
There were so many opportunities and excuses to give up. Everyone has a list of barriers they overcame to succeed. The size of the barrier is less relevant that the event of overcoming. I know I have had every opportunity in life and I feel lucking for that, but that doesn’t mean that my obstacles weren’t just as formidable as the next persons. In failure any excuse is good enough.
It’s all about long hours painting houses to put myself through an undergrad degree. It’s about working in graduate school as a stock boy with a B.Sc. to save up for our first house. It’s about my wife a certified teacher working two and often three jobs to put me through school.
My wife never once complained about waking up early teaching all day, going directly from school to her retail job and then writing provincial exam questions for $20 a question before falling into bed, hopefully before midnight, only to wake up and do it all over again the next day. She did this for 300 plus days a year for two almost three years.
That’s paying your dues!
She taught me the real trick to happiness is wanting what you have not wanting what you don’t have. There is no room for envy in my life, only bike envy.
It’s about taking risks and making the best of your circumstances. In the end it’s about being proud of how you did it.
Success is a state of being not an end result which is why success doesn’t exist without hard work.
Success on the bike, success in life, the Olympic podium or a Perogy XC sport class second place finish, a mansion on the lake or a house in the burbs.
The manifestations of your successes are irrelevant only the sacrifice in achieving is important. I think Paris Hilton demonstrates this point clearly.
When you see the gold medal and hear that anthem played that tight feeling in your chest and the tears you are fighting back are not an expression of national pride but rather your recognition of the dues that were paid. That’s why we don’t care that Donovan Bailey was born in Jamaica, it only makes his sacrifice that much more important.
