Success in motocross is often a very personal thing. Most victories on the track do not result in headlines or championship celebrations. More often, they exist in nothing more than a feeling of quiet satisfaction.

The reason for this is that no one else can come along with you as you race. No one else can feel what you feel. No one else can grasp the desires, fears, disappointments and triumphs as you grasp them. They are too intimate, too complex.

Yet it is hard not to share the experiences. They bring such elation and excitement that it seems impossible that they could be meaningless to the rest of the world. When you get a holeshot or make a last-corner pass or jump a new double, the joy is usually too much to keep quiet about. But for all the impact your stories have on your friends and family, you might as well be writing them in a locked journal.

It’s not that everyone doesn’t care about your interests (though many certainly do not.) It’s just that the typical motocross story is only interesting when experienced in the first person, and as part of a larger storyline.

Example: Let’s say you decide to share with a friend the story of how you passed your longtime rival for fourth place in the second moto on Sunday. To you, the story is epic: after a moto-long battle, you set him up in the last corner. He’s been shamelessly blocking you all moto, because he knows you’re gunning for him after he took you out on the start last week. So you leave it on extra long and dive for the inside...then the outside, where he’s desperately trying one last time to escape you.

Only this time he can’t. As he hits the apex, he sees you pull up alongside just a second before you jam your elbow into the vicinity of his chest, completing a flawless block pass. Your move is so perfect that he has no recourse, and is left to endure a mouthful of roost as you blast across the finish.

When you relive it, the story gives you chills-- more so each time you think of it. So you assume it’s a great story and that everyone should hear it. But what you don’t realize is that all the details of the story--the rivalry, the take-out, the elbow, the roost--are only interesting as details of a much larger story that you’re totally wrapped up in: the story of your racing life.

To your friend, the story will merely evoke an image of two mediocre racers battling mid-pack at an obscure event for the privilege of taking home a plastic trophy--if they trophy as far back as fourth. There is more happening, of course, but only you know the back-story that makes this episode something more than what your friend imagines.

It’s sort of like trying to tell someone about a great movie you’ve seen, complete with uncontrollable laughter and enthusiastic hand gestures, only to have your listener respond with faint nods and a you’re-slightly-insane sort of look. “You had to be there” is the only thing you can really say at the end, and it’s a good phrase to adapt to the end of your motocross stories too. No matter how polite your listener is, the effect is usually going to be the same.

Further complicating things is that so few people understand the depth and complexity of motocross. As far as the general public is concerned, a victory means a good weekend, a loss means a bad one. Tell your friend that you won on Sunday--even if your victory came against a pack of nuns on Segway scooters--and he will congratulate and possibly even high-five you. Tell the same friend that you came in, say, sixth place--at an AMA Pro National--and the reaction will be one of consolation.

Try as you might to explain how the win was meaningless and the sixth was out-of-this-world good, it is all for naught. To the uninitiated, motorcycles are machines, which means they should achieve the same level of speed regardless of the rider or event. Thus explaining the significance of succeeding against very good riders is usually pointless. Almost no one understands the distinction. The nuns are Ricky Carmichael and James Stewart, and Ricky Carmichael and James Stewart are the nuns.

I stopped trying to share my own stories a long time ago. It took me awhile to realize how dumb it was to try to funnel all of the meaning of my last episode into a five-minute conversation with someone who wasn’t there, but I finally came to grips. Now I tell my stories to myself. I know more about my storyline than anyone, so there’s no better audience.

But even though I am not sharing my triumphs with others, they don’t resonate with me any less. As I said, success in motocross is pretty personal. And it’s often wise to keep it that way.


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