Ten years in the draft
Drafting is how you learn. Then the race changes.
In track racing, your line is the path you choose through the corner. There’s a fast one and a slow one, and the difference between them is measured in microseconds.
For ten years I rode someone else’s.
I don’t say that with regret. Sitting in the draft isn’t cheating — it’s how you learn. You tuck in behind a stronger rider, watch where they enter the corner and where they stand up, and get pulled along at a speed you couldn’t hold on your own. That’s an apprenticeship, and I had a good one.
It also takes more skill than it looks from the stands. You’re inches off the wheel in front of you. Touch it, and you go down — and you don’t go down alone. You take the whole team with you.
Here’s the part people get wrong when they rush this into a metaphor: it depends on the race. In a team event, holding the line and following isn’t the lesser option. It’s the assignment. A team pursuit is four riders rotating through the wind — you pull, you swing up, you drop to the back, you recover, you go again. It’s won or lost on whether everyone holds their line. Nobody out there is freelancing, and nobody should be.
I’m not reaching for this. In August 2024, four of us set the USA Cycling Masters national record in the 35+ team pursuit: 4:08.952 over 3000 meters, at Rock Hill.1 It still stands as I write this. Someone will take it eventually — that’s what records are for.
I was good at the same thing off the bike. Ten years designing enterprise software: the systems that decide how people get hired, paid, and promoted. I held my line. The team won races.
Then how people work changed, and the change reached me too.
Here’s what took me a while to see. I didn’t get dropped. I didn’t touch a wheel. I didn’t stop being good at holding a line.
The race changed.
That’s the sentence this whole publication exists for. It’s not that you suck — it’s that the old way of work changed. Those are different problems, and they don’t have the same fix. Most career advice treats a structural shift like a personal failing: polish the resume, network harder, want it more. That’s telling someone with a bad bike fit to pedal with a better attitude.
So: different event now. Out of the draft, and full gas.
What you’ll find here
Most weeks, one piece. It’ll be one of three:
Full Gas — what I’m actually doing to rebuild, numbers included when they’re real
Off the Front — making the move before you feel ready, and what it costs
The Read — where work is going, from someone whose AI design story starts in 2015, not 2023
The through-line between the bike and the work is the whole thesis: structure beats motivation, and nobody PRs by accident. You don’t win a pursuit because you wanted it more. You win because eleven months earlier you started doing unglamorous work in the right order. Careers are the same. We just don’t have coaches, so we improvise and call the result luck.
The deal
Free, and staying free. Nothing to buy, no funnel at the bottom. If that ever changes, I’ll say so in plain language, in a post, before it happens.
If you’re mid-shift yourself, this is written for you. I’m half a wheel ahead of you at most, and I’ll show the misses while calling out those bumps in the road.
I’d rather work from facts than assumptions. If you’ll take ten seconds on this, it tells me what’s actually worth writing — and I’ll show you what comes back.
Hit reply and tell me where you are in yours. I read every one.
— Lyndze
USA Cycling National Records, Women Masters — Team Pursuit (4-person), 35+, 3000m: 4:08.952. Lyndze Blosser, Kaitlyn Mittan, Brittany O’Neal, Laura Munoz. Rock Hill, SC, 8/10/2024. Record book last updated 8/26/2025.