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Jeff Mahin

Lead From The Front

By InnerVoice

July 27^th, 2018

Chaos and structure

I got kicked out of high school.

We’d already moved around a lot - from northern California to New Mexico - but working in restaurants took me even further. I’ve lived in England and Spain, Mexico, New York and Chicago. I never really knew I wanted to become a chef, and I certainly didn’t know it was a career, but when you get kicked out of school there’s not a lot of opportunity to do many other things. I started out as a dishwasher and a busboy and a server; easy jobs that were cash-in-hand right away. You would just get dollar bills every night, so when you’re 15 or 16 you’re drawn to that as a shiny object. There’s also this duality to restaurants that I really like. There is this chaos and pure adrenaline, but structure at the same time. It’s very individual, but also very team-oriented. If you screwed up, other people would have to pick up your slack, but at the same time if you did really well, you would be able to make more than everybody else. So, by working harder it made everyone better, but if you didn’t work hard it made everyone worse. I may never be the smartest person in a room, but I’ll definitely be one of the hardest working and I have a lot of pride in that. The older I got, the more I became competitive with it, which has become a bit of a pattern for me

When I got into chefing I was still very young. It was aggressive and very bully-esque. There’s a lot of screaming, swearing and throwing things, so you always wanted to do your best. I guess what has made me a good chef and a good athlete is I'm never afraid to fail. I went from cooking at a Denny’s to working my way up to a restaurant called The Fat Duck, which was voted Best Restaurant in the World the year I was there. It had nothing to do with me - I was just there - but I was part of an amazing team of people and many of us are still friends.

lead from the front

I’ll be honest, before I started cycling I didn’t have any friends. I had chef friends, but we all worked so much we’d never see each other. I wasn’t a nice person. I worked a lot and then when I wasn't working I’d go to a bar. I was doing a lot of drugs. I was drinking. I was chasing this adrenaline high and not really taking care of myself. I was a wreck. I was mean to people. I would do a bunch of things I shouldn’t do. I was letting myself down, but I was also letting everyone else down. What I realized is that you can’t take care of other people unless you take care of yourself. I guess you don’t really understand much about taking care of others until you’re a leader. Getting older and becoming a restauranteur, it was less about becoming successful myself and more making sure others are successful. So the reason I starting getting into cycling and other more healthy endeavors was that I was burning both ends of the candle and no-one was winning.

I started focusing on myself; reading managerial books and self-help books with the goal of trying to be a better person. Exercise was a big part of that. I remember the first time I went to look for a bike, and I had two completely different experiences. In the first shop, I saw this Piniarello which was, like, $4,000, and I took it for a test ride. I remember thinking I was the coolest guy in the world. I went back and asked to buy the bike. The salesman rung it in and it was $12,000! It turns out the frame was $4,000 but the sales guy never educated me, or told me the bike was way beyond my skill set, he just scoffed at me and was rude when I said I couldn’t afford 12 grand.

I thought 'these guys suck,' but I knew there was another bike shop right down the street, so I decided to go and check it out. This guy was the complete opposite, he was more like: I totally get it, you’re new to biking, let me show you the way. He sold me a BMC from the year before and all the top of the range components, but he was unbelievably welcoming. He said “I’ll give you 40% off because I want you to start riding bikes.” If I hadn’t have gone into that second shop I wouldn’t be a cyclist today.

“If you’re cooking 300 or 400 covers a night, everything has to do with movement and efficiency. It’s about how you move as a team, and you can’t be out of rhythm. When I started cycling, I found a lot of similarities in that, firstly, there’s no script, and also the peloton needs to work together in this amazing seamless activity. If one person is too fast , or too slow, or riding dangerously, it messes up the rhythm.”

incredible connections

I try to have a community around me that’s full of smart people. That’s what is really interesting about the cycling community; there’s people from all walks of life. There’s business owners, hedge fund guys, people who work at the airport. Everyone that shows up knows your bike life, not your real life. You end up in these conversations with people who, in other circumstances, you probably wouldn’t talk to. I’ve met strangers that, on a 20-minute climb, we've ended up telling each other pretty heavy secrets about ourselves, and accepting them. I’ve made connections with people in a way that I’ve never been able to connect with other human beings off the bike, and I think that’s pretty commonplace. Endorphins and shared suffering can form connections that can last a lifetime.

In February my father passed away. It was a Saturday, and I remember waking up at 6am to go to my normal group ride and there was a text message from a few hours earlier telling me what had happened. I called my brother and told him that I felt like I had to go to the ride. So I show up to the group ride. I had my glasses on and was really quiet, I was bawling as I was riding. I rode so hard that day. At the turn-around, someone went to give me a high-five and realized I wasn’t doing well and asked me what was wrong. I told him my dad had died earlier that day. I said it out loud for the first time and, man, maybe nine people who I don’t even know just came up and started giving me hugs. It was unbelievable. It sucked, and it was sad, but it was this really special moment where they helped me more than they’ll ever know.

It’s funny, because as an adult I think it’s hard to make friends - it’s scary - and because you often meet people at work, you’re often competitive with each other. One of my best friends is Michael Voltaggio (who won Top Chef) and as much as we’re best friends, we still have restaurants that compete against each other. But in cycling, if you ask for someone’s help to learn how to climb better, people just come from everywhere to help you get better, and they don’t care who you are.

chase the dragon

Once I find 'the quiet,' that's when I feel the most freedom in the world. For me, it’s not even a positive voice. There’s no “You can do it.” It’s just quiet. It’s like when people talk about meditation and what it’s like to focus on your breath. I reach that point when I’m breathing heavily, my heart rate is 190 and I can feel every muscle in my body has a purpose. In that moment, I can feel everything: I can feel my breath, I can feel my fingers, I can feel my toes, and I find this rhythm. To me, it’s the epitome of a new high.

If I can’t get there every day, or I don’t allow myself to, I’m like an addict. I start getting the itch, and it affects me. It really means a lot to me to be able to push myself to places I never thought I could go, both mentally and physically, because it clears my mind. It allows me to make better decisions throughout the day. Conversely, if I come home and I can’t find the quiet, I feel like I’m not in the flow. I think that word summarizes it perfectly: Flow. There’s a rhythmic flow on a bike, like how you become one unit with the peloton, and how you navigate with them by the smallest twitch of your hip.

stay out of my way

Cooking is riddled with failure. There’s a lot of fear involved and a lot of insecurity. Any given day, our business could fail or something bad could happen. I’m always afraid I’m not good enough. But I’ve learned that if I can make one or two things better every day then I feel pretty accomplished. It’s kind of like if I go up a hill one second faster, I feel accomplished. It’s the same in the restaurant: if I can figure out one thing or make someone's life easier I feel pretty happy about it. My job is still a lot of creativity, but it wasn’t too long ago that I used to beat myself up if I wasn’t creative every day. I was pushing, trying to force it. Now I just let it flow.

On the bike I just accept that creativity can come to me and when it does, stay out of my way because I’m going to be a cannon ball. When it doesn’t, I’ll work on other things. It’s funny, my life has changed a lot because of cycling due to the fact that I want to be good at it. When I’m at work, I’ll make decisions for the restaurant based on what cycling does for me. Eating better, healthier meals so I can cycle more has influenced the way I cook.

Chefs Cycle

Chefs Cycle also plays a part in my approach to cooking. What started out as Jason Roberts wanting to ride his bike across the country has turned into this big thing in the chefing community, and we have raised over $6m for No Kid Hungry. It works perfectly with the chef mentality too, because it’s competitive and there are both team and individual challenges along the way. Chefs also love equipment and gear and metal and learning about things. But it’s changing our mentality as well. I’m on five group-text chains with other chefs, and we used to talk about who’s going out tonight to get fucked up - now we're talking about riding bikes.

Sometimes you pull, sometimes you draft

I feel like I'm a really negative person on the inside and really positive on the outside. I think I'm really hard on myself and I'm always nitpicking. I'm not very good at believing in myself. What I've learned from cycling is that it's a work in progress. The only way to get better is to really believe in yourself and allow yourself to be better. For a long time in my life I never allowed myself to be better - whether that's a better person, or a better leader, or a better employee, or whatever it is. Cycling has really made that a lot easier, but that doesn't mean that I’ve solved it and it doesn't mean that I have gotten better at it. But what it does mean is that I’ve realized cycling allows me to find a state where I can accept myself.

There was a really interesting article the other day about learning to take a pull and learning to take a draft. It’s a great metaphor for life. Some days you feel amazing and you can go to the front and you can just pull everyone along, and then other days you don’t feel great and you just need to tuck in and take a draft. With all the things in the media about depression in our society, we're always comparing ourselves to one another and we're obsessed with trying to find success. I think to be a good athlete and a good businessman, you have to understand that stress is inevitable. Everything is life is just application of stress and adaptation.

Sometimes you pull, sometimes you draft. But either way you learn to adapt, and it all gets easier.

Footnotes

Words by Jeff Mahin, Photos by Matt Clark @stirlandraephoto, Jeff Mahin & Julio Bustamante / Chefs Cycle , Editor Cody Royle, Published by Travis McKenzie, Presented by Split Nutrition

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FootNotes

Words by Jeff Mahin, Photos by Matt Clark @stirlandraephoto, Jeff Mahin & Julio Bustamante / Chefs Cycle , Editor Cody Royle, Published by Travis McKenzie, Presented by Split Nutrition

Colin O'Brady

Jeff Mahin

Lead From The Front

FootNotes

No Human is Limited

I'm Here To Win

The Humble Son

My Incredible Journey

The Most Interesting Man In The World

Season 3