The Jade Wilcoxson playbook for winning cycling's national road-racing championship calls for starting late. Very late.

During your teens and most of your 20s, don't ride at all. Instead of training, obtain a clinical doctorate in physical therapy and work with disabled patients who struggle to complete the smallest tasks. Then, after a sobering diagnosis from your own doctor, buy a road bike, train for nine short years and enter and win the sport's most-coveted domestic trophy—transforming yourself into a contender for the 2016 U.S. Olympic team.

Asked to explain her unlikely ascent to the top of American cycling, the shy Wilcoxson puts it this way: "When I get on a bike, there's a switch that's flipped and I want to beat everyone around me."

In the culture of endurance athletics, how an athlete reaches the podium is a matter of obsessive interest. What she eats, how she trains, which equipment she rides—even how she stays afloat financially—become valuable secrets. But the Wilcoxson model calls into question a tenet fundamental to the pursuit of all sporting championships: that winning must matter more than anything. Working with the disabled did something more than prepare Wilcoxson for the harsh equation behind competitive cycling: that every inch of gain requires miles and miles of pain.

"It takes months of hard work to go from not being able to move in bed to being able to walk at home safely, and it is painful work," said Wilcoxson. "Those patients inspired me."