Perspective

My first for real race of the season was pretty hard. I got dropped, I stayed on, I felt good, I felt bad, I hit the wall, I made a break, I got nervous, and I felt relief.

Before the final event and after three days of intense racing I was very nervous. I couldn't calm my mind down the night before the circuit race. Then all of the sudden I had a moment of perspective: at least I'm not in Libya; at least my house is still standing; I have food in the fridge, and fresh water to drink; I have a good job that pays my bills and more; I have a wonderful group of friends, a supportive family and people I know love me.

With that perspective this whole racing business becomes pretty small. Racing isn't what paid for my bike; it's not what puts food on my table; it didn't pay my car off; it doesn't bring anymore emotional intelligence into my life; racing isn't about fulfilling some gaping hole in my ego, rather, it's about completion. it's about starting something and seeing it through.

Waking up each day I have to self-commit to a lot of things: family and friends, work and myself above all else. I know I can hang, I know if I really try I can do OK with some pretty stiff competition but it's not why I start the race. It's very difficult for me to come to that line, it's the tough "get out of the door" feeling I have some days when I just don't feel like doing what ever I need to get out the door and do that day. it's easy to just say fuck it. When it gets hard in a race it's easy to say Ok, I've had enough, that's it I'm threw.

But you can always give 50% more. Your self-commitment and motivation are always synergistically linked. If you're committed to seeing it through the motivation materializes out of thin air; if you're motivated you are already self committed to the task at hand.

I was told from a young age that if you start something you see it through; if you're going to do something, then do it right. For me, doing this racing thing right is to get myself to the highest level I can as an amateur. I'm almost there, I can taste those points. I won't quit until that goal is reached.

In the mean time, while I complete that little goal, I'll keep my perspective and wits about me. I know it's just a bike race. I know it's place in my life, what it does and does not provide for me. It's just a hobby. A very expensive, time consuming, energy sapping hobby that can easily take precedence over more pressing and important matters. And here is where it comes full circle: cycling is hard, life is hard; it's not about point A or point B, it's about the ride; it's not about the bike but it's about the bike; cycling is not a sport for me, it's a lifestyle, the filter through which I experience my world - it can leave me with or without perspective, it's my decision to choose which road to take, and what I get in return for my hard work.

Motivation

: moe[te]vae-shion : An inner force fueled by desire - sometimes by outside stigma or negative energy from other people and/or groups or by inward reaching daemons; once recognized, gets transformed by your inner consciousness into something positive. When this energy is funneled appropriately it can have a transformative effect on attitude, lifestyle and overall wellbeing.

Testing Limits

That's really what it's about.

How do you know what the limits are without testing them?

It's like sex. You can't know what you're doing until you've tested it; you don't know what you like until you've tried it. That unsure, uneasy but awkwardly anxious yet excited moment in kissing someone for the first time? Same thing. It's a boundary, a limit that's being tested. It's the same feeling I get when I toe the line at any race.

Sex and bike racing share common ground: They're both dangerous when done without protection; they involve sweat and precise movements in near nudity; you get better at each through training; both have a lot of accessories; each requires time, energy and focus for a brief moment of glory and euphoria; in both cases natural talent get's you further; and afterwards all you want to do is pass out on the ground.

Testing limits is something I do on a regular basis, I used to do it a lot more, but you only need to test some limits once to know what's good for you. I value not only the lessons I've learned by proxy of these tests, but the insight I've gained about my own psyche. It's this insight that's guided me through some pretty shitty moments in life - moments I'd care to forget but inform who I am today, and in this way feed that insight and make me a stronger person.

It's cyclical. In the most simple terms, going beyond a limit can be viewed as a fuck up. You red lined it on the bike for too long and blew up before the summit. You tried to do 10 hours of work in 8 and half-assed the task. You tried one too many drugs and ended up hurting a lot of people who love you.

Bottom line is as long as you fuck up and then you learn from the experience how you fucked up and you don't fuck up again, then you've gotten what you need out of that test - you now know the boundary, you know the limit, you learned from your experience.

One day, you have a lot of fuck ups under your belt and all this fucked up wisdom from wadding through a fucked up life and somebody says to you, "wow, you've been around the fucking block" and you think, "yeah, I have been around the fucking block, what am I doing with all this fucked up knowledge?"

I guess that's why I write in this blog? Just passing it around I suppose.

I can't believe I spent four hours thinking of this while I rode today - that's what happens when you ride by yourself a lot.

I also thought about why fat people think it's appropriate to wear a moo-moo. Just as a side note, it's not.

Fitness

: Ph[i]t-necc : The synergy between cardiovascular and pulmonary strength, muscle and mitocondrial density and body fat percentage. Mixed properly, creates a mind-body machine which eats mountain roads in the big ring, clicks off the km's in a rhythmic and controlled fashion and whose only limiting factor are the amount of pastry shops in any given 100 mile stretch of road.

Fitness is assured when the leg band on the bibs are lifting thusly off the top ridge between the two large quadricep muscles when downward pressure is applied to the pedals. If said band is not lifting thusly, more training is required.

An Exercise in Economy

So much of my life revolves around a cost-benefit analysis. Not only in consumerism but in my day-to-day scheduling of events. If my mind was written in C my event handler would be less concerned with memory resources and more in the economy of the processing hops.

My form on the bicycle, finding more economical movements, creating more synergy between the body-machine object that moves forward in time, and never back. Life again, is like a bicycle trip, forward motions mostly planned in advance informed by economical movement, getting from point A to point B with the least amount of resistance and the best cost-benefit.

Sometimes on the bicycle you need to go uphill to get the greatest training, or cost, benefit. Sometimes in life the same is true. Sometimes you need to go uphill, sometimes you have a tailwind and sometimes you have a headwind - regardless you need that hill - it's there to tell you something - to train your mind and body. It's about learning, it's about finding rhythm in chaos, it's about finding peace, it's about the distance between the places where you gain your experience and your wisdom.

I wake up everyday and learn something new about myself. Recently, I've been learning a lot about emotions. What they are, how they affect me, why they are invoked, why I react to them. I never gave them a lot of thought in the past - as Dan Savage would say, you don't want to over-lesbian this thing by feeling it to death. That was a good rule of thumb, but now I'm realizing that sometimes an emotional audit is in order.

Right now I feel tired. I was out at a concert all night. I stayed up late, on my feet dancing, and having a pretty awesome time. As one of my best friends would say, I made a pretty big withdrawal from my energy bank. I don't have the opportunity right now to make a deposit because I have a job, responsibilities, and some sunshine to soak up on my bicycle this afternoon. But I know tonight when I get home and crash on my bed it'll all be worth it.

It'll be worth it because I have the choice to do these things. Sometimes I regret my choices, but the fact is that I have them, they're options, and I can choose to or not ... that's a pretty awesome gift. I can choose to feel and I can choose to not feel. I can choose to react and I can choose not to react.

Today I chose to wake up at a respectable hour even though I needed the rest - what is more important to me today is to get my job done to the best of my ability, in the most economical way possible, fitting the most work into the small space of time I have to get done what needs to be done. Today I'm going to ride my bike - I'm going to get outside and do what I need to do in the most economical way possible. It'll involve going uphill quite a bit. It'll involve some pain, and it'll definitely involve me second guessing whether it's a good idea to ride when I'm so tired, whether that'll benefit me in a training sense.

Truth is, I don't care if it does or doesn't. I know riding my bike makes me feel good, tired or not. I've done way more on way less. I tell myself that every time I go uphill. More on less. More on less. More on less. When there's nothing left you can always give 50% more. When that's gone you've got 50% more. And when that's gone... you get the picture.

I do this because I can. Because it's beautiful outside and I've been at my computer in a lab all day. I do this because life is too short not too.