Riding Away
This was another article I wrote for Topia Road, right after my third racing season. It pretty much captures the combination of high hopes and compromise that I go through every year.
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You look up through sweat-seared eyes and your soul gets crushed. The race is riding away from you. No matter how much your brain screams, your body still snaps like a dry-rotted rubber band. There’s nothing left. All of your hopes and aspirations are replaced with a tidy little package of all-consuming despair. If you race and haven’t experienced it yet, you will eventually. Sooner or later the race will ride away from you, too. In fact, that’s the one time when I have anything at all in common with a Tour de France rider. I’m the non-threatening rider who is allowed to carry the yellow jersey while the favorites sort themselves out, waiting for their moment to pounce. In that instant, I’m the guy that eventually watches as stronger riders strip his small moment in the sun away from him.
I admit it; there have been races where I’ve just laid down before I gave it my all. My body was tired and my nerves were raw, and I just decided that finishing would be enough. I decided to let them ride away, and finish at my own pace instead of digging down and really pushing to see how far I could go. It stings a bit, especially afterwards when I have to honestly admit to myself that I still had something left in the tank. Then I balance that with my goals for the race. Most of the time I can live with not destroying myself for a decent result, because I am usually completely surprised when one comes along.
Then are the times when I’ve trained, plotted, and wrapped my whole being around performing well in a completely unhealthy way. Maybe I’ve strung a couple good races together, deluding myself into believing that I might not be woefully inadequate for the task at hand. I’ve measured the competition, consulted the star charts, and generally done all sorts of mental calisthenics (sure beats the physical kind) in preparation for the upcoming event. If I’m really serious, I might even start tapering my McDonalds intake a day or two prior. Then I get absolutely destroyed, and that’s when it’s not so easy to shrug it off. The clarity is brutal. I know exactly how I stack up, and it’s not pretty. Wailing about how it’s all so unfair completely misses the point. I came up short.
Sometimes a known rider comes from nowhere, peaking in what was supposed to by your time of glory. Sometimes it’s a rider you’ve never seen who sneaks in and steals the show. Sometimes you miss a move that ends up costing you. However, it’s usually the strongest/most skilled rider who ends up winning. That’s the rider that takes care of himself, that maybe avoids high fructose corn syrup or simple carbohydrates, or doesn’t bail on a training ride to sneak in one more round of Halo. It’s probably the same rider who is genetically designed with a huge engine and the metabolism of a hummingbird. That rider. In the long run, you can’t lay the blame on him. At some point in his life he made the conscious life choice for fitness over bacon. I may disagree with that choice, but you can’t really argue with results.
No, the blame usually lies solely on my shoulders. Most of it can be directly tied to all of the promises I broke months before. Last fall I swore I would eat better, lose weight, build muscle, expand my overall fitness, and roll into the riding season ready to chew the tires off of the peloton. Then life intruded, and once again I made a compromise. Then another. Then another. Finally I am left salvaging something less grand and pure than what I had envisioned in the aftermath of the last humiliation. Sometimes it’s enough and sometimes it isn’t. Eventually the race rides away from me again, and as always I’m left with harsh reality as my riding companion.
Next
time will be different. You’ll see …
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You look up through sweat-seared eyes and your soul gets crushed. The race is riding away from you. No matter how much your brain screams, your body still snaps like a dry-rotted rubber band. There’s nothing left. All of your hopes and aspirations are replaced with a tidy little package of all-consuming despair. If you race and haven’t experienced it yet, you will eventually. Sooner or later the race will ride away from you, too. In fact, that’s the one time when I have anything at all in common with a Tour de France rider. I’m the non-threatening rider who is allowed to carry the yellow jersey while the favorites sort themselves out, waiting for their moment to pounce. In that instant, I’m the guy that eventually watches as stronger riders strip his small moment in the sun away from him.
I admit it; there have been races where I’ve just laid down before I gave it my all. My body was tired and my nerves were raw, and I just decided that finishing would be enough. I decided to let them ride away, and finish at my own pace instead of digging down and really pushing to see how far I could go. It stings a bit, especially afterwards when I have to honestly admit to myself that I still had something left in the tank. Then I balance that with my goals for the race. Most of the time I can live with not destroying myself for a decent result, because I am usually completely surprised when one comes along.
Then are the times when I’ve trained, plotted, and wrapped my whole being around performing well in a completely unhealthy way. Maybe I’ve strung a couple good races together, deluding myself into believing that I might not be woefully inadequate for the task at hand. I’ve measured the competition, consulted the star charts, and generally done all sorts of mental calisthenics (sure beats the physical kind) in preparation for the upcoming event. If I’m really serious, I might even start tapering my McDonalds intake a day or two prior. Then I get absolutely destroyed, and that’s when it’s not so easy to shrug it off. The clarity is brutal. I know exactly how I stack up, and it’s not pretty. Wailing about how it’s all so unfair completely misses the point. I came up short.
Sometimes a known rider comes from nowhere, peaking in what was supposed to by your time of glory. Sometimes it’s a rider you’ve never seen who sneaks in and steals the show. Sometimes you miss a move that ends up costing you. However, it’s usually the strongest/most skilled rider who ends up winning. That’s the rider that takes care of himself, that maybe avoids high fructose corn syrup or simple carbohydrates, or doesn’t bail on a training ride to sneak in one more round of Halo. It’s probably the same rider who is genetically designed with a huge engine and the metabolism of a hummingbird. That rider. In the long run, you can’t lay the blame on him. At some point in his life he made the conscious life choice for fitness over bacon. I may disagree with that choice, but you can’t really argue with results.
No, the blame usually lies solely on my shoulders. Most of it can be directly tied to all of the promises I broke months before. Last fall I swore I would eat better, lose weight, build muscle, expand my overall fitness, and roll into the riding season ready to chew the tires off of the peloton. Then life intruded, and once again I made a compromise. Then another. Then another. Finally I am left salvaging something less grand and pure than what I had envisioned in the aftermath of the last humiliation. Sometimes it’s enough and sometimes it isn’t. Eventually the race rides away from me again, and as always I’m left with harsh reality as my riding companion.
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