Checking My Head

I've been off the bike for four days now. I needed it after my physical and slight mental meltdown at the W101. It was hard for me to wrap my head around the the idea that despite feeling great for almost 70 miles, eating gels, drinking water, taking in electrolytes, and doing all the things that I was "supposed" to do, my body would just shut down and say "nope, no more."

I admit a lot of my mental deflation was ego. I love doing these races, I have not expectations of "winning" or placing, but I've pulled some good mid pack finishes in the past, I had hoped to do that again and I was reduced to feeling like noob and a boob. I mean I was just getting used to my permanent mid pack residence, and NOW I'm in the BACK of the pack trying to beat the Broom Wagon! Yikes!

I just can't seem to get my head around the fact that as cyclist/athlete I'm supposed to IMPROVE not get worse. I need to come to grips with the fact that maybe I AM doing OK for someone who just turned 38, only rides 7 to 12 hours a WEEK, is currently about 7 pounds overweight, and has no real "inherent" talent. What do I expect? You get out what you put in and right now I feel like I'm just not putting that much in to it, so I sure as hell can't expect that much out of it.

At the beginning of the year I was motivated, putting in longer hours, eating better, resting more and was less stressed. In other words I WAS putting in the time and effort both on the trail and road. Now here we are in August, the weather has been wet and soggy for 90% of the summer, most of the time my local trails are slick with mud, overgrown with weeds and a pain in the ass to get to due to Pennsylvania's habit of CLOSING roads whenever they want to do construction that never yields any real result. I have less than 11% motivation (according to my internal auditors) to ride on the road for my hours on the bike. So I went from hours in the teens in the spring to struggling to get 10 or 11 now. I need my mojo back. Who took it? If it was you could you please return it? No questions asked, I won't flip out on your or turn you into the Five-0. Just give it back!

While I can't say that I've got all my mojo back, I can say that the desire to race has creeped back into my noggin since Sunday when I thought to myself that it was time to stop this racing facade and just "ride". I'm inching towards doing the Big Bear Ultra on Saturday just for the chance to ride 50 miles of dirt, and inching closer towards the SM100 in September. I had the goal to get in 4 hundies this year. Right now I have 3, so I guess I can put in 100 more miles. But before I get back to 50 and 100 miles, I'm just looking to get back out for a couple hours of time on the bike tomorrow.

Finally got around to cleaning up the Dos Niner from Saturday's 101 mile love fest. All looks good except for my head tube. I had a multi tool in the side net of my Mountain Feed Bag. One part of the tool pushed through the mesh and proceeded to rub the paint down to the Scandium right above my Pepper head badge. Frig! It's like having a zit on the tip of your nose. Poor Dos. Poor, poor Dos....

Nothing worse than "bag rub" during a race.

I had ANOTHER follow up with my Doc about my (former) DVT today. The Doppler from the other day continues to show some tiny clots in some superficial veins, but no DVT, and NO new clots. So while I do have to continue to watch it, and go back AGAIN in 3 months, I can continue to stay off of blood thinners, and bleed happily whenever I crash.

OK, so now that my 4 days Xtreme self loathing is over I can get back to just my normal everyday self loathing and some riding. I did ride with B-Man for about 1 mile yesterday, but not sure if that counts towards "hours" or not? I know it counted towards fun outside with my son, and I know that's the most important.

Later.