I haven't posted on this blog in 7 years. My last post was about getting my a** handed to me on the Belgian cobbles with the National Team. It was, needless to say, an eye-opening experience. When I was called to the line of duty by Team USA at the ripe age of 22 yo, I thought I had a really bright future. I thought I would need to bring sunglasses. But it wasn't that sunny in in Belgium in the spring of 2013. I got dropped in every single race and was usually happy just to make it out of the neutral.
Anyway, enough about Belgium. I was inspired to write this post after reading a blog post by my friend and fierce competitor, Kaysee Armstrong, a pro MTBer for Liv Cycling. We’ve been racing each other for a few years now in the gravel scene. She usually beats me by virtue of her bike handling skills (and also being very strong). At my very core, I’m still a roadie and have lots of learning to do.
Most of my training these days happens in the great indoors. Working 40 hours/week really cuts into my training time, so now I'm playing videogames every night on Zwift, and trying to be a #weekendwarrior. My now fiancé Jim is helping me improve my weaknesses. I’ve been working on my pop, descending on gravel, and even do abs 3 x week for 15 minutes. :)
This weekend I had a little bit of bad luck, but a larger amount of good luck.
With about half a mile to go, I rolled a tubeless tire, making it unfixable. I was maybe a couple minutes ahead of Kaysee and that's when I knew it was time. Time to channel my high school cross country running days.
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| Runner Roren |
I heard a quote from this guy you might of heard of, Theodore Roosevelt, who said "comparison is the thief of joy." As much as I love the competition and had fun winning a race, at the end of the day what matters is that I enjoyed myself doing what I love most, riding my bicycle.
Monday morning: I woke up at 6AM, picked out some work slacks, packed a lunch, and picked a podcast for the traffic jam, which is Atlanta.
I've realized through all this gravel racing, I don't have nearly as much control as I think I do. Things usually go wrong at some point, and that's when you need to literally make a run for it. Or at least be able to think on your feet. I try to prepare as best as I can, but at the end of the day, the point of all of this is to just enjoy ourselves.
'Peace out. A Town down.
