Give Up to Gain

Sometimes doing what is right for ourselves can be the hardest thing in the world to do.  Why is that?  Deep down we may know, or have a gut feeling about what is best, but we just can't let ourselves go there.  I think for competitive endurance athletes this is especially true. The nature of endurance sport compels us to forge ahead, to keep moving, follow the plan.  So when it becomes too much it can be hard to differentiate between appropriate stress and over-stress.  I think right now I am in a state of over-stress.  I feel lethargic and down much of the time.  I have a couple good days of training, then don't want to move from horizontal for 3 days straight. My performance has been less than expected, I'm moody and out of sorts.  (I did see my doctor and we have some blood work pending, just to be sure.) So why do I keep doing all the training and racing if that is what's causing me to feel so bad? I think for the past couple of months I have been hoping things would turn around.  Hoping I just need a week of good nutrition and sleep, that it was just the last week of hard training and I would recover after a couple easy days. But that recovery hasn't come.  I'm more tired and cranky than ever, and even the thought of riding doesn't appeal to me, much less doing a race. So I've decided to end my season now and forgo my last two planned mountain bike races of the year.  It is really sad and a hard thing for me to give up. I believe what I gain in return will be greater and I will be happier, stronger, healthier and better for it.

Curve Ball

Funny how life throws us curves.  Not “ha-ha” funny but “that’s kind of weird how that happened” funny.   I guess the very nature of a curve ball is that it is unpredictable.   It upsets the balance, throws off the equilibrium and changes the course of things. For the last 9 months I’ve felt as if I have been trying to right myself from the effects of such a curve ball.   

Sometimes when we are lost we hold on to the familiar because it is what we know.  It is a comfortable touchstone that helps us find our way.  The familiar is easy when we don’t have mental energy or insight to know how to do anything else, a default setting for our brain.  My brain has been set to default since January, when my dad died unexpectedly.  The grief that came with his death has changed me in a way I never could have predicted. I continue with what I know; training and racing and travel and bikes and training and racing and more training.

It is a rough place to be in, when what sustains you is no longer fulfilling. That is where I find myself now, at the end of the 2014 race season, unfulfilled by racing and uncertain of what to do about it.  This has been a less than stellar year for me in many ways.  I guess if you race long enough there will be bad years.  The good thing is a bad year can help one prioritize and re-set.  Next year I will mix things up, try some different types of events.  I look forward to new adventures, new experiences, and a fresh start in 2015.  For now there are still a few months left in 2014, and I will do my best to make the most of them.