Positive

"Find the positive in failure."  Well, it's not a direct quote of Johan Bruyneel, but it's the jest of it. It's from a chapter in his book.  It was describing how Hincapie and Armstrong both suffered what they saw as failures, and how Johan saw it from his perspective.  To paraphrase again, if i may, "if you stare at a failure long enough, you will start to see the good that can come from it". OK fine, enuf of the quotes. But the message is there.

I went to a ride saturday, and it was fast and I was clearly out of my league, and i preceeded to kick myself in the butt until yesterday about it, esp when i depleted so much I couldn't get my LD ride in on sunday.

Despite what I think, sometimes, I have a few, very close guys who give me moral support when I need it, and don't judge me at all.  One, who's impressive by any means, caught me in the hall to chat about it.

He put it in perspective.  He pointed out to me, that where i went, was a race, not a causal ride to get in some miles, nor was it a social ride.  Once he cleared my head of the expectation of what i got myself into, I suddenly began to see possibilties, instead of failure.

For one thing, it was a race. I hven't been training for speed at all. I've been busy building strength towards endurance and distance.  I am slow. But i trained to be slow. So far.  He confirmed that I should have taken friday off to allow my bod a chance to recover, and to give my legs a chance to get used to the new bike position. "Even a mm, can change the where your strength lies". I've been training for 2.5 months in a specific position, and i drastically changed it in a day.  Ok fine.  But what my numbers pointed out, was that I hung in there, for the first twenty miles, in a 30 mph wind.  Not impressive to most ppl, I am ok with that. But i couldn't have done that last year. 

He also mentioned his wife got dropped about the same place, and it took her all summer to figure out how not to get dropped. 

After I've had some sleep, and some food, and stared at the issue long enough, I began to see the silver lining.  It's a guage of where my fitness is. Not a bad thing.  Here it is, staring me in the face. I'm about to turn 46, and i started this last year journy last year.  Those guys have been doing this years.  And their guys. 

Out of this carnage of my ego, I will now consider how to train for that, and if it reall fits into mylong term goals.
Thank you Johan.

Clear Skies.