Soooo, how many things did I have to cancel this year:
1- Alta Alpina 8 after breaking shoulder blade.
2- Davis Double due to same accident.
3-Anniversary trip with wife cycling around Crater Lake due to same accident.
4-We then rebooked to go vacationing/ catch baseball/ go to Cooperstown. This trip didn't get off the ground as wife's mom went into intensive care.
5-Now mother-in-law passed on and its a funeral instead of the Mt. Tam Double.
As someone who usually focuses on end results, thus has been a real shitty year (and quadrupled for my wife.) But squeezed in between all the cycling events that went down the toilet were great self supported century rides, usually with other Diablo Cyclists--but all the "training" all for naught. Or did it?
After being spent trying to get a last minute airflight back East without 7 connections/ leaving at lousy times/ and selling a car to pay for the flight/ (getting all three are impossible) I vegetated today. Read a quirky book "Miracle Ball," written in the Hunter Thompson author directly puts himself in the story style; it involves the author's search for the Bobby Thompson 1951 home run ball as mental therapy. An interesting search unfolds--and unfolds--and unfolds, and ultimately leads to NO BALL. But though finding the ball was the aim of the author, the strange events regarding what happened to it are flushed out. In the end its NOT the ultimate result of finding the ball that is important--but the journey is.
***
Quick reflection. Yeah, I'd have loved doing Alta Alipina 8(I think), and Mt Tam Double--but as Paul Sherwin says "sometimes things don't go as planned. " And in the end, its good to have wacky goals as motivation for the training, but the training rides, the journey, are important in themselves.
From one of our Mt. Tam self supported century rides along the Mt. Tam Double Route. I would had probably been real happy dropping down to Alpine Lake (above-1st photo) where the "real" climb up Mt. Tam then begins. (above-2nd photo) But though I like the Mt Tam ride, a part I dislike is when we drop down off the top and into the fog bank below. Then (below) coming off the Big Rock climb there is a nice finishing straightaway to the Mt Tam Double--but usually I'm going too hard to look around and have NEVER spotted the yard with the Indian Statuary until the last ride---you miss somethings when just focusing on the end game and not the journey.
1 comment:
I'm with you, pardner! This has been a goal-less cycling year for me, due to family, stress, and injuries. But, our "training" rides have been some great ones. Ends in themselves.
-- The Doctor
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