Shout out to our friend John who road with Jen and I last weekend at the Southwest Michigan Apple Cider Century. We chose to partake of the metric century ride (62 miles). And although it was a great time, it was also very surreal for me.
See, like a lot of triathletes we have to travel to most of our races with all our gear and various accoutrement. In the case of this ride there was the traveling part with all our bike gear, there was registration, there were "race" numbers and there was an expo of sorts. But there wasn't a race (if it looks like a race and it smells like a race...). See where I'm going with this?
My coach asked me a couple of weeks what my objective was in doing this ride (since normally I do these SAG rides with some sort of training goal in mind) and my answer was quite simply, "to have fun."
Its been a long time since I said something like that going into an organized athletic endurance event. I could actually just enjoy myself. What's that? Have a beer at dinner and a very rich and dense turtle cheesecake for dessert the night before? Sure! Why the hell not?! Stop at all the SAG stops and eat a cookie at each one? You betcha!
Now was I tempted to throw down every time a pace line whizzed by? Heck yeah, that's just how I'm wired. But I'm glad we did it. I'm told that I need to have more of those experiences to balance out the scales of competitive burn out within me. That's cool. But lets start with just the one for now.
Comments