I'm cold

I grabbed a win on day 1 of Supercross, and felt decent. Better than most of 2012, so I'll take it, but things cooled down pretty quick. Day 2 I felt pretty off and wasn't happy about it. NCGP was a complete disaster. Particularly Sunday. Embarrassing is the best word to describe my feelings from the day. I didn't even give my fitness the opportunity to fail because I was falling all over the place. Set the bike up all wrong with WAY too much psi. Just a complete mess.

On the bright side, there have definitely been times in my cycling career in which, under these circumstances, I woulld have just quit. Now-a-days I seem to be reasonably content with under-performing. Maybe "content" is the wrong word, but I feel like I can shrug it off and keep plugging away much better than I used to. That being said, I AM a realist. I've said before "you don't learn much when things come easy. You learn a ton when you make every mistake in the book". Well I'm going to add to that. You also don't learn a whole lot when you put the blinders on and deny the mistakes you made. I have to recognize how poorly I performed in order to see the mistakes I made and try to correct them. Things only get ugly when this creeps into you self esteem and you start to believe that you performed poorly because you ARE poor. I still go out to train and race with certain expectations. I have lofty dreams, but set reasonable expectations. The drawback that inevitably comes along with having expectations is the failure that you set yourself up for. I'll take the self-imposed failure every now and then, hell, I'll take a whole season worth, because I know I can work through them so I can have the expectations that provide me with the motivation and drive to become the bike racer that I used to be and the even better bike racer that I want to be in the future.

getting warmer

There is snow falling outside right now. Yesterday I was comfortable in short sleeves while inactive. What the heck? My neck of the woods is known for unpredictable weather. Great place to be a meteorologist. It might be actually, everyone knows nobody knows so if they are expected to be wrong, well that must really take alot of pressure off.....but this could also be looked at as an unatural swing due to climate change. A lot of people would be quick to jump to that conclusion, and they are right, but it just makes me think about how we really have no scope for the changes we are causing. Climatic changes over, say 100 years is a blink of an eye in human terms. A flash of lightning. Abrupt. Nothing can adapt. To us, well it's a lifetime. We have no personal gauge for what is happening. Not too long ago we had cultural knowledge. The collective mind of the people was one, so to speak and closely tied to the world around it. The feelings, memories, and skills from one generation were given to the next, so that any one generation had the memories of their ancestors. That is a wisdom unknown to the people of today.

The bike racing weekend was finally a pretty good one at the NBX shimano series finals. On day one sitting on the back of the lead group finally worked out in my favor, as I was able to avoid the puppy-monkey crash and follow Lindine up the road with Nick Keough. We got some space but Garrigan and Milne bridged up. I was not feeling great as usual and when it whittled down to Garrigan, Lindine and I chasing Milne, I got gapped off a little. The good from this day was that I was able to chase back on and squeeze into third at the expense of Justin. He bobbled the last corner, or else it may not have been so. On the second day things felt like they were finally coming together. I could push the pace, make the splits, and even cause the splits. I think it has taken me this whole season to just figure out my position on the bike. Sunday I finally felt like it was dialed. I was comfy all around. Pace and Position. Unfortunately my head might need to catch up. It is so used to not having the go that I found myself sitting on the back when Milne went away. Yesterday when he got the gap I saw it and was held up a little but in reality, probably didnt have the go to get across. Sunday I saw the gap and definitely had enough to go with but was poorlly positioned and had no way to follow. I came across second, feeling quite comfortable.

I am pretty happy to feel like things are coming together even though there are a limited number of races left. I need to get the confidence in the mind now that the legs are workin OK. Long Island, North Carolina, Arizona in-laws visit, and then on to Chicago and Nationals.