Hoping to come along

Yeah - I haven't posted anything for a couple of weeks.  Not even so much as a post saying I wasn't going to post.

I don't know what's going on, but I haven't been too into it for the last 3 or 4 years.  I want to be, but I seem to lack motivation.

Anyway, I thought I'd stop by tonight and stare at the blank page for a bit.  Once I got here, I saw this draft from 2 weeks ago. All it had was the title. There was no body.  The title was (is) "Hoping to come along."

I could see it was a draft, but I was curious about the subject so I opened it to find no words.

So I don't know what I was hoping would come along 2 weeks ago. I will just have to guess, I guess.

The first thing that comes to mind is cyclocross.  I love cyclocross.  I can tell because I suck at it and I still always want to do it. I want to get better at it.  I am always wondering why I cannot seem to get it right.  The difference between me and the top Cat 4 guys never seems to change.  I always end up a couple minutes behind them.  They are a different crop of guys every year, but I just slog away year in and out at about the same level.  It's maddening, but I love cyclocross.

I think the reason is that it really hurts a lot. The more I torture myself, the more I feel I'm going to puke, the happier I am when it is all said and done.

I think that's because I'm going to finish well back from the front.  With that kind of embarrassment, It's murder to look at my results and know I didn't give it all I had.

It does leave one area of confusion, though.  Why am I getting smoked by all these guys?  Guys I can easily dispatch on the road?

I'm pretty sure it comes down to skill.  Criterium racing (now my second favorite kind of racing) is about energy conservation.  I believe that's the difference for me and cyclocross.  I am not so great around the corners, so I have to burn a match out of every one of them to stay with a group that just railed it.

I practice cornering on the grass quite a bit and I've seen some improvement.  Maybe that's what I mean when I say I'm "Hoping to come along."

Or maybe ...

Maybe a couple of weeks ago, some of my friends were talking about going to get some ice cream or something.  Maybe they didn't say exactly when or where, but it sounded like something I'd be up for so I was hoping to come along.

Yeah, that makes more sense than learning to turn a bicycle on the grass.


Oh that reminds me, I just signed up for the races in Lincoln this weekend.  I am pretty sure I will win them both.

My daughter lives real close to the park. She watched me win the Cornhusker State Games Road Race a few months back. I think I will bring the boys with me to Lincoln and they can hang out with my daughter.  I'm pretty sure they're not hoping to come along.