Shop Ride, Drop Ride

Trouble recovering after max efforts this past Saturday.  First around mile 30 (the climb out of the Guadalupe River on Spring Branch Road.)  Dropped.  Second around mile 40 (last climb on 311.)  Dropped.  Chased on 3159 then Upper Smithson Valley (miles 41-45.)  Unable to rejoin the bunch, got within 200m.

Smoother look at profile and heart rate tracings.  You can clearly the see the last 15 miles of diminishing heart rate as I rode home reflecting as below.

Gentlemen's way back to the shop - crossing 281 at Bulverde Road, rather than further south on Stone Oak Parkway.

Many excuses come to mind.  2nd week of marathon training - long runs, hill runs, mile repeats.  Maybe this left the legs without the ability to recover after efforts Saturday.  3 hours of sleep before the ride, maybe not enough rest before such a hard ride.  2000 miles of riding last month, maybe overall fatigue and malaise.  Hot and Humid, maybe too dehydrated midway thru ride.  Age, maybe can't ride with the 30 year olds (course there were 50 year olds up the road also....)  Lack of natural talent.  Weight.

Riding home I thought of all of these and pondered whether I was disappointed that I'd been dropped.  I didn't think I was, and reflected on one of my favorite Phil Ligget sayings, "You're only as good as, right now."  I'd ridden my hardest, gotten dropped, tried again, gotten dropped, tried again, then accepted my fate.

As in all of life, there are no excuses, only rationalizations.  Bottom line, like most things, performance in cycling is the simple result of ability and determination.  I don't have a lot of natural ability, however I do ride a lot and race hard races to try to reach my potential.  My determination has improved over the years.  My ability and determination Saturday simply didn't match that of the group.

Watching the Tour of Ireland this year, I acquired a new hero and motivator.  Malcolm Elliot.  This British rider is the oldest active professional cyclist - 47 years old!  He ended up 41st of 110 starters this year, and had finished 2nd in the Tour of Ireland in the late 1980's.

Early this year, I began racing again and dropped out of my first few races.  I was reminded of a comment by Andrea Tafi - he had raced nearly 1000 times as a pro and had dropped out of only a handful of races for reasons other than an unrecoverable mechanical.  With this in mind one of my early season goals was to reduce my quit and I did so.  It's hard not to quit when you are hurting on a hard ride.

Yes you can only do what you can do.  But, you also can quit too early.  Knowing where you stand on that line between giving all you have, and quitting too early, is tough.  Yet another of the great challenges of cycling, and another reason we love this beautiful sport of suffering, so much.