Racing is full of fun and surprises!

Note: I had planned to post this the day that I wrote it but I ran out of relevant things to say, but I'm posting it now because it makes more sense after I did the UCSC race weekend.

With less than three days to go before the kick-off of NorCal Collegiate racing in the WCCC, I think it's an appropriate time to remind ourselves that racing is exciting, challenging, and ultimately fun.

I've had a lot of "bad" races, meaning that I've finished almost dead last. Obviously, the result of that would most likely be poorer self-confidence or developing insecurity. But whenever I do bad in a race, I never think that way--I never put myself down or feel bad about myself--at least to an extent. First off, I always know that there is a legitimate reason why I did bad, whether that was lack of training, poor nutrition/hydration during the race, or other circumstances that I couldn't avoid. But even when knowing that, I still don't ever think of a race as a waste of time or waste at all!

And that's because bike racing is fun. I don't know about others, but for me, there is always a unique feeling when racing that is different from a hard group ride. There's something about being with people who share the same passion as you, because it's a relief from the ignorant people at my college, it's a relief from the ignorant drivers on the road, and pretty much just a relief from people who don't love cycling.

This interaction with people who have the same interest as you, is especially valuable after training alone and interacting with the non-cycling population.

According to Joe Friel, training alone is a positive characteristic of highly motivated individuals. There was a time when I didn't like riding alone--something was scary about it...something was lonely and depressing about it. However, when I tried a training plan for the first time and eventually started racing, my perspective on riding alone completely changed. Riding alone helped me focus and pay attention only to me. So what does this have to do with racing being fun?

The key word is anticipation. Anticipation builds up when you notice an increase in fitness...such as PR's, lower HR's but higher efforts, faster speed, etc. When you train alone you kind of get lost as to how well you can actually perform in a race since you only know that you're better than yourself. But that's the main idea! When you increase your fitness, your confidence builds, so when you get to the start line you're thinking "wow I wonder how well I'm going to perform..." then you start getting mixed feelings of excitement and nervousness because of adrenaline.

And that leads to another factor which makes racing fun--surprises. You might be thinking that only the miracle surprises are worthy, for example, taking a podium spot without expecting it, or bridging a gap and thinking "wow where did that come from?." But what the mentality should be is that ALL surprises are pretty awesome, even the...well, disappointing ones. For instance, i'll give a personal example of last year's race at UCSC. It was a surprise to me that I got dropped so early in the race and that I pretty much had no legs to finish, but I legally did. So what is so cool about the surprise...?

All "surprises" give you a direction toward becoming a better cyclist. In this case, this surprise simply informed me that I needed to work on my climbing and endurance. In the case of a bridging the gap surprise, maybe that can be a good indicator to include more, time-trial-like threshold efforts in the training plan to make it a more consistent thing. Whatever the reason, surprises allow cyclists to funnel attributes they never knew they had OR they should have, into their training. 

It simply starts all over again. After improving what you learned from your last surprise, you go back into a race and surprise yourself again, and again, and again.

This is primarily the pattern I've seen in my racing at least. Racing essentially guides my training the same way training guides my racing. It's a dualistic thing and one can't really exist without the other.

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