Wabbit or Coyote?

photo courtesy of teamJVA.com

I've heard numerous references to this article recently. The point taken is that we all rise a little with some healthy competition. Setting the bar too high can break one's spirit or even worse harm one's physical health. But reaching 2% seems to be the magic threshold. 3% I guess turns the Rabbit into a Road Runner and nobody wants to be Wile E Coyote.

In the movie, For Love Of The Game, Kevin Costner shuts out distractions by reminding himself to "Clear the mechanism". He then is able to focus solely on the task at hand as a (fictional) MLB starting pitcher.

The last 6-months I've worked through more PT with the hip to allow myself to get back on the bike for more than just easy pleasure rides. However, the motivation comes in irregular flurries.

Putting myself out there to "race" is humbling as I know what I need to do to compete and I also know what I am doing. The two are not intersecting.

A month ago the Newmaforma packed up and went to the first cyclocross race of the season. I rode around a tree with G instead of properly warming up. I had a mechanical and only rode 10-minutes of the 45-minute race due to previously working on my bike while playing with G in the garage and not focusing on tightening the parts correctly. The thing is, he didn't care. He got to ride the kiddie race, ride around a tree for an hour and eat a Nutella waffle.

The next chance to race rolls around and I'm off to it alone. All I need to do is finish to better my record of anonymity. I try to "clear the mechanism" and just ride the course consistently each lap. I want to improve on the technical hiccups and be smooth through the parts I am competent at. I'm alone off the back of the group quickly so focusing on the mechanics is really the only thing I can do. What I can't do is let my mind wander. If I do that I'll end up in the parking lot, quitting.

But competitive people like to have a gauge. Some want to compare themselves to others or to what could have been if this day was 5 years ago, 10 years ago or more. So by averaging my lap splits and that of other categories and being the math genius I am, I figure I would have finished:

@5th in the beginner mens race
@Last, 5-minutes behind the actual last placed rider in the Master A group
@72nd, but not last, in the Master B's
@35th in the Master C's.

What is more scary is that while I would have completely dominated the Junior Girls race, I would have been a mere 5th against the Junior boys.

Ten of the age 35+ women would have beat me. And even though I don't weigh 200 lbs but am still 25 lbs heavy, I would have managed 12th in the Clydesdale stampede. But worst of all, I would have been smoked by two old men in the 60+ race.

So all that just confirms to me that a 2% improvement is far less important than the half of the battle of simply showing up. Chasing anything at this point will only get me to ride myself off a cliff like Wile E. Coyote or as frustrated and empty handed as Elmer Fudd chasing Bugs Bunny.

Suspect Summer Lessons

G has been concerned about the fact that when we get to the park in the evening it gets dark sooner and he can't complete his routine round of adventures before dinner. Lately, it's dark by the time we make it home.

Two years ago we could do a quick lap of the park before dinner in the boat bike. Last year he was wise to the play structures and mastered climbing the ladder, spinning on the tire swing and drinking from the fountain. This year he graduated from tricycle to Scuut bike and discovered the paved path that descends into a gully and the lower part of the park.

The gully has a patch of trees and steep grassy slopes. After descending the paved path at full speed (10mph) wearing Crocks, no socks and no covering over knees, elbows or hands, I decided he needed to learn how to crash a little before he fully ate it and traumatized himself with major road rash his first time fighting gravity.

He dubbed the gully "Thunder-dome" and that's where we went nightly with the ambition of a lightly skinned knee or elbow.He loved coasting down the hills, around the trees and walking up the other side of the ravine a little further each night made for some fast descents on his plywood bike. Until he ate it.

I was so proud of him. He bounced down the hill using his feet to center himself like pontoons as he built up speed. Finally, near the very bottom, at maximum velocity he hit one last bump that shook him enough to want to stop. So he did. He put his feet straight out in front of himself and cartwheeled over the bike, flipped a couple times as the bike landed on top of him and stopped in a haze of dust.

I rolled down the hill and jumped off my bike to pick him up and dust him off. By the time I got there his shock turned to tears. I checked him over to make sure he didn't break anything. He hadn't even scratched himself. We talked about what happened and I convinced him to laugh about his "rad" crash.

A week or two passed and his confidence was restored. Full speed descents into Thunder-dome were a mere warm up. Yet after only a handful of rides through the trees he would stop and look at the purple sky and ask why it was getting dark. His astonishment at my explanation of the sun setting behind the hills summed up the look on his face as crying bullshit to my answer. Explaining the solar system and orbits only furthered his conviction that I was full of it.

He'd stomp back up the hill straddling his bike for one last free-ride descent before I'd carry him home on my shoulders, pushing my bike and his, strapped to mine with our helmets buckled through both bikes. He'd point to the moon and call out stars or airplanes or street lights. Explaining to me that street lights stay on at night because they are not behind hills and that airplanes fly over hills but that we ride our bikes down hills. And stars are just street lights on roads really far away.