Riding and not riding and being a tub o' lard...

Race season 2005, over. Well, at least for me it’s over. I don’t see any reason to keep racing for me this year. It’s been what we might want to call a tragic season thus far. I’ve finished like 3 or 4 races out of about 20 that I’ve done, and those weren’t very good finishes. I cannot spend the amount of time riding and training that I want, and just can’t get my mind wrapped around riding the bike, and training hard, and racing hard. I’m spent. I just can’t commit the time that I need to commit to the bike to be a fairly decent cat. 2 racer. Bear in mind, I’m not looking for win after win, or something like that, but Hell, I’d like to finish a damn race more than once in awhile. This state of mind that I get myself into, leads me into feeling down, which leads me into not riding my bike, which leads me into being in worse fitness than I was before, which makes me even angrier, which leads to feeling down more, which of course winds up in this kid overeating, and then getting large and in charge. So right now, I feel like a freezer compared even to where I was a couple of weeks ago. Ah, how it goes away so quickly. My fitness, fleeting. It can be taken away with a simple swipe of the credit card at the local burrito joint. But at least now, I have something to work towards, again. For about the 12th time this year. I get into these cycles where it’s up, down, up, down, and around. Then of course, when I’m thinking about things, and feeling shitty, this leads to me NOT being able to sleep (see previous post about insomnia), so instead of getting rest at night, I am thinking about this that and the other thing, and I wake up, wiped out. That’s how it’s been this week again so far. Monday night, up until around 3:30AM. Last night, up until 2:30. With 5AM wake up calls, going to sleep this late, doesn’t fucking help at all, I can assure you of that. Not at all. I’m thinking it might be time to visit the doc, get some medication to help with the sleeping bit, at least for 5-7 days, get into a good sleeping pattern, and I think I’d be OK. The lack of sleep thing of course impacts training and riding. No good sleep, no good riding. No good riding, no good state of mind. No good state of mind, no sleeping. Do you see this cycle that I’m in? It’s freakin’ horrible if you ask me, and it’s driving me nuts. What’s the root cause of all of this? I think it’s my workplace. I dread coming into work every single morning, and the sad thing about that, is that this place is not that bad of a place to work. It’s the drive, the damn commute. It’s too long, and it’s breaking a brother down.

What lead to the bout of the most recent non-riding? Well, it was too much riding, and the resultant saddle sore from it. It got infected, and it got hurtful, and then it burst, and it hurt even more to ride on it, so therefore, I couldn’t ride until it was healed again, and now it is. Now I can ride again, but in the past week and a half when it has been healing, been feeling sad and sorry for myself, and not riding, and going into a bad cycle. I just feel like shit right now, which is why I’m hanging up the race wheels for the season, and looking forward to next season. Of course, I’ll be riding some select events, such as The Carolina Cup and the rest of the races that weekend, and maybe the 100k in Atlanta, but that’s going to be about it, and I might make my return to cyclocross as well this off season as something else to do. So we’ll see what shakes loose. For now, and for this evening, and the immediate, I’m looking forward to going out on the bike, riding, and getting some exercise, and feeling really rough on the ride, which is I’m sure what is going to happen this evening when I do ride, because it has been so long since I’ve ridden the bike. OK, not that long, but long enough so that when I do go and ride this evening, I’m going to feel like the floor of a bad movie theatre. I’ll be OK though, eventually. Although I’m sure I’m going to be sweating it out like a fatman (which is what I am right now) in a ham store this evening. Damn, when I put it that way, I can hardly wait.