Another race another DNF

So what’s been happening with me since my last post…..it’s been a while, no? It sure feels like ages since I last posted anyway. So after the Paris-Roubaix I had a pretty easy week of training, just doing my intervals and drills and minding my own. The next weekend was pretty easy too as I had a race the following Tuesday – this one just outside Kortrijk in Belgium (Chris and Jess – remember Kortrijk and the bangers with the flying shoes??!).

So Tuesday morning bright and early we head out in the team van down to Kortrijk and get set for the race start at about 2pm. It’s a 170km race around an 11km loop, with a small climb on the cobblestones (“yehaw” I thought!). I won’t get into the details of the day, as it was pretty disappointing – I got dropped (again). This time there were 7 of us on the team, and 6 of us were in the 4th group when the peloton shattered. We rode hard for a while but couldn’t make up any distance, so there were about 30 of us that got pulled off the course after 2 hours. Shi-tty. It was really frustrating as I’d taken the day off work and gone that far for a 2 hour crappy ride, and the cobblestone hill was nothing more than a rise on cobbles (which was a breeze since I’d just done PR!).

But more importantly I was getting pretty down about things. A lot of stuff isn’t going my way these days, or as I’d hoped they’d go, so it gets pretty frustrating. I know it’s wonderful just to have my health, a good job, and the freedom to do what I want and when I want, which is great – and please don’t think I’m taking that for granted. But with these freedoms and abilities I should be able to lead a happy life, however I define ‘happy’ (it can be anything, from riding my bike to working in a bar to sitting on my ass watching TV). And also knowing that these freedoms and abilities can change at any time I would rather take advantage of the situation while I can and do the most with my life.

So again – it’s not that things are bad at all, but things just aren’t working out as I’d hoped in so many ways and it’s getting me pretty depressed. The poor cycling results are just one of many things that are getting me down recently.
But on the drive home after that race in Kortrijk I had a chat with our mechanic and he seemed to think I was being too hard on myself and expecting too much too soon – to just jump into the fray and expect to get good results at elite level bike racing is a pretty daunting task. That definitely helped boost my spirits a bit, but I still wasn’t feeling good about things.