First, A BIG, HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who's been so supportive of my return to racing, including and most of all, the
boy.
While stressing and agonizing fear of failure and fear of the now-unknown, I've been doing a lot of thinking about my prior race lives. In recent years, I was an instigator while chasing down unfavorable breaks and organizing a lead out for our designated sprinter. Previous teammates called me the puppet-master as I often orchestrated the strategy from within the race, filling in if I could when someone wasn't able to play their part. I almost always finished at the back, having played my part to set up a team win. And that we had - lots of team wins.
When you're new to anything, you do what comes naturally, what "feels" right. From the beginning I was predisposed as a gear grinder - big gears to power past people, up hills and through the finish. The trouble was that I didn't have the power to "power past" anything. Sprint was a dirty word to me, seeing as that doesn't work with aforementioned big gears. I could suffer more/longer/better than most and that was a source of early success. Once you get past the beginner categories, though, that logic only works for team worker-bees - people who can damage other people but aren't going to pull out a finish without a closer. I pigeonholed myself as a leadout expert and/or a breakaway rider. For a while that worked - being a part of a bigger thing, "I love it when a plan comes together" etc. After a time it's expected that you'll be the workhorse, suffering for the greater good, covering when someone else can't or won't, always sacrificing your result for a team result. Teammates knew I'd fill in if they decided to conserve for their own finish or raced contrary to the agreed-upon strategy. That's when it stopped being fun, when it stopped working for me.
Fast forward a couple years - the women's team I helped to create no
longer exists in the same form. I left that team the week before I was
injured in 2010. I realize there's no "I" in team but sometimes there has to be a
"happy" in me. I always thought it wouldn't matter what color your lycra was, friends are friends. Of course there was drama at the time but no hard feelings, that's old news and, honestly, things change.
the definition
of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different
results.
This time, it's different. Everything has changed, from my home to my job to my personal happiness. I
trained differently this winter - thanks to Coach Chris (my xmas
present from the boy). I am approaching racing differently, taking it a lot slower
than my normal bull-in-a-china-shop pace. Maybe
even exercising a little (very little) patience as I get my feet wet again.
I've recently noticed that I'm no longer a gear-grinder. Sometimes I'll find myself looking for heavier gears but when I grab them I realize they're no longer my comfort zone. My average cadence has increased significantly and I put out higher and steadier power numbers with the higher cadence. I'm learning how to race for myself - conserve a little more, react to others rather than having them react to me, allow someone else to instigate or set the pace instead of doing it all on my own. I haven't got it all figured out yet but each race leaves me with more education.
I'm even
approaching the prospect of a team differently. There was a time when I thought that being a part of a team was required - partially because of my self-imposed status as a worker-bee. Then, I decided I'd never be on a team again - a knee-jerk reaction (once bitten, twice shy). Now, as I'm figuring myself out and getting to know some fantastic women, I'm enjoying the lower-stress of just racing my bike instead of trying to run a team, plan team events, look for sponsorship, run interference between teammates etc.
There has to be a happy medium and sometimes you just have to know your limits. For those of us hard-headed, type-A personalities, sometimes your limits have to hit you in the face a few times before you reluctantly acknowledge them.
Here's to the reinvention of this racer-girl. It'll be fun to see how this turns out!
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