More navel gazing/soul searchingy sort of stuff;
So why am I doing what I'm doing ? Am I trying to re-create my youth as a born-again bike racer ? Looking for lost glory as a veterans champion ? Trying to win some cups to put on display. The last is more like it. Maybe once I have a set of awards I can stop this often awful treadmill of racing, training, trying to recover, trying to fit in training rides when I have a job that takes me to distant parts (how can I train if I go to US for a few weeks ?)
Am I feeling this way due to a mid-life crisis, or because tomorrow I have to race up Angel Bank, the hard, steepest side of Clee Hill. This hill would be a category 3 in the tour de France, but most races I ride don't have anything as scary as this.
I feel as I did when I was 16, in body and mind, maybe my outlook and understanding has changed, I suppose I am a lot less selfish (well at least a bit less). So far, since I re-started the racing thing, I have'nt had some of the hammerings I had back then. But I suppose after accumulating 20 seasons bike racing experience, I should be a better rider than a raw 16 year old. Why should I compare myself now to myself at 16 ? Is it because that was almost 30 years back ? No, I don't think so, its when I became more like I am now, moving away from childhood into maturity (ay ? You are kidding me, maturity is something I never had/have). 16 is when I can remember thinking similar thoughts, and can remember some of what I did and said pretty well. I don't desire to be 16 again, luckily. I prefer me now to me then. My memory thus far is good enough so I don't look back through a romantic haze of long sunny days spent happily. I was as miserable and depression-prone them, probably even more so, as I am now.
Then I could look forward, but did'nt. I went through a long miserable time in my 15th year, when I looked back to the past as some sort of golden time of my life. The advantages of youth were wasted on me, as I suppose they are on all of us.
Oh yeah, just found a cyclists website with a link to the 'spit on a stranger' blog. Is he taken in by the psuedo-punk posturings of a west coast rich kid ?