Serious business

Boy, if you miss today the future won't make much sense.

Back in June Colt from Cycling Dirt did an interview with me while I was at the Trans Sylvania Epic. Something he asked me forced me to answer a question I've never bothered to answer for myself. It's had me thinking for months now. Paraphrasing, it went kinda like this:

Colt: If you could win one race before you die what would it be?

Dicky: Of course it would be the Single Speed World Championship.

~Then I bitch about people like Adam Craig, Carl Decker, Fuzzy, and Dejay.~

But then I say this:

Dicky: I've won everything I'd probably ever want to win....

I've been thinking a lot about that for some time now, and over the weekend while I was flailing away on the ORAMM course it came to me. If I've already won everything I'd probably ever want to win why would I try to win anything else?

Where is this going? Lately I've acknowledged the fact that I am tired. Working, "training", blogging, writing, family time, fun time, racing... I try to put a lot on my plate and the one thing that gives is sleep. How can I alleviate that problem? Sleep more and lose one of the other bad habits. It was an easy decision. Training has to go.

There's only one point to training; to do well at racing. If I have, in fact, won every race I ever felt like winning continuing to train seems like a stupid concept. Of all the races I've ever won (or done really well at), only two stand out in my mind as achievements. Winning at ORAMM and the 24 Hour Solo Single Speed Championships were the two biggest moments out of everything I've done in the last seven years. I'm talking about my first ORAMM victory in 2004 since it was my first single speed endurance race ever, not the other victories since I actually went in thinking winning thoughts. Both victories pushed me to a new edge and both were quite unexpected and somewhat life changing.

Winning at that first ORAMM made me realize I might be able to try my hand at La Ruta. I'd never heard of anybody doing something like that on a single speed, and thus Bad Idea Racing was born as I wrote my first ever race report and started chasing down stage races like a not so attractive college male would chase down less than sober girls at 2:00am (nothing I would know about for sure). It was the beginning of an era for me, but then winning the 24 hour thing kinda pushed this blogging business to new levels starting even another era'esque period for me. Pivotal moments for sure.

It's not like I've been very absorbed with winning this year. Winning never really seemed like my style anyways. If you look at the photographic evidence from the past decade you'll see that I've never felt at home on a podium, and I don't think that will ever change. For me the feeling of standing on a podium is sooooo small compared to the feelings I had out on the course earning the privilege to stand 2.5 feet taller than my peers.

I do feel like a spoiled asshole rich kid when it comes to the wealth of fitness I accidentally have right now. My job has the fortunate side effect of keeping me in the kind of shape that will allow me to continue attending races and having fun, and that's what I intend to do from here on until some big life event occurs that I can't predict. No more skipping out on the pre-race festivities to get a good night's sleep, no more drop bags full of nutritional shit I don't really wanna ingest, no more worrying about who else is registered, no more morning rides before work all over Charlotte aimlessly chasing fitness, no more extra laps I don't really wanna do on the local loops, no more shaving my head down before hot races, no more worrying about my weight, no more of the things that kill the fun of doing what I love.

I'd go on and on about this topic, but I think you get the point. I'm still going to attend cycling events with start and finish lines, but speed will not be of the essence in between those two locations. I'm already daydreaming about the pizza at the 75 mile mark at Shenandoah in September, not to mention the pre-race beer the night before I've been ducking out on for the past two years. More fun rides with more slower friends since fitness won't be the focus of my rides April through September. What I am proposing is a return to the fucking salad days.

There is another change on the horizon. It's only in the works, so you'll know more as I know more and then we'll both know more because the more you know...

Looking for that image I found a website for breast augmentation. I love the internet even more now that I know there are boobs on it. Mmmmm.. the more I know.