Back to basics

I've been thinking a lot lately about where I am going with my life. Before it used to be so simple. I wanted to make it to the pros, simple as that. Dreams are interesting though. Maybe I was a little naive or ignorant, but in reality dreams often change. I am reminded of a few years ago when I graduated high school. I was dead set on pursuing nursing as my career. That only lasted a year before I decided I wanted to change focus and schools. Since then I have constantly been discovering more and more about not only myself, what makes me happy, what motivates me, how the world works, society, and so much more about just life in general. It seems like there are never ending lessons to life. No matter how on top of things I feel, something always seems to find its way out of proportion. It's a balancing act I suppose, and maybe I've been too one sided.

The last few years I've put every ounce of energy I've had into being competitive in cycling. I've sacrificed many weekends as a high schooler and young college student to stay true to the strict lifestyle that is demanded to be competitive in the sport at the level I wanted to be at. I even left my family and friends to move to a school that would allow me to race as much as I wanted across the country. For a while, everything was going according to plan. I moved up through the rankings pretty quickly and soon enough I was able to be competitive at a pretty decent level. My sacrifices seemed to be paying off and I was so excited. My future looked bright and everything seemed to be going according to plan. I even was able to get a spot on a professional development team this year with RGF, which has been an amazing opportunity. Sometime though in the last few months, everything seemed to be going downhill.

Last fall was amazing. I was able to pick up my mtb and cross bike right away after road season and was blessed with many victories. I couldn't believe how good I was feeling. I remember feeling like the pace in races were easy and I would be able to attack and stay away and feel great. I felt like my potential for improvement was exponential and I was super excited to see how I would be the next summer after training my butt off in the winter. Perhaps that's where I went wrong though. I only took a week off of training after cross nationals before I started up base. I was too excited to start training again and I wanted to get a huge base and come in as strong as possible. My first few races looked really good. I didn't have any high end, but my endurance and climbing felt amazing. I was even time trialing pretty good for being on a normal road bike. I don't know exactly when it happened, but eventually my excitement of training and racing started to fade and I felt more like I was forced to do everything.

During the collegiate season we would leave ridiculously early in the morning for races that were the same day. Sometimes there would be two races in the same day with a TTT and often it was cold and wet. Eventually this starts to wear on you, especially if there is little free time or rest. Every race was a battle, skipping a weekend to rest would mean giving up on a spot for the nationals team. It gave me a lot of insight about what it must be like to be a pro cyclist. I would not be able to truly chose the races that I would get to do and there is a lot of pressure to get results. I was really excited about the main season starting in the summer to get some good results and work hard for my new team. We went to a couple of races where I just had horrible luck with getting injured, getting caught in or behind crashes every race, and breaking equipment. It started making me think negative thoughts about cycling and I eventually started to dread any race that wasn't geographically challenging. I was feeling great physically, but I am a horrible racer when it comes to strategy and I really was getting irritated that even though I was way stronger than the previous year that my results were going downhill.

Basically I want to stop going down this downward cycle. I want to simplify my life and go back to the basics and remind myself of why I fell in love with cycling in the first place. I just want to ride and enjoy it for a while. This might be my last year focusing on road though, I don't want this to happen to me again. I want to thank Polo and everyone on RGF for a great year. The team is phenominal and the program is so amazing. You guys were awesome, I just wish I could've done more for the team this year. Sorry to let you guys down.

I don't know if the lifestyle of the high end racer is for me anymore, but we'll see. Maybe I'll come around with time. In any case, I am looking forward to mtb and cross season. I just want to have fun with it and see what happens from there.