AS TIME GOES BY
I find myself repeating my thoughts over and over when it comes to cycling. Last time I posted was in October. I made this grand plan to get back on the bike seriously again. I made graphs and charts, laid out my coming months, and made a heft blog post about it to keep myself accountable.
In the end…I did nothing. Only recently have I started to ride with gusto. Part of the reason why may be due to the weather in Colorado…and my disdain for trainer rides. Part of it may be due to my job – working 4 12-hour shifts a week now, and driving 1 hour each way really cramps my ability to ride effectively.
If I’m honest with myself though, it’s all due to the fact that I’ve made my whole cycling experience too involved. All the number crunching, all the planning, and all the disappointing thoughts as a result of the former, made me hate riding.
Yes, I said it. I hated to ride. And the way blogging fits into that is even more ridiculous. I blogged about the stuff that makes cycling boring – at least to me. I know some people just hear power meter readings and get figurative erections…I don’t. They lull me to sleep. And that’s exactly what I was doing to myself by blogging all the numbers and plans I had for myself.
THE RESULT
After torturing myself for months about the perfect plan, I gave up. Most of the crap on this page is going to go away. This blog needs to be about cycling at its core – to me. So, goodbye power meters, goodbye training plans.
THE NEW BLOG
Same place, more posts.
For me, cycling is about adventure. The journey on the road that is the ultimate expression of human ingenuity – the power of your muscles and lungs moving the most simple yet intricate of man’s creation, the bicycle. The adventure for me is all about the intrinsic meaning of adventure – seeing new places. The bike offers intimacy with those new places like no other means of travel. Don’t get me wrong, though – I love feeling my abilities become stronger and more tuned. In the end, however, I’d rather make it to the top of a giant climb to see the view, not to bask in my awesome glory of pedal mashing.
As it turns out, I have the perfect job for being able to adventure – I’m a travel nurse. I move every 3 months, with nothing but the things I love and need. So, this blog is going to start focusing on each of the new places I move to and what they afford the prospective cyclist.
Don’t be fooled when you see that I still use a power meter on my trainer – I now only do it only to set a maximum during recovery rides. Don’t cringe when you see me talk about average speed or VAM, I’ll use them only to prevent myself from going too hard.
Yes, from here on out, it’s about seeing the USA. Possibly about losing all the weight I’ve put back on, but mostly it’s about the ride.
WHAT I’VE BEEN UP TO
Well, I’ve been spending a lot of time figuring out the aforementioned problems with my cycling. As I said before, I have been working 4 12-hour shifts per week, which is really cramping my cycling, but I’m starting to make it work now that Colorado has warmed up a bit (I say this, even though it just stopped snowing). The trainer has come in handy a little – but as I said before, it is really tough to get psyched about riding in place, indoors, with no wind, and no views.
I also had my first kid. She’s perfect, as I’m sure every dad says. Mine might actually be perfect tho…just saying. While she might cut into time, my wife has been amazing and she’s handling it better than I am in every single way, and that gives me a lot of hope that I’ll get back into the swing of things very shortly.
Other than that, not much…
To give you all a taste of what the Colorado I’ve been riding in looks like:
Entrance to Garden of the Gods, view of Pike’s Peak, with Manitou Springs at its base.
round cycler 
This works for me: I write about what I DID… not what I’m going to do. My plans are irrelevant next to what I did after I made them. Just a thought.
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You hit part of the nail on the head for me. I was planning far too much – even with this blog. It just turned into nothing BUT planning. But really, without seeing new things on the bike, it just becomes static for me. Hopefully I can just get on the bike, go down random roads in all the places I live and see some amazing things…
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Fortunately I am not hampered by scenery… seriously, I consider it a blessing. I ride the same route up to four days of the seven in a week and I still dig it.
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Nice!
I’m not saying I couldn’t do that too…I was not enjoying the scenery at all because my eyes were on the numbers.
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My only plan is to live long enough to complete my plan, hang on that’s two plans, though you’ll have to wait over 30 years to see if I make it. But the joy of cycling, that makes it for me, looking forward to the sequels.
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Sequels are definitely important to keep the bike moving. Whether your sequel is to see new places, new faces, new numbers…they all give motivation. I’m 99% sure I finally found my motivation – before it was weight loss. But, I love riding too much for it just to be a weight loss tool. It took me a bit to figure that out.
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I’ve dealt with the same issues, except I didn’t stop riding. It was, however, taking some of the joy away for me. We ride because we love riding, not because we like the numbers. Numbers can be important, but they’re not the do all, be all to our riding. That’s what it came down to for me at least.
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Exactly! Joy in cycling can come from a lot of different places, including those numbers. But I know that those numbers just squash the joy out of it for me. No joy, no ride – in my case.
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