Training Series, Teamwork, and Motivation

Last week was an interesting one race-wise. We participated in the first 'Ring of Fire' race at the Mellowdrome in Asheville, taking the win as well as 3 of the top 5 spots on the night. A great result considering the field and the fact that Jason's back precluded him from racing that night. It's a training race, so the goal is to go hard, but it's always nice to take home a win for the sponsors!

This culminated a solid training block for me before a little rest before one of my big objectives of the year - Dilworth Criterium on Saturday. I targeted this race since last year and I've been training for this race for months. In addition, I've been feeling great recently and have been putting up some of the best power numbers I've ever seen, at one of my lowest weights since started racing again. This combination as well as the commitment from my team to help me on the day gave me some super motivation! Unfortunately the best strategy is a failure if there isn't participation and this was the case come race day. That, along with about a dozen Lees-Mcrae riders foiled my plans . . . we'll leave it at that.

After the race I discussed motivation with my friend, Adam Ray, in the context of some of the mentally ill people that he has worked with in his life. I started to ponder what ultimately motivates people to do what they do and obviously if you can harness this for yourself or others you can increase your success exponentially. This is true in life and in cycling of course. At our level mental motivation is so important. Especially on race day and those days that you train particularly hard.

This brought me to Sunday. I almost didn't ride yesterday due to the weather and my frustration. A steady rain made me think twice about hitting the road, but with a break in the rain on the radar I took off. I'm glad I did too, because the roads were beautiful and I had a couple of fantastic climbs up 151 to the BRP! I had an outstanding workout since I had some serious motivation from my frustrations on Saturday! With some important races in May and June as well as Nationals in July, now is the time to refocus and pour my motivation into my workouts. I hope that you can do the same as you get into the meat of your cycling season.

Have a great week!