Confessions of European Racing

I didn't really have any idea how I would feel leaving Europe. It's been my dream to race here since I started biking years ago, yet I've heard all the horror stories of "euro fever". Getting so home sick and lonely that you begin to lose the ability to even function while across the pond. I supose that might be the case for some people, and perhaps my stay was still short enough to be considered a vacation, but I honestly can't relate. The past two weeks I've spent racing, training, eating, sleeping, and breathing Europe has been one of the most enjoyable times of my life.  The amount fun I had is only matched by the amout I learned. Aside from the obvious things such as Europeans thinking that Visa credit cards are evil, and the fact that it costs 0.75 euros to enter a "public" rest room/ toileten, I feel like I'm coming back to the states with a new understating and respect for racing and, for that matter, riding a bike. I wrote about coming over here with a new perspective. A perspective of just having fun in every race without worrying about the results. However, it's hard not to feel slightly hypocritical once you get thrown into that first race.  Let's put it this way. Your out there having possibly the best race of your life. You feel like you could destroy any field in the world, nobody can match your speed, your power, your... Wait was that a euro kid on aluminum 26er' that just flew by... Oh there's another one... Another, another, where do they keep coming from!  You catch my drift. It's hard to be out puting down an effort that should spell pain cave for all your competition and all that happens is you go cross eyed watching them pedal away. But at that moment you must remember why you subjected yourself to this pain in the first place. To learn. It's the little victories that begin to mean so much in every race you do.  When I started to get nervous about a race coming up I would simply just think about what I would need to do to make this a good day. An effort where at the end of the day I can look back on and be proud of. Before this trip that would have meant winning. No exceptions. But now I feel like the one and only true thing that I can control in my racing, that I can depend on, is going as hard as I can. If I go through a race and put everything I have into every single pedal stroke, if I finish a race and I can't talk or have to put my head into my hands then it was a very good race.  So, I guess I think the most important thing that I learned during my stay in the motherland was just something my dear, not-so-old dad's been telling me a while. You can't contol your competition, you can only control how you race them. I didn't really know how I would feel leaving Europe. Would I feel defeated, sad, unmotivated? That's what they say. It's in Europe where you really can figure out if mountain bike racing is for something you want to do, and you know, I supose if the coffee stays this good and the racing stays this hard, I think I could see myself coming back hopefully very soon.

Perspective

Perspective is key. Perspective is truly what creates the good, the bad, and the ordinary in our lives. To understand it is to live, but to master it is to live happily. I'm finding there to be no better place to find a new perspective than sitting thousands of feet in the air starring out at the clouds. I've never seen clouds like this; at least never outside of an airplane. These clouds are tall,it's like a city of white fluff up here, and while I was staring down on this sight, this new perspective of the sky, I began to imagine the perspective I want to adopt to my racing.   Taking off out of the Helena Regional Airport this morning is the perfect time to review my perspective as I'll be needing some pretty soon here. In a little more than twenty four hours I'll have landed in Brussels, Belgium for the US Cycling Mountain Bike Race Camp. This is undoubtedly a flight I've dreamt about making my whole career, but now that it comes around I find myself feeling a bit differently inside than I imagined.  I'll be the first to admit that this season, while being more fun than I could have hoped for, has left a bit to be desired. I feel I'm in a prime position to do something big. Soon. But I just haven't been able to put the pieces together yet. Whether I'm struggling with fatigue, or bad luck it's those adversities that have driven me down.  So where does that leave me in Europe? Well, it's a matter of perspective. I could let those problems drag me down and leave me truly as a loser, or I could control my own destiny. I could turn that devastation into my motivation. Mountain biking is what I want to do, for now and forever. I've said it many times aloud and written it many more times in this blog, but that feeling I get when the dirt's just perfect, the air is clear and crisp,and my blood runs fast through my veins; it's enough for me to forget the pain that comes along with that feeling. It's what I want to do, and I've got a long time to see it though, so that's what makes the right perspective so important. In Europe I'll be racing for the little victories. To ride a lap clean, get a good start, heck, to not get lapped. Those are things I can think about through the race and things that in the end of the day I can feel good about achieving, whether I finished first of fiftieth.  So as I watch these clouds from a new view, and as I go some place that will be very foreign I can always rely on these simple constants. A screaming in my legs, a click of a shift, the grip of my tires (hopefully), and the beating- almost combusting of my heart. These are the things I can always count on, but it seems for them to stay constant my perspective must change. It's going to be a long ride to my dreams and I believe that it begins with a Belgian waffle...