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.