Tour of Walla Walla 2012

I had a really fun weekend. Things really came together in all areas. I got a lot of thoughts, so let me try to go through them chronologically.

The weekend before.

I went out to King's Valley and got a flat on the first lap and had wheel change issues and dnf'ed. It sucked and it was hard to even force myself to do a second lap. The next day I went for a long ride out as far up Larch Mountain road I could with some new biking friends. That was a lot of fun and a nice day.

Things start clicking... literally

On Monday I went to a shop to have them glue on a new tire. While there I also was planning on putting on some new speedplay cleats - a task that was long overdue since I had not done any maintenance whatsoever to the cleats since I first bought the system in July of 2010. They were so bad that the screws attaching the cleat apparatus to the cleat mount were totally stuck if not fused together in a huge pile of rust. Luckily, a shop mechanic was able to drill out the cleat screws and then hacksaw off the apparatus.

Once the new cleats were on (and I had inserted the cleat anglers the right direction) my bike felt like a totally new bike. It was responding with seemingly no loss of power transfer to my every stroke. That night on some hillclimb intervals I easily got the farthest up the hill than ever before. Then at PIR, it felt easy to hang with the pack and even get onto Beardsley's or Ginsberg's wheel in a sprint. However, the wet track and my still slippery tires made things seem a little to sketchy to want to risk sprinting. At least a teammate got in a break so the team got 4th.

And now for the main event

The first stage race of the year for me! There really has not been a stage race that I've been to where it wasn't awesome and this one has been the most awesome yet. I feel like the Tour of Walla Walla is a really challenging regional stage race where doing well means far more than doing well in a local race or even a smaller stakes stage race.

Logistics

Getting there was definitely a battle and I was set on not camping this year. It was also tough to even find a ride out there again, but things worked out. Ted from Audi hooked me up with some other Spokanites (Spokanistanis?) that were renting out a house for the weekend. I slept on the couch the first night and managed to negotiate half of a bed the following evening just like last year. On a sad note, my housemate has been in India for a family emergency, but was gracious enough to loan me his car for the weekend. And off I went!

Friday

This year I have been trying to be a little smarter in choosing where I make my efforts. That means that I did not bury myself trying to breakaway on the first lap. I saved most of my efforts for the hill. The first time up was moderate and I was a wheel-length out of contention for a mountain prime, that was pretty cool though. After that, nobody wanted or could breakaway so I just waited up at the front for the hill again. It came and the pace got harder. Attacks came at 5k to go, but then the winner went at 3k and stayed away by 10 seconds. I came in 9th which I was quite satisfied with. And my mom had some homemade applesauce for me at the finish! Nice.

Saturday

It would seem as if I need to take on some better strategies for criterium riding. Namely not hammering on the front for 75% of the race. After the final prime I actually got away from the field, but then Team Bonehead Cycling sent a guy up to me who then proceeded to attack me and didn't get that far away. Ultimately the peleton caught us after a valiant imbecile pull from another Team Bonehead Cycling guy. I was amazed and then nervously pedaled on the back of the pack in anticipation of a crash that never materialized. Nice.

I took things to another level in the Time Trial. Compared to last year, there now wasn't any wind, I had carbon wheelz and I had a skinsuit. But moreover I again set speed targets for each section of the road. On the first section I didn't anticipate the very slight wind so was a little slower than I wanted to go, but then I crushed it over my target up the hill. On the long downhill I wasn't going as fast as I wanted, but I was still flying. Then I didn't really have a good sense of how far that last stretch was and probably could've pushed it harder. I passed one guy and only got passed by the TT winner which is fine by me, especially since it was Tim. He's all right. My time was 21:16 compared to 24:37 last year. I am pretty stoked about that improvement.

Sunday

Sunday was my day. This time all things came together in the Success Equation, but more importantly I added a dynamic element to the equation in that I adapted my strategy as the race played out. I was sitting 9th in GC, so I was going to breakaway, no question. Last year I attempted to breakaway on the long downhill backstretch on the first lap and then barely had enough energy to stay with the pack after getting caught. This year I was going to go either on the hill after the sharp left or the feedzone hill.

The race day weather was predicted to be 80 degrees with very little wind. So I took 3 water bottles with me. Just before the race I had to swap rear wheels after I had had enough with this valve extender that could not accept air. Right before the start I took a leak (in a port-o-potty) which was a good sign that I was staying hydrated.

As the race began nothing much was happening, except Audi was absolutely intent on getting a break going. They had a guy get away with some other people by the time we got to the backstretch. I was waiting for the GC guys and their teams to do the work to bring it back. Tim (2nd in GC), his teammate and #1 GC put in their time at the front. Eventually we caught them just before the long hill on the front stretch after the break just died completely perhaps due to someone getting a flat, not quite sure.

Now it was time for some counter-attacks. Another Audi guy went up the road along with 2 others. Then a pro-city rider (they had 2 guys in top 10 GC) started mashing his pedals like no other to bridge up. I decided I may as well jump on this free ride and see what happens. It was a little early and not according to my plan, but the effort to stay on that wheel didn't require a lot of exertion for me, so I gave it a shot. We got up to the break quite easily and then were joined by an HSP rider (also 2 of them in top 10 GC). The Audi guy and the Pro City guy fell off, but we still had a yellow jerseyed (not GC-leader yellow) Canadian who claimed he was about to explode due to lack of water.

And so it was 3 of us and we began working. Each of us seemed to be putting in our fair share of effort even despite me taking a break here and there at the back to eat some food. We motored down the long downhill backstretch and then tempo'ed up the feed zone hill. All of us grabbed a watter bottle, but then hammered it down that hill so hard that we almost ran into the lead car if it weren't for us yelling at it. Then up the final hill and we still had our gap. It was then an intense mental and physical battle for us all the way down the hill to the finish. We could see the peleton just dangling about 20-15 seconds behind us most of our descent. After each pull we would nervously look over our shoulder but still kept working. All in all we were quite lucky that the field didn't organize themselves.

We got to the 1k mark and this little 3-man break that could had the podium sealed. After having downed my remaining half a energy bar at 1.5k I was ready for the sprint. We knew yellow jersey wouldn't contest so HSP sat on his wheel and I on his. With 180 to go HSP made a slight move to the right and then I blasted off to the left and pounded it out. At first I was like, is this happening? Am I about to win? Did HSP somehow cross before me? Whoa, I crossed the line! I think I won! I WON!!! YEAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!! YEAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!! I actually screamed "YEEEAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!" twice. First time as I pumped my left hand in the air. And the second time while pumping the right hand. YYYEEEAAHHHHHH!!! I just screamed that again in my apartment as I'm righting this, but not too loud, don't want to wake the neighbors. That was an amazing win for me and ranks up there as one of the hardest won and deserved wins given the challenge of the reputable Tour of Walla Walla. I have been so psyched and pumped since this win.

Me and Team Guinness really want to obtain a picture of me winning this stage. Please let me know if you or anyone you know has a picture. I am going to put it here in this blog.

Not Quite, but Almost

All right back to racing! Oh wait, blah blah blah training, lots of hill climbing intervals this 3rd intense week of a build. But wait wait!

An Important Announcement from My Employer

TrafficBug^® - The Commuter's Companion^SM was released to the public in both website (with Flash) and iApp format this week. TrafficBug helps commuters and travelers navigate through traffic finding the fastest route possible and alerting users about any traffic incidents along the way. TrafficBug has the ability to create personalized trips between any two locations (accessible by roads in the US, Mexico and Canada). Not only does TrafficBug have the ability to create personalized routes, but it also allows takes into account the historical and realtime traffic along the way based on the time of day of your trip. Leave the worrying about your commute to TrafficBug as it is constantly monitoring the roadways to give you the best advice on how to get to your destination quickly or even if you need to leave earlier in order to arrive by a specific time.

I've been working on parts of this app for a long time - over a year now and I am very happy that we finally have a product to sell. There are a whole lot of things I still want to improve, but at some point we have to have something to sell since nothing will ever be perfect. So, please download the app or go to the website and try it out and let us know what you think about it. We would love to hear your feedback and would be ecstatic if you purchased even a one-month subscription let alone a three-month or even yearly subscription.

Piece of Cake

Getting There

Now, it is a huge oxy-moron that I work for a company seemingly obsessed with auto-transportation yet bike nearly everywhere. But the bigger oxy-moron is that the only reason I get in a car these days is to go bicycling (at bike races of course). And now each time I travel to bike races I'm constantly checking our TrafficBug app to see what it actually is like using it in a car.

I had the pleasure of commuting to the Piece of Cake Road Race in anti-bike racing rural Amity, OR with the Guinness Cycling Team Leader extraordinaire Dave Klipper and the cool Cliff Heaberlin (another one of my teammates in Cat 2). Getting to Amity is an interesting task because there are numerous ways to get there and we had opinions from everyone on which route to take. Ultimately it was Dave driving which meant that we were using whichever navigation system he preferred at that moment in time. At first we were using his car's Navigation system which told us to go through Salem, so we headed towards Salem. TrafficBug said to go back-roads via McMinville, but later I found that the geocode result it got (from Google, yes I am blaming them) put the location about 6 miles north of where we actually needed to go.

Once we started driving over the Salem bridge we had a massive navigation breakdown. We had just exited the highway somewhat accidentally and were in a predicament. Cliff was suggesting we go north via backroads, the car navigation still thought we were on the highway and I couldn't press buttons fast enough to make TrafficBug recalculate. Eventually Dave decided to get back on the highway and asked a passing bicyclist how to get back on the highway - local knowledge trumps!

The race

All right, 3 laps with 3 miles of gravel per lap and a whole bunch of relatively flat countryside to spare. I started at the very back which was a bad idea because I had no idea that the gravel came at mile 3. So from the car horn we were rocking and rolling! And then we hit the gravel and people began shattering off with flats about every 20 seconds. Earlier in the week I bought some brand-new tires anticipating this, but it turns out that these tires were the absolute worst tires I have every bought because not only were they incredibly slick in any kind of rain but I flatted out 5/6ths of the way through the gravel on the first lap. These tires will go unnamed for now in the event that I can't return them to the store and need to sell them.

I got a wheel change but the support crew said it was sort of rubbing the brake pad - it was definitely out of true, but I was happy to have a thick 28c tire to support my heavy ass now. I suffered to just get back onto a flat tire chase group and caught them just as they caught the rest of the field which was thankfully going really slow. So now I made damn sure that I was close to the front before the gravel came again and I was 3rd wheel when it came. Just before the gravel, Kyle made his move and motored away from the field. I thought it was still a little early and waited for other moves since there was good representation from other teams. Eventually it became apparent that none of the other teams had any kind of arsenal or organization (except for Soraz's blocking abilities) to chase down Kyle and now Eric was running up the road solo.

The gravel was coming up again and I attacked and started bridging up to Eric and caught him just before the gravel. For the next 10 miles Eric totally put me in the gutter - especially when he was taking his pull! We were closing in on Kyle and riding away from the field, but I lost contact with Eric's wheel and it was all over for me at that point. Well, not all over because I rejoined the chase group and then got to watch the sprint which involved a spectacular crash which involved a guy that seemed to lose control of his bike and hit the ground and then the finish sign and then the ladder holding the finish results camera and finally the medic's car. But apparently he was ok and got 5th! Woohoo!

Meanwhile, in the P 1/2 race

The p12's had to do 5 laps and I was waiting for a long time for them to get back. It turns out that Dave had won it in the sprint by a handy 3 bike lengths! There was quite a story about the race and all the tactical battles and how Dave ultimately found that finish line before anyone else. Very well played.

Public Urination

Uh.. excuse me? Yes, this topic deserves a whole section whole blog post due to the circumstances and fine mannerisms of the bicycle racers on this day in Oregon bicycle racing. It is a wide-known fact that bicycle racers are douchebags and the epitome of the bike racing antics is our need to urinate. You see it is all a function of making sure our bodies stay hydrated during the race in order for the body to perform well. As a result, us bike races need to urinate often - sometimes even during the race - sometimes multiple times in the same race.

Due to the request from some specific people on this matter I unfortunately cannot provide the internet you with further details. I'll just say that there is a big difference between public urination and discrete public urination and also that I learned that I need to hydrate to the point where I should need to publicly urinate. Gosh, I really want to tell this story in greater detail, but I cannot.

Onwards

On Sunday I rode out to Estacada by myself since everybody else was too cool doing their own rides. I had a good time though since I had never biked out there before.

This coming week I've got a rest week, and I am going to try HARD to rest. Starting with publishing this blog post before 10:45pm any further errors be damned! So I've got a few goals that will help me rest.

#1 NO TRYING TO SCORE DATES WITH HOT BIKE RIDIGN CHICKS. I spent wayyy too much effort on this the last two rest weeks I had and probably ultimately drove them away for doing so.

#2 Do fun stuff that I like doing. I'm going to spin some records, work on a website or two and maybe even make this blog look a little prettier.

#3 clean up my messy apartment. I've been all home alone with my housemate being in India for over a month now to support his sick sister. Pray for her. But I need to clean a bunch of stuff since everything got disorganized due to lack of time this week.

Bike riding is fun

No racing this week, but riding as always. Some highlights:

Tuesday

Steep hillclimb intervals and then some more hillclimb intervals after that. Felt great.

Wednesday

Had a confrontation with a MAX fare inspector for being the 5th bike in the train car. He wanted to see my ID because I was supposedly blocking the walkway. I didn't comply and a bunch of other people argued against him too.

Thursday

More hillclimb intervals, but didn't feel as strong. Maybe it was because that by the end of the ride I had realized that my front deraileur cage had broken. The top metal holder had broken so now the right side of the cage was rubbing on the crank, but the left side was rubbing the chain no matter where I shifted to.

Saturday

Rode my own Ronde Von Flaanderen. Went up the SW hills via Terwilliger/Westwood then out Fairmount/Hewett, then up 59th, then out Skyline and down Old Germantown and then up North on Kaiser back to Skyline, back down Old Germantown again, then up Springville then down Thompson and I still hadn't had enough so I went out to 82nd/Glisan and then headed back on Burnside.

Sunday

Was trying to avoid the intense rains, but eventually made my way out to St. Johns then along Marine View where the fun started. There was an intense crosswind that was nearly blowing me off my bike all along the airport. Then I got a slow leak just after that on the front tire. I put in a new tube, stashed my bag with all my gear behind a tree and headed out for some intervals. Halfway out to Troutdale in the middle of interval 2 of 3 my rear tube exploded. I started walking back and eventually hitchhiked with a very nice old couple back to the I-205 path where I had left my bag. I put my slow leak tube back in and then attempted interval 3 up the 205 trail to Gateway Max. And then at the Gateway MAX I was threatened by another fare inspector with a $159 fine for not walking my bike on the platform - but by walking he meant that I couldn't even straddle my bike and stand up.

I need me some more racing to push myself though. Piece of Cake is coming up Saturday and I'm looking forward to it.

Same old, same old

In each of the four races I've done so far this year, a break got away and I wasn't in it. That is all.

Something isn't right

Well, it was a rest week and I had some days off, but at times I struggled to rest. I would be laying in my bed for 10 hours but only sleep 7-8 hours. My mind was keeping me up. Anyways, come Saturday I was back on the bike doing some z4. I had a delightful ride heading out to St. Johns around the terminal past the airport and did an interval out to Troutdale and then headed back towards the airport and then down to Dave's Killer Bread to stock up on gluten.

Hagg Lake

Then Sunday, it was on to racing. I headed out to Hagg Lake with the help of the awesome Eric and Ellen from my church group. I thought it was going to be about as miserable as last week's Mason Lake, but the weather turned out to be nice and sunny. There were only 13 riders in my field. All was going well, but I could tell there were some monsters in this field who were about to rip things up. On lap 2, Tim attacked on the decent west hill and then Kyle, Jesse and Al all matched the attack and proceeded to put the hurt on. I was trying to bridge but had just nothing on the steeps it seemed. After the sprint hill I tried harder to bridge with the help of my teammate Tyler, but by the time we got to the middle of the dam we gave up and decided to wait for the next 2 chasers.

Eventually we had a little chase peleton of 6 of us going, but I knew it wasn't close to the pace Kyle would be setting. Lap 4 we dropped the Hutch's rider and then it was me who was struggling to keep up with the group on the steeps. Lap 5 I got dropped for good on the sprint hill and pedaled in z2 the rest of the lap. Turns out 2 other cat 3s quit so I was 10th and second to last.

I got dropped, really?

Wow, guess I'm not in Cat 4 anymore. But still, last year I was the one doing the attacks even in Cat 3 but admittedly the breaks I did get in weren't solo breaks. But I could always stay with the peleton, but this week's peleton was quite small.

After talking to my coach about this, I'm thinking that I'm having a self-confidence problem. The problem isn't that I have utterly no self-confidence, it's that I don't have a massive self-confidence. Based on what my coach tells me and what I've seen myself output on the bike before, I know that I should be able to stay with the pack and even get in that break. And looking at my data, I was only at 172 beats per minute heart rate when I got dropped on the final lap - not even in my z5!! It could've been that due to only believing 70% of the way in myself that I was only able to output 70% of the possible power that I can actually output. It could've even been that it wasn't my body that felt like it was shutting down, it could've been that my mind was perceiving a shut-down even though I had room for exertion.

So my diagnosis is that without a strong self-confidence or perhaps faith, challenging situations are going to be much harder to excel in since the mind limits whatever needs to be done to perform at the high level. It seems quite likely to me that especially in a bike race pain can be amplified through a loss of self-confidence. But not only in a bike race, nearly anything where there is effort required low self-confidence can just ruin people. I imagine and can even relate to the homeless people outside who may at times just piss themselves yet do not have the self-confidence that they can stand up and pull themselves out of the literal shit they have created. Or perhaps you can take Arthur Ashe's quote for it as my Mom shared with me:

The most important factor determining success in athletic competition is often the ability to control mood swings that result from unfavorable changes in the score.

I'm perhaps a bit reluctant about this self-confidence thing however, because I'm a firm believer in using numbers, statistical evidence and formulas to make decisions - I will try to rationalize anything in excel if I can. And I further dislike that self-confidence is often times used by people instead of hard evidence in decision making. But often times this self-confidence thing is what people kind of notice and can use as a gauge to estimate someone's ability to deliver on something, and perhaps it is quite a reliable trait that can be used as a gauge for some items.

Nonetheless, I must admit that self-confidence matters quite a bit. In trying to categorize it in the success equation I came up with, I'd say it would fall under the execution parameter. It's possible to have massive self-confidence in say biking at an average speed of 30 mph for 20 miles, but if you don't have the resources (fitness) it's still probably not going to happen. It's rather weird thinking about how the mind works and directs the body to do things, but that is what is going on - it's not like the legs control the mind, they just whine and complain under stress hence Jens Voigt's saying "shutup legs!"

So what to do, or what would Arthur Ashe do?

I knew that I had to do everything possible to keep this avalanche of deadly emotion from starting. One simply must not despair, even for a moment.

It's so cheesy, but it's so true about letting bad thoughts entering your mind. When you start believing less in yourself in anything that you do, your mind will be unable to perform at the level you want and in the case of bike racing it won't be able to overcome the whining and complaining of the legs saying "stop, this is haarrddd. wawawawa" and perhaps the mind will give in and give up. Instead, excellence must be pursued.

IVRR, I'm coming for you

Goal: annihilate myself on the hills of Independence Valley. I will not be satisfied with any race performance this weekend unless I hit a heart rate of 192. I know I can do it, I've seen myself hit a heart rate of 196 last year. Aside from that, I think I'll be satisfied if I stay with the pack, but if I'm still with the pack after that last hill, we'll see what happens.

The Standards Have Been Set Low

Racing! Finally! And probably overdue. After a third week of a build and final week of weightlifting of the season, I went into it tired. And it showed.

Sequim

I have at times struggled logistically getting to races, but I nailed it for this race. I did all bike maintenance stuff the night before and packed everything before going to bed. And even before this, I had made breakfast for the weekend before leaving Portland. Then I got up and was driving by the time I had wanted to start driving. I got to the race 1 hour and 25 minutes early! I set up the bike and kitted up and even tried some relaxation and visualization exercise before the race with time to spare.

Then we started racing. I had had a plan to just watch things basically the first few laps and then try something lap 3. This strategy was going all fine and well until I tried a break on lap 3 and realized that I did not have enough sustained power output available. I was able to get clear fine, but staying away was a big problem. I got caught quickly. I also had a bit of a problem during the race in that my race food was clif bars which were way too clumpy to be effectively eaten and digested at the pace we were going.

On the final lap I found myself at the back of the pack after fumbling around trying to eat my 3rd clif bar. Not good. I was trying to move up a little bit and was really going to get up there after that final riser. Unfortunately, some people decided to crash themselves in front of me which I could not avoid getting caught up in based on my current position. I was able to slow down enough to slow-motion crash-speed, hit a few bodies with the front wheel, began a brief launch up in the air and then landed on who knows who with my neck. I got up, had to take off my helmet because it was now covering my face and then proceeded to assesses the damage. All body parts still intact and not even scraped up, nice. Spin the rear carbon wheel.. it's true! Spin the front carbon wheel, it's also true!!! YESS!!!! Best crash ever!

Although I didn't get a chance to contest the sprint I was relieved that there wasn't any pressure at this point so I happily pedaled my way in z2 and even did my own sprint from 200m. Then it was another logistical whirlwind - chugging chocolate almond milk, getting packed, driving to Oak Table, chugging some more chocolate almond milk, eating an entire apple pancake at Oak Table in about 15 minutes, speeding my way all the way to Winslow with 10 minutes to spare before the 2:55 ferry! This view never gets old:

Ate dinner with my good friend Randy over at Wild Ginger, drove back to Tacoma, watched "No Stings Attached" with my sister and her quirky housemate and getting to bed later than I should at about 11:15.

Mason Lake

If you were told that there was this 60 mile bike race around this lake called Mason Lake where you get about 3 seconds of a nice view of it per lap, where 98% of the time it is cold, rainy, hailing, there are about 6 total spectators cheering you on, no prizes for anybody, no beer at the end, no food, it costs $30, and the sprint is notorious for being a crashfest, what kind of moron would want to do that? Well bike racers, that's who! This classic event is where the Cat 5s come to prove that they are the next Lance Armstrong - shitty conditions be damned - and the rest of us to get our racing on. And this year the race did not disappoint.

It started out cold and somewhat windy. Only about 50 people from all afternoon fields showed up, so we all got jumbled into one large group, cat 12s, 3s, masters and a few women too. It started out with attack after attack until finally 7 people got away for good on the 2nd lap of 5. I was feeling cooked and tried at one point to bridge up to the 7 and ended up getting about 30 meters closer before I became so tired that I drifted to the back. At this point, I was just trying to get my workout on. I missed a chase break on lap 4 and by then there was snow on the ground. When the final sprint for 15th place came around, I was done, stuck behind a wheel that was drifting back hard and ended up thank-God-we're-done pedaling through the finish.

Above is a picture summarizing Mason Lake. There is some snow on the windshield wipers, yet it is sunny at the moment. Got my spare wheels, got out of my cold and wet clothes, sped my way back to Tacoma, got 2 hot-n-ready pizzas, ate 2 slices, showered, ate another slice, got driven to the train station, barely finished assembling my bike for the train as it rolled up, and then ate 7 more slices of pizza on the train.

Post-weekend thoughts

I am tired. So tired. I did not have the resources available to get into the breaks this weekend. However, I view this weekend as quite positive, perhaps also due to the fact that I'm beginning to read this book Karly gave me for Christmas:

And after reading this book, I'm already putting some of the strategies to use. An interesting passage was that it said that ultra-competitive people expect success so much that they'll rate there successful achievements with lower rates of satisfaction than otherwise happy people rate some of their failures. So you could say I've had some good opportunities to reframe things this week for the good. And honestly a lot of good did happen. I was quite happy to have raced finally.

Racing is different in so many ways from just riding around. To put things in perspective, I have spent more time in HR Z4 this week than the prevous 4 weeks combined and more time in z5 these past two days than my entire training season-to-date. Ok, so in Lehman terms this week my heart was beating at a rate between 160 beats per minute and 174 beats per minute (Z4) for 3 hours and 6 minutes - 2:10 in just these past two races. Even though I didn't get a shot at winning, I realized that just by racing I was pushing myself harder than I ever had on all these solo rides. This was a huge eye-opener to me in that competition seems to drive people to achieve better results than just people working without such conflict. Just look at the HR Zone profile from Mason Lake (z1 - z5 left to right), I just can't get this kind of a workout by myself:

Ok, rest week coming up, need to sleep.

The Success Equation

The problem with bike racing and every other competition for a scarce resource in this world is that not everybody can get that scarce resource. However, sometimes it seems like some people have a seemingly natural and unexplainable ability to excel in the area where they can easily obtain something where others struggle desperately to no avail. However, it is no coincidence that some people are just better at some things than others are.

This entire world is discrete. There are a certain number of people in this world, there is even a certain number of matter in this world, the point is that nothing is infinite in this natural world. And furthermore, rules hold together this world: gravity keeps matter close together, thermodynamics cause weather. And even furthermore there are patterns to everything: certain ways to race a bicycle race that gives you a good chance of winning and certain things to say to women to make them attracted to you.

On a spiritual note, however, my Lord Jesus Christ is infinite and has the power to accomplish anything despite the laws and general patterns of the world since He created all that. But on the other hand, His way of doing things can dramatically differ from what any one person can judge to be good, bad, preferred or even desired. So even though it can be possible for a paralyzed man to desire to win the Tour de France, this man is subject to the conditions placed on him by God.

No matter how strong of a bike rider you are, since you probably don't have such a superior amount of fitness that you can ride away from everyone since you are constrained to the general abilities of the human body, there has to be some management of the exertion of the potential energy you have. Similarly, with women (the other obnoxious area of my life where it seems like it's impossible to achieve success) since I am constrained by the amount of base attractiveness I have relative to every other douchebag competing for the same woman, there has to be some difference in my methodology for achieving my goal. So, I have come up with an equation to describe this problem:

Success

This is the end result that you want. In a bike race, usually the result you want is to be the first across the line. With women, I want to have consistent companionship with a woman that loves me how I like to be loved and enjoys receiving my love as well. So, how to get these things?

Situational Awareness

Do you really understand what is going on around you? In a bike race, do you know how many miles are left in the race? How to tell who is feeling strong? Or how good you are feeling? The world around us feeds us data about the current state of everything. But how good are you at determining exactly what the world is telling you? When this bonehead Evan from Guinness makes an attack 5 miles into a 70 mile race, how likely is it that he will ride faster than the other 50 riders for the next 65 miles? In the sprint, who is the sprinter that knows what wheel to take and where should you position yourself prior to those last 3 turns?

With women it is just as complex, but my awareness is so bad that I can barely guess what is happening. And at times I have let my feelings rage out of control to the point where I'm so excited about a woman that I can't see that she's actually not as good as I think she is. The point is that each situation has particles of information located all over the place and the more of this information that the brain can process and catalog, the more informed one will be when the time comes to make a decision about what action to take.

Strategy Formulation

So, how to achieve your goal? To win a bike race you have to ride hard and fast, right? To get a girl you have to "be yourself", right? Unfortunately for things that are hard to get, it is usually not simple. In fact it is annoying and painful and at times compelling to make one try harder.

If you ever fail in succeeding, you probably did something wrong. Perhaps that breakaway attempt at mile 5 of a 70 mile race was not a good idea. Maybe I shouldn't have been so nice to that woman that wasn't all that interesting. To achieve your goal there are patterns that can be more effective for certain kinds of situations. To win from a bike race, your timing must be just right to be first across the line. To get into a loving relationship, both parties must be interested in and working towards the benefit of each other.

The challenge is in the details of how to achieve your goal. And typically and even statistically if you really want to study it, there are patterns that generally can be followed to obtain a certain result. There are patterns that rarely work such as breaking away 5 miles into a 70 mile race or being the most boring person on earth to a woman, but then others patterns that are usually more successful like being behind a good wheel up until the last point of a field sprint or with women... actually I don't have much advice to offer with that. But the more ways one can identify to achieve their goal the more arsenal one will have in trying to achieve their goal.

Execution

With whatever strategy you use, there is the slight matter of actually carrying it out. You can be in exactly the right spot at the right time and still execute poorly and thus not achieve the level of success you wanted. For example, at last year's Franz Bakery Crit I had planned on sprinting for the win, but pedaled through the final corner crashing myself and then the field passed me, however at the Salem Crit I sprinted for the win on a 500m straightaway.

Luck

Luck can be anywhere in the spectrum between good and bad. If you had no idea what was going on around you and you didn't really have a plan, but the result of whatever you executed was success, than you had good luck. If you did not achieve your desired result despite thinking you were aware of your situation and came up with and executed what you thought was the best possible strategy, then you had bad luck. Luck is an interesting factor because it basically represents a situation you were not aware of or some strategy you weren't realizing that you were doing. If everything about the world is known and all possible strategies and their outcomes are already known then luck is a passive variable in the equation.

Bad luck for example can range from being struck by lightning to getting a flat tire. Yet since the world is discrete these items are not random. There are patterns to lightning and you're much more likely to be struck by it if you bike around holding a 40 foot metal pole sticking into the air in a thunderstorm in Florida. But even with the flat tire, the chances are far less likely that you'll get a flat tire if you slap on a brand new tire in substitute for the tire you've been riding since last season. Luck is an opportunity to learn more about the world and various situations and what strategies you can design to combat such a problem in the future or if whatever caused the good luck is replicable, perhaps this can be used again to achieve success again.

Resources

No matter how well you sense things, pick good plans and execute them well, you are bound by the physical resources at your disposal that you will need to accomplish the goal. If you want to win a bike race, you will need to have a bike. If you want to win a time trial against Fabian Cancellara you better have an immense amount of fitness available to use. In the case of the paralyzed man who wants to win the Tour de France, while he himself may not be physically capable of doing it himself, there would be nothing stopping him from giving other resources of his own to another person who has a body functioning well enough that he could accomplish that success.

Putting it all together

Success is tough because it requires a keen situational awareness combined with an effective strategy and then decent enough execution of that strategy or strategies all assuming you have enough resources available to achieve your goal. I've personally got a lot to work on in both the situational awareness and strategy formulation departments. With biking I need to be aware of the course and competitors and how much effort I am able to exert over the remaining distance. With women, I've got to be able to sense what they are feeling like and if I'm being treated well enough by them. And then I've got to have a whole range of tactics to employ in my bike racing from attacking at certain times or even having teammates do work for me. With women, it's really weird how they react to certain strategies and it can often times be surprising what strategies are effective.

Anyways, Racing...

I didn't do Hagg Lake because I got really sick the night before due to what I believe to have been a rotten tomato. So, this weekend it's up to Washington for Sequim and Mason Lake.