No new goals for me
After a disappointing performance on the Oregon Ultimate earlier this year, I was eager to do well on a big ride. This past weekend, I took part in the Shasta Super Century. Basically, you ride to the top of four mountains in one day. The roads are steep, so it’s challenging.
Having learned from my earlier DNF, I formulated a strategy for completing the Shasta and stuck to it. The first half of the day couldn’t have gone better. I moved right along and felt like a million bucks. Somewhere on the third mountain, I started feeling sick and actually took a 5-10 min nap at the top (something the other riders found funny). For most of the final mountain, I was in a daze and experiencing heat exhaustion symptoms even though it wasn’t hot.
Although I completed the ride with time to spare, midway through the final climb on the Shasta, I thought about scrubbing my plans for taking part in the Everest Challenge (my riding goal for the year). The Everest is roughly as bad as two Shastas spread out over two days.
Ever since I got my new job, I’ve been riding half as much as I normally do, and the resulting loss of conditioning was hurting my performance. As I slogged through the final 2 miles of the Shasta, I calculated that I might be able to complete the Everest, but even under the best circumstances, I’d probably feel the worst I’ve ever felt on a ride. Since I already felt terrible as I thought about this, it didn’t sound very tempting.
After I finished the ride, I realized that completing goals requires us to go well beyond our comfort zones. By definition, anything in our comfort zone is something we know we can do, and there’s not much point in setting goals if there’s no doubt about the outcome — it’s hard to get much sense of accomplishment from shooting fish in a barrel.
It’s much more satisfying to try things where the outcome is unknown. If I do my best to prepare for the Everest, formulate a good riding and nutrition strategy, give my best effort, and am willing to possibly feel worse than I ever have on a ride before, I might be able to finish the Everest. I’ll be pretty happy if I can pull that off.
I won’t feel bad if I don’t make it to the end. When you explore your limits, you find what you’re made of, and you can use the knowledge you gain to improve yourself whether or not you succeed. Besides, plenty of strong cyclists in their 20’s and 30’s don’t reach the finish. I’ll have lots of good company regardless of the outcome.