Gotta Stay Positive- an early June Update!

Dear Readers,

Last week was a really good week of riding for me. I may have overdone it a bit, but I'll watch the volumes a bit more this week.

In the past few weeks, I have gotten to venture out and start doing some local group rides. On each one I did I was so stoked to make it to the finish of the ride. In each situation, I was throwing everything I had out there, and using every bit of energy, and 20+ years of deception and guile I had to stay in the group. My long time friend Dennis Smith looked back over his shoulder for me 3x during our ride Sunday. I suspect it was to make sure I wasn't turning blue, as I was breathing so hard  and loudly. I must have sounded like a steam train.

  Karl put the screws to me as we sped up the church climb on Saturday.  He has been wonderful keeping an eye on me, and pushing me home when needed through out this process...

On a local club ride last week,  I thought I had positioned myself well going into Spears Hill, the only hill on the ride, but I was wrong and I was quickly popped and dropped.

Thankfully, the kind gentlemen (Todd, Brad and Matt) were merciful on my soul and sat up letting me get back on the group... That would have been a long lonely ride back to the lot...

I stumbled across a blog post that I had booked marked a while ago, and frankly it's been a bit of a mantra for me these past couple of weeks. How much can I suffer? The more I can suffer, the faster I can go...  On each group ride I have done I've focused on 3 things:

1. ride smart, don't waste energy
2. suffer hard, and embrace it
3. keep a mind to what's the knee is doing

I find it a bit exhilarating. As Mark Wise has said to be "you can choose to be in the stands or in the arena. No one cares about your issues, you can choose to sit back and watch  or you can get in the arena! I choose to get in the arena!"

"get in the arena!"

In some ways, getting hurt has brought the fire back to my belly. Heck even on strava where in many cases I can't sniff my PR's on sections, I have enjoyed setting goals, and crushing my soul in an effort to achieve them. If I had a vision quest before... it's even greater now...  Baby steps... Progression...

As for my knee, it's getting stronger. It's getting better, but it's not right yet. That's toughest part of all of this is that I know that I'm walking a tricky line between getting stronger and healing and everything blowing up again...

I am cautious and constantly monitoring my riding time, and my work load to figure out how much I can push it, without going over the line. Small incremental adjustments, and lots of resting afterwards.

All this to say, that these showed up today:

Yeah- I'm pretty stoked- more on these later, they deserve their own blog...

 (don't mind the dog in the corner)

New cross frames. I am totally stoked. I'm not in anyway ready for cross season, but I am thinking about it, dreaming about it...

In a final bit of Fatmarc news, back in March I made the tough decision to leave C3-Twenty20. As I told Auer, I'll always be one of his guys, but I needed to make a change. I didn't say anything on the blog at that time, because I didn't see myself racing again.  I obviously have a little more optimistic view look right now.  For the time being I planning on racing for Vanderbacon Enterprises, with my hopes high that another iron I have in the fire comes to fruition.(keep your fingers crossed for me) .

So, that's the world as I know it. Your favorite mid-pack masters racer signing off!

Thanks for reading.

respect
fatmarc