First Ride...

- I managed to get out for a ride yesterday for 90 minutes or so. I took it real easy, since the foot - we need a good nickname for it - still hurts, and no case of tendinitis is ever so healed that you can't toss it right back into full blown pain by over-exerting yourself. The ride went fine. The decent legs I'd maintained through December were gone, replaced by a couple square-pedaling, heavy pegs, and even little hills left me winded. That's what a one month layoff will do for you. It will take three weeks to get comfortable on the bike again, six weeks to gain some fitness. I'm pretty fat too, even by my standards. So there's a lot of work to be done. But I got through it alright and feel a whole lot better and a whole lot less depressed, both about riding and about life in general. Road biking is my drug of choice and I suffer withdrawal when I can't get it.

- Don't misunderstand what I'm saying here. Racing is about getting your ass kicked, not about winning. Very few people win. Everybody, on the other hand, gets their ass kicked. Even people who pull off multiple wins each season get their asses kicked a lot. So all of us suck at it, just some of us have streaks where we are a lot less sucky than others. Few of us are losers though. The only loser is somebody who sits on the sideline without giving it a go, jeering at the man in the arena.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Teddy Roosevelt said that in a speech at the Sorbonne in 1910. I think he pretty much nailed it. Weird dude, old Teddy. Half insane, half genius. He was right there though.