psycholist wrote:
|| "Badger_South" <
[email protected]> wrote in message
|| news:
[email protected]...
||| When the TdF commentators say the yellow jersey "used his courage to
||| get back up to the back of the pack" does that have meaning to you?
|||
||| I'm beginning to sense a developing ability to continue even when I
||| should be dropping, and that seems a little bit 'mental' ability. It
||| takes courage to ride into the place that you think might be 'beyond
||| your ability', but wondering if there is some kind of shared
||| consensus
||| of what that means in the biking lexicon.
|||
||| -B
|||
||
|| I've read all the replies you've gotten so far and I don't think
|| they picked up on what you were really asking.
||
|| I recall a century I was on several years ago. I was with five guys
|| and we were off the front going at a pace I'd never gone before. I
|| kept thinking to myself, "I can't keep this up for five hours." It
|| kept running through my mind that I should sit up and wait for a
|| group to come along that was going more "my pace." But then I'd
|| resist that thought and just fight to take my pulls. Soon I was
|| realizing how and when to get a little recovery and that I COULD
|| keep that pace. And it turned out I didn't need to keep it for 5
|| hours 'cuz we finishing 102 miles in 4:34. That was an enormous
|| breakthrough ride for me.
||
|| I wouldn't call it "courage." But I'd say I plumbed the depths of
|| my mental and physical strengths and learned something new about my
|| limits.
||
|| Having said that, maybe there is an element of courage in that. I
|| think it takes a bit of courage for a person to test their limits.
Put that way, I can see what they (the commentators) possibly meant. Maybe
it's one of those things where you have to had been in that situation to
fully appreciate it.
This would be a good question for the "Ask Bob" segment on one of those
other race shows.
||
|| One other thing I learned on that ride that's stuck with me ever
|| since ... about the time you think you're just gonna die, know that
|| everyone else is probably feeling the same way. Before I realized
|| that, there were a number of times that I'd sit up and watch the
|| lead group ride away, only to see them just linger tantalizingly
|| close in the distance. They'd obviously backed off a notch. But I
|| was too cooked to close. I learned that, if I could go just a few
|| clicks farther into the red zone, I'd be with them when they backed
|| off a notch ... and with them again when they put the hammer back
|| down. A few extra hard seconds trying to hang on with faster riders
|| can, in the longer run, save you from having to do a long individual
|| time trial.
Even though I've heard it said over and over, I still have a hard time
believing that drafting really saves energy. I can understand it
intellectually, but without having experienced it first hand I have
difficulty accepting it.
