All that matters is how you finish

As Derrick had written, the last week and a half has been tough. Even coming into to it has been tough. Obviously my racing here hasn't been what I had hoped for. Yes the first race off the plane I was super happy about, but after that I didn't plan for. It sucked, I didn't get sick all cross season and what I did to myself travelling every weekend throughout North American and training hard the days in between, I pretty much should of been destined to get sick. But because of not working those months it just allowed me to stress my body a little extra in another way other than work and cope with it.

Then of course I get sick a week into being in Europe. I felt awesome the first week and then it totally left me when I got sick. I was pretty upset, and I tried to race when I felt better but it wasn't there, nothing was there and I thought I should just pack up and go home as I didn't make this trip to be finishing over 2 minutes back from the wins at the races. The picture above shows what I felt like doing while I was riding (basically putting a mask over my face). I thought I should just stay home to get stronger and not waste my time or money I didn't have. Yeah, I'm all for gaining experience but I'm also not made of money. If I can only afford so many trips to Europe for racing, I want to save it for the times when I am there to win and deserve to represent our country. As I'm sure you all know, cyclo-cross is not an Olympic sport and is totally self funded.


The good news is that with Derricks' help I snapped out of it this past week. For all of his efforts I have made him a super nice dinner every night for the last week or so. In return he is also spending a great deal of time on my bikes to make sure they are ready to give me 100% confidence. Derrick is also making me doing some visualizing each night of me racing to my full potential.


The first couple days beginning this last block of training did start off slow thought. But, I had two weeks to train, it did start to get better. Believe me the first few work outs were awful and my power was crap. But then I got the feedback of what I needed to tell me why the races weren't going well, cause my power had gone down a bit because of the illness. But my attitude with this was okay, I have 10 days to turn this around and get back to what I am used to seeing. Ken (coach) said everything would be okay, the power of a year just doesn't disappear all of a sudden. The 385 days spend giving it 110% just don't vanish. And guess what, sure enough everything is back with all my hard workouts under my belt this week and just recovery to the World Cup on Sunday after today.

That's kind of all what matters, it doesn't matter how my Europe racing started or was going, it just matters how it finishes. Most importantly, how it finishes on the day of the WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS. Everything I have done over the last 13 months has been put into this final day. All the sweat, tears, pain and frustration has been for it and that's what I have to remember. This World Championships is the first one of many in the future to build on and I will leave it all out on the course to push the bar for the next one.

How are you going to finish, are you going to finish strong?


NCE