It's glandular..

I am still in the 173-ish range (surprised?) depending on time of day.. and I hereby resolve to drop at least 4 kilos in time for the Hartford Crit on the 25th of May.. Don't want to look like pear shaped fat-ass when I don my brand new Millwork One skinsuit, do I?? Well.. that and I don't want to suffer so badly when I'm trying to climb. To help me lose the weight, I'm keeping a ten pound dumb-bell on the kitchen counter- a contant reminder of exactly what ten pounds means. These road races have me a little bit down in the dumps. Okay so I fell apart on the climb at Sturbridge.. not on the rollers or flats.. no need to beat myself up about it.. but it was more mental than anything else. I have this bad habit of withdrawing myself from a race long before the body has reached it's limits. If I anticipate severe difficulty (inexperience at road races pre-disposes me to expect the worst), even miles before reaching a climb, a switch has already been flipped in my mind, and it's telling me it's not worth killing myself in a race where I have no chance of placing. I'd rather lick my wounds, do some more proper training and rest and try again later, than slug it out in the red zone for 1-2 hours, hanging on by a thread and holding down/tasting my vomit. I don't race well unless my head is into it. My head doesn't get into it unless I visualize myself in the top ten. If I don't visualize myself in the top ten, I have a hard time justifying the suffering. It stops being fun. There needs to be hope. Is this such a bad habit? I'm not so sure. In my profession, I have this knack for sniffing out and avoiding un-necessary work. It keeps me ahead of the curve. At Sturbridge I could have done a better job of grabbing a wheel and sticking to it all the way up that first climb.. but by the time that I popped I had no gas left to match anyone else's pace. I was on my own. When I got to the finish at the end of lap one, Sandy asked if I was gonna finish. "Yes I am!" was followed by a lot of "am I really?" echoing in my mind.. Thoughts of a long drive home and getting no training and being $40 poorer kept me churning the pedals to the very end, regardless of how many minutes I was down.. How much of a difference would ten pounds have made? Go lift a full gallon container of milk and you tell me! It's only 8 pounds... I should not expect myself to be an excellent climber or road racer- I never have been!- and I'm not going to magically become excellent at climbing and road racing just because I have a large amount of base miles and hours. So when's the next criterium? I'll drive to New Jersey if I have to!.. As for the GVCC Classic of two weekends ago, I'm over it. Once I took a look at the results, I realized that over 1/2 of the field was DNF.. so I'm not so special after all. Now quit looking at my gut! I had just inhaled.