Because I didn’t preview the TT course, I had no idea what to expect. Which, if you’ve read any of my previous anecdotal posts, you’ll know by now that it’s imperative to preview courses.
This is why I rarely previewed courses:
- I didn’t think it was necessary.
- It was too much work to find the course, create the route on my Strava account, and then import it into my Garmin.
- I had no one to ride with.
- It didn’t fit my “training schedule.”
- It was too much of a hassle to drive to all the different courses throughout Colorado.
Okay, so let’s break these down.
“I didn’t think it was necessary.”
Truth be told, I didn’t think I’d do all that well, so I thought it wouldn’t matter if I knew what the course was like or not. This sort of thinking sets you up for C-effort. This is why I came in 5th and not 1st, 2nd, or 3rd.
Previewing courses is necessary. You’ll know where the hills are, where you need to turn, where you can go full throttle, where the finish line is, all the things you need to know prior to racing if you want to strategize. Granted, my strategy was “giving racing a try.”
“It was too much work to find the course, blah, blah, blah.”
I don’t like finding courses on Strava. I don’t like making my own routes on Strava. And I really don’t like the process of importing the route to my Garmin. Sure, the whole process could take me an hour tops, but that’s an hour I can spend doing something I enjoy. It’d be much more convenient if the race directors inserted a link to the Strava route (which some do) within their race flyer, so we know what we’re racing.
This really comes down to being lazy. If I would have just bit the bullet and added the course/route, I would have been able to at least see where the hills were on Strava if I wasn’t going to ride the course myself.
“I had no one to ride with”
I didn’t want to ride alone on a new course. I can ride routes I already know, but new ones, ehhhh… not a fan. I think it’s the fear of getting lost. I don’t know why this scares me so much as I’ve been lost before with a riding buddy and we eventually found where we were going. I think it’s the idea of being alone and being lost and not being able to figure it out. I’m too prideful to call someone to pick me up and I have an irrational fear of my phone dying and being lost forever.
“It didn’t fit my ‘training schedule.'”
Truth be told, I didn’t have much of a training schedule as I was trying to do too many things at once. At this point in the year, I was still training for a double century, the Seattle to Portland ride, to be exact. Driving up to Boulder for an 11-mile bike ride was not part of my “training plan.” Could I have turned this 11-mile bike ride to a 50-mile or 80-mile bike ride? Yeah, sure. And then I didn’t.
“It was too much of a hassle to drive to all the different courses throughout Colorado.”
It is a hassle to drive to all the different routes peppered through Colorado, but winning takes effort. Winning takes strategy and planning. And if you don’t want to win, then don’t put forth effort. But don’t bitch and moan when there’s a hill you didn’t expect. The difference between the gal who comes in first and the gal who comes in last is effort. That’s all things effort: training, experience, planning, etc.
The takeaway:
Excuses are like assholes. Everyone has one and they all stink.