Bittersweet night...

Tonight is something of a bittersweet night for me; tonight is the opening night of our Tuesday night racing series here at our velodrome... and I'm not there racing.

I was kinda hoping to be there to race, even if I only finished one race in the B's or even the C's- just to complete the recovery since the crash. See, this month- the 29th- marks one year since the crash at the velodrome that changed my life. I am SO blessed to even be alive, let alone well enough to ride again and complain about not being able to ride as much as I would like. On 4/29 of 2008, I came close to never doing anything again and a lot closer to dieing than I hope I ever get again.

Instead of racing, I'm at home doing laundry and working on some of the projects that are behind and need to be worked on... which is a lot. I did not know that opening night was tonight until this past weekend, since the velodrome website had not been updated with the racing schedule until last week- a friend of mine told me that racing was starting tonight and totally caught me off guard. I was drifting around in my own world of belief that racing would not start for another week or so and that I still had time to get in a few training sessions on the track before the start of the season... but I was wrong.

Track racing, even though it nearly killed me, is still something that I love very deeply. It is my hope that I will get back on the track this year and finish what I started last year and retake my place among "the fast guys". I would like that a lot. What I fear, like many people who suffer a traumatic experience, is that I will get back on the track and be consumed by the fear of a repeat incident. I am reasonably confident that I can get back on the track and work through that initial jitteriness. I've crashed many times in the past and I've always managed to get back up and get back into my slot in the paceline... and I plan for this time to be no different... but only time will tell.

So, even though I am healthy again and riding as much as my schedule and life allows, I have not yet completed the cycle of my recovery... but it will hopefully be soon.

Tim

Dad-gum rain equals No-Race-For-Masiguy

SoCal needs all the rain it can get, but it means that I will not be racing today and I was really looking forward to putting the new bike through it's paces in the heat of competition. However, since I leave tomorrow AM for a 4-day dealer training event, it would be very unwise of me to risk crashing (and destroying a super gorgeous bike). I will be taking people on demo rides the next four days, so being covered with scabs from ankle to shoulder would be a bad thing. I love the course of this race, but in the rain, it is near suicide- especially as the first crit of the year in this area. That usually spells disaster, as most people have forgotten how to ride in a pack at speed and don't really start to get the flow of things until around mid March or early April. I'm less scared of my own riding in the rain, having grown up riding in LOTS of rain in Alabama, but the rest of the riders scare the poop outta me. Let me just put it this way; there are tons of really strong, really fit, really fast riders in SoCal, but many of them can't ride a straight line, don't know how to corner at speed and typically freak out when it rains. Needless to say, I'm just not willing to risk the injury and damage to a new and really beautiful bike (or even an old and ugly one).

So, instead, it looks like I will put my Marketer's hat on and watch the Super Bowl (Stupid Bore) and evaluate and critique this year's crop of incredibly over priced TV ads. As a "new media" marketer, I am always repulsed by the cost and ineffectiveness of the ads that are purchased during the game. One 30 second ad could easily fund an entire year's worth of social media marketing efforts. It boggles the mind. I fight for each and every penny I get for my marketing efforts and I still dig into my own "funds" (my time and effort) to move the brand forward. The sheer size of the waste of money on these ad campaigns makes my head spin. Sure, the commercials get talked about, but do they "sell" or improve brand image among consumers? I would argue that they don't... but I'm just a small time marketing wonk who likes to ride bikes... so what could I possibly know?

Well, maybe The Princess and I will go to the YMCA and I can get a good workout in before letting my brain get bombarded by over priced and ineffectual advertising.

Hope your weekend is full of fun and fantasticness!

Tim