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mandi said:
I remind myself of this all the time. I ride and I think, "shit, this was so much easier last year. Did I get that slow?" Then I go home and upload my file and realize I'm actually riding faster, it's just become the new normal. You can do that same effort you thought was so hard, and it's your new tempo.
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So true with this Mandi... So many rides I feel like Im not giving enough effort then I look down at the Garmin and say to myself, "slowdown"!!
 
The competitive, racer, crush everyone mentality is really prevalent here. There are also a ton of guys with fragile egos who feel like they need to over-emasculate themselves for whatever reason (Maybe because they wear tights 10 hours a week?). Some other people are just driven to constantly improve, and although they don’t act like dicks about it, they put out a certain vibe that others dont relate with.



I know some people get turned off by this stuff, but you have to tune it out. Just as leisurely, fun, social rides are part of this cycling community, so are all the other things I mentioned above.
 
jShort said:
The competitive, racer mentality is really prevalent here. Some other people are just driven to constantly improve, and although they don’t act like dicks about it, they put out a certain vibe that others dont relate with.
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THIS

its like you know me... Like... you really know me... Can I have a hug?
 
Six years into cycling at age 51 it appears that in most respects I have plateaued in my performance.

Some excellent news

Here in the North East it is easy to have a nice pattern of starting each spring a bit slow, heavy and rusty and improve through the summer and some big annual rides in Sept/Oct and coast into 'cross (which is fun but for me is really an excuse to reduce my riding to just 40 minutes per week.)

Head into winter and repeat the process the next year.

Fun, fun.

W
 
bonefishjake said:
a lot of people know each other which keeps people in check. except @stb222, of course.
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Nope, didn't ride with like half the team recently.
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mandi said:
So I feel like you either want to ride bikes for the sake of riding bikes, or you want to ride bikes to get better. I think tons of people just ride to ride. They are happy with just pedaling along and not pushing themselves towards progressing further. I think about the people who go on the tow path and ride for an hour and they are just wanting to be out there, riding. They don't look at the time, or their speed, they just don't care about that stuff. Some days I like to be that guy too. That's totally fine to do forever, but you have to be okay with that if that's what you're doing.

If you want to get better, you can. I don't believe that you hit a point right now where you can't grow more as a cyclist. Every year I grow, even if it's hard to see sometimes. But getting faster doesn't come easy, you have to work really really hard to get where you want to be. Some times even that isn't enough.

“It never gets easier, you just go faster.” -Greg LeMond

I remind myself of this all the time. I ride and I think, "shit, this was so much easier last year. Did I get that slow?" Then I go home and upload my file and realize I'm actually riding faster, it's just become the new normal. You can do that same effort you thought was so hard, and it's your new tempo.

Bottom line is that if you set your mind to something, you can do it. You just need to want it bad enough.
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I told myself last season that I really wanted to do a race in 2015. Short Track or not, I've done 3 so far this year! Couldn't be happier with the series and hope to do the Jungle race after a little bit of training, as well as Ben's clinic on Saturday. Progress!
 
Then at some point after you plateau, no matter how hard you try, you will get old and become slower and slower. It happens to everyone, I can guanrantee this :D
 
Arwen's Mom said:
One time someone wrote on this subject and offended me enough (it was Norm's "people who do 16 are slow remark") that I wrote a huge post about it, but before I posted it up I emailed to my buddies to "proof read"
They said dont bother. But I feel it is something that I need to discuss. I cant be the only one on here, or in the biking community, that gets discouraged by being dropped, or told you are not trying hard enough, or you are too slow, blah blah blah when you are giving it all you got, and have for quite a while.

You can NOT improve for ever. There has to be a point when you have become the best you will ever be and need to be happy with that. And every one has a different "best" point. And not everyone is "wired" or "constructed" in a way to be as fast or good as you. For example: you can train a pitbull or a Pomeranian to be racing dogs. Best training, best food, but they will never beat a well trained greyhound in a race.

Why do so many here feel it is wrong to accept certain things about yourself and your riding abilities? I am NOT saying they (me) should stop trying to improve! But there comes a point when I have to be happy where I am at because if I keep trying over and over, and dont succeed, I will get discouraged and say F it. I would rather continue to TRY MY BEST and accept little achievements and LOVE what I am doing. That is far better for the biking community than "you suck, you are slow, try harder, you still suck" and have the biking community lose another member because they dont "match up" to what YOU think they should be able to do.

Wanna grow the sport? remember how much you sucked when you first got on a bike. And accept the fact that some people will never be as good as you, and thats ok too.
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Lots of good content on this thread - need to catch up. Yeah AM I forgot about Norm's jerky post. On improvement, being a newbie I saw lots the first two years but it is definitely plateauing. And I have no problem with that - I know at my age/weight I'll never be that fast, I have little interest in racing - I ride primarily for fitness and fun. I try to get faster on the road and more competent on the trails but if it doesn't happen, I don't really care. I usually ride alone but if I was with a group and got dropped that would be a-ok too. We need to ride together again soon - hopefully at Allaire - gotta get there one of these days.
 
Arwen's Mom said:
One time someone wrote on this subject and offended me enough (it was Norm's "people who do 16 are slow remark") that I wrote a huge post about it, but before I posted it up I emailed to my buddies to "proof read"
They said dont bother. But I feel it is something that I need to discuss. I cant be the only one on here, or in the biking community, that gets discouraged by being dropped, or told you are not trying hard enough, or you are too slow, blah blah blah when you are giving it all you got, and have for quite a while.
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Ok I re-read your post and now I'm curious. What is this "people who do 16 are slow" remark? I have no idea what it means? I guess the other thing that bothers me is that someone or peoples are actually telling you that you are not trying hard enough, you're are slow, etc... For all my history of riding I don't remember being ridiculed once for being slow or out of shape. Maybe in high school, but people in my age range don't really do that.

Getting dropped in a yes-drop ride is expected and I wouldn't let it be a discouragement. But if I got dropped on a no-drop ride or a casjual social ride, I would not like that.
 
Norm said:
But while I'm here, it does make me wonder about biking. See when I wrote the above, I was thinking back on biking and how bad I used to be. When I first started, I would do these 50-6-70 mile rides and be astoundingly slow. Like 14 mph slow. These days, I could almost literally ride one of the kid's scooters that fast. So I was not naturally gifted at biking, not by a long shot. And I guess I did work a lot to get where I am, which is yet another thing I'd classify myself as good-but-not-great. But in this instance, I went from bad to good, hitting all points in between.
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Maybe I'm being too much of a Norm apologist, but I did not read that as 14mph is slow for everyone who rides a bike. I read it as "14mph is slow for me since I can now go much faster."
 
Just to clarify, No I am not giving my riding up. Did that once, and God willing will never do it again. I was not picking on Norm again either, just brought it up to illustrate how a post can easily be misunderstood, and possibly upset someone.
Thanks for all the support and encouragement.
I was thinking more along the lines that people in general can be very discouraged by the mentality "try harder" all the time. This is sorta where I am at:

rick81721 said:
Lots of good content on this thread - need to catch up. Yeah AM I forgot about Norm's jerky post. On improvement, being a newbie I saw lots the first two years but it is definitely plateauing. And I have no problem with that - I know at my age/weight I'll never be that fast, I have little interest in racing - I ride primarily for fitness and fun. I try to get faster on the road and more competent on the trails but if it doesn't happen, I don't really care. I usually ride alone but if I was with a group and got dropped that would be a-ok too. We need to ride together again soon - hopefully at Allaire - gotta get there one of these days.
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While I understand I have room to improve still, I am not going to improve as fast as when I was much younger and braver. While I get that and am ok with it, sometimes it still gets very frustrating. And Rick, would LOVE to ride with you again! maybe we can get Pat out too (hint to Pat).

Oh, and I would race if it was the old style dual slalom, but no one does that anymore.
 
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