Losing your mojo

Rode in today for first time in weeks. Cold but sunny and crisp. Half term = quiet roads. Took my time, explored a New route and had a coffee in a flask as a reward for arriving in the office. Marvellous. Going to try and ride in a couple of times this week to see if today was a one off or if the mojo is returning.

I'm struggling with the preconception that most 'cyclists' are cocks. Don't want to go on the club run tomorrow because all they'll go on about is how many watts their ftp or whatever is. There's a LBS ride which is populated by some massive twats and is much worse. Factor in the shit weather and I'm demoralised to the point where I don't even want to go out on my own.

Had just started picking up the intensity in readiness for club TT season, then had a weekend away on the booze, no sleep, took all week to get over it and now I just don't want to. I just want to drink and get fat and not have to associate with over-competitive, Sunday league, sub-golfer, basic humoured belm hats.

Glad I got that off my chest. They're not that bad but my brain won't let me believe it.

I know what you mean. The only thing for it is to train to the point you're faster than the ftp boys, go out and shred them all on the club run whilst not taking it too seriously.

Hopefully inspire some of the powermeter, ftp people to lighten up.

Cheers for that. Still can't be arsed but I'll have plenty of time, they've all been giving it full bore on some computer thing all winter, they'll be fucked by June and hopefully I'll be enjoying the scenery at a canter. This will require me to find some motivation at some point, however.

You still down Dorset way at Easter? Come do the Good Friday 10 -P311

Hello mate, yes I am actually. Not sure if I'm there on good Friday but I'll check the dates and let you know. Do you ride with Poole Wheelers? A lovely old guy from our club has moved to Poole and rides with them.

Ah good stuff, I might not be the only fixed TT'er there!
Nah I'm with a triathlozenger club, but I haven't properly ridden since Oct. Consider my mojo null/void for now...Back on it soon though, marathon training is taking up most of my time.

You might be, I'll probably be on my road bike so I can do some more leisurely riding while I'm there, but you never know.

This shit. Gah, fucking kill me.

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But sometimes he posts pictures of his ripped legs too...

I remember an experiment we did in school where we basically weighed ourselves and then ran up some stairs and timed it and calculated our power output based off that weight, time, and height gain. I was a fat kid but I did a fair amount of walking as I had a paper round so must have had fairly strong legs. Turns out I could output over 1kw in a sprint up the stairs so their power output is akin to an unfit, fat, unhealthy, secondary schooler. Hope that helps.

Haha, i'll tell him that next time i see him. It doesnt make me feel inadequate, it just bores the tits off me. When i'm having a good time on a bike its because it taps in to my inner 8 year old bombing round the block on my BMX with my mates. This roadie nonsense is so at odds with that.

#needs #more #hashtags

Tell him to try for longer than 20 minutes.

I'm in a similar position. I feel slow and fat and racing seems very close. Fed up of riding fixed, want my road bike back. Why is it cold.

Why is it cold.

Because it's not raining

Rode to my mate's house last night, 10 miles each way, managed to summon a couple of efforts too. Smoked a bifta and had a cuppa and rode home absorbed by the fascination of my dynamo and the full moon. Seems to have got me back on track a bit.

Sorry to hear that, i think my thing is to do with racing season getting close too.

So much beer, bratwurst sauerkraut kasseler kirschkuchen etc. at the German deli your season will be ulriched after next Saturday.

Sweet. I might need some of Ulrich's other motivational favourites too :)

Yes straight to people paying you 3 grand to ride the Ötzi next to yourself all Rapha lightweight on a Storck with Lightweight wheels.

I've been finding it really hard to find motivation to ride this month, it's partly the standard viscous cycle of depression/anxiety - cycling remedies - not cycling - depression/anxiety makes it hard to cycle but it's also this obligation of needing to train and an anxiety of am I doing enough? Am I going to be able to complete the races I want to? I then find the anxiety about these things a bit debilitating and just try to distract myself. I rode a 300km at the beginning of this month then had a little knee pain, then a bunch of mechanical issues including snapped saddle rails exacerbated this knee pain and now I'm just, I don't know, scared I guess? I'm terrified that I won't be able to hit the targets I've set for myself and that's making it hard to ride at all.
I was supposed to ride a 160km today, then I stayed in bed, then I said to myself that I'd still head out for a 100km, and now my landlady is coming over tomorrow so I've had to clean (but I'm secretly kind of glad for the excuse to not be riding?).
/csb / #htfu etc etc I know. (same old fucking boring epping routes don't help either. I like cycling partly for the sense of adventure and discovery and wholly missing that when I know every loop like the back of my hand)

I just want to drink and get fat and not have to associate with over-competitive, Sunday league, sub-golfer, basic humoured belm hats.>

I don't know you but I wanna go for a bike ride with YOU. There will be pints and pork pies on the way.

If you really love racing, then I guess you do need to train. I feel your frustration with the not wanting to go out to train but having to pretend you do.

Go easy on yourself. My best advice (though I'm not really into racing or anything so feel free to ignore) would be: Go on a long ride that has a destination. Visit a garden or gallery or view or whatever it is that you like that's nothing to do with cycling. Go there on a bike. Ride it in whatever way takes your fancy. Fast, slow, low heart rate, walk up the hills whatever. Take sandwiches. Carry a lock. Leave your bike and do something nice. Then go home on your bike. Stop at a pub if you feel like it.

I can relate to this big time. I'm not a racer but I found myself in a similar position at around this time of the year two years ago. I was training for LEJOG and I remember being on a ride in Essex (near Chelmsford I think) in some of the worst rain and wind ever. I remember thinking, what the fuck am I doing? This is so fucking shit and at right at that moment a driver beeped me for ages as the miserable cunt had to wait the best part of half a second before he could overtake which really rounded off the day perfectly. I think what really helped me get back on track with it all was having new routes and places to ride. It didn't even need to be somewhere that far but getting the train to St Albans and doing a route round there was so much more fun than doing that same route out from Lee Bridge Road and coming back through Chigwell etc...I think London is pretty good for that as you can to most home counties pretty quickly and you never have to wait too long to get a train back.

Spotify helped a lot as well. Just having new music made rides a lot more interesting and I found the miles ticked by quicker.

Don't know if this helps at all but you never know...