One Way Ticket to Reality

Well this past weekend in Phoenix was quite a wakeup call into reality in several aspects. I finished top 20 in the time trial, top 20 in the super D, 25th in the STXC after getting pulled and DNF'ed the cross country after my seat breaking and crashing into cactus. While I have already started this year by hitting last year's goal of top 20 I found myself pretty bummed about my performance. When you put a lot of time and energy to train and do things right, to go out on those days when you don’t even want to get out of bed, well...sometimes you just expect you will get more out of it. That’s what I was thinking this weekend. The Time Trial went ok and the Super D was just a suffer fest/ Time Trial #2. But I still found myself discouraged. The Short track was a disaster. I felt good was 110% there mentally, had a great call up, got the hole shot and then blew it from there. I had entirely too much pressure in my tires but besides that it was entirely operator error. I just straight up sucked. I read the course wrong and raced it wrong, kept crashing, losing wheels along with my motivation and ended up being one of the first ones pulled. Purely pathetic. With some anger to throw into the pot of emotions I was even more driven to do well in the XC. Yea, well that didn’t happen. I had absolutely horrible legs, and was falling of train after train. Discouraging to say the least. Well then to add insult to injury my seat broke and I slammed my foot into a cholla cactus which is a creation of the devil himself. I had enough and called it a race, not like I could have changed that but oh well. So to some up my racing experience this weekend it would correct to say that it was simply a motivation deflator.

However, its times like these when you have to keep your chin up and enjoy everything else around you including other people’s achievements. Bryan had great races this past weekend. Making his debut in the pro field was no joking matter. Bryan had his game face on all weekend and while at times it got demoralizing racing against JHK and Todd Bryan held his own and finished in very respectable positions in both the STXC and the XC. Congrats DAWG! Shep got the "I don’t give a damn I don’t give a fuck" award. Shep mentally flogged himself after every one of his races. And shep all I have to say is that even though you didn’t win or podie or whatever, you might have forgotten that YOU ON ANTIBIOTICS IN THE FUCKING DESERT! So through perseverance shep in my opinion had a better weekend than I did. Martini during the weekend got the WORLD WORST GAS AWARD. Martini routinely reminded Bryan Shep and I that he doesn’t like to go #2 while on the road. Needless to say it was a smelly ride home.

Yesterday and today I have just been dragging. Forcing myself to get out and ride. Today I had a hard training day that I called short. I just didn’t have any legs or motivation to keep going. All I could think about was sleeping. I hate not doing my workouts. Every time I feel like im falling behind in the overall game. But I have learned one thing this year and that’s to listen to my body. With that said I don’t think im going to sea otter. Too much travel, too much money and not enough fun. I think I need to chill out for a day or two and catch my breath. The last thing I need is to get sick.


Here are some pics and videos of this weeks adventures. Enjoy!

Troy rocking the Free Sager and Dopers Suck (Ying and Yang?)


Larry said that if i sat down really hard i could be just like Sager!


The "Teddy Bear" cactus:


Sam Schults my new hero! Way to go!


Second name down...Someone at least is benifitting.


Shep shows one of the best uses for the Free Sager bands.


Zach gets his NASCAR style on.


Desert Sunset.


FU.


Mooning was in order for this line of cars.



FU#2.


The gas man himself.


artsy fartsy picture taking.


Now here are some cool videos!

Downtown STXC under the lights! Sam S. got 4th!!!!!!


While on the way home Shep decided to slam an entire bottle of FRS concentrate and top it off with a red bull. The results were predictable.

PART 1.


PART 2.



Overall it was a fun time. Hopefully next race will treat me a little better than this one did.