Blake Harlan: People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.

Well in light of sucking it up these past three weeks of racing i can say that i have had fun and learned a lot. Its times like these when you train hard and continuously make mistakes that you really find out if you enjoy it or not. Hopefully Andrew Carnegie was right when he said I would only succeed if i enjoyed cycling. I have been pretty hard on myself lately. Racing in Colorado Springs this past weekend was a bust, but in reflection i realized it wasnt that bad; in fact I probably learn more about myself and racing when i do bad then when i do good. Whether it be from myself or all those who i look up to and give me their advice. This weekend was kind of a realization for me. I came out of a bad crit with 150% mental preparedness for the RR the following day. Well the RR came and i got dropped again. At the time i was givin'er all she had and still got popped. After the race i had my 20 minutes of self hatred but then started to piece together everything that went wrong and what i could have done better. In that regard, i think i learned a lot more than if i had just straight up won the race. Well, that was just turned out to be the theme of my week. I realized that no matter how hard you try at something, you can still hit that wall and its how you deal with that adversity that allows you progress and move forward or fight it and eventually hit it again. Needless to say I am ready to ride next weekend in Durango. I wont be making the same mistakes again this time and hope i can have a good result. In other news other than Blake's life relizations, I've been spending this week putting in some good training. 3.5 hrs yesterday and 4.5 hrs today. Today was spent solo. I did one of my favorite loops here. Boulder to Lyons, to Peak to Peak Hwy, to Ward and back down to Boulder. S. Saint Vrain Rd. is one of the most beautiful rides ever. You start in the canyon with the tall rocks all around you and climb up to the top where you look over the cliffs and 14ers still up above you. The ride was really nice especially for about 3hrs of it i think only 5 or 6 cars passed me.