TOUR DEL SO STUPID I WANNA DIE

Well, it certainly has been a period of time since I have graced you all with my pithy lizard language. That is because I made some strange life decisions, partially destroyed myself, and now hobble along with only the tiniest inclination toward any sort of bicyclery.

That is not to say, internet, that I no longer love the bicycle. I do! I lurve it. I love the mountains and the flecks of pastured green and white crawling up toward the sky. I enjoy the wind in my small amount of hair.

But in my heart there has grown a distaste. I no longer feel the joy that I once did ascending the ranks. I am Michelle Kwan in Salt Lake City. Okay, I am not comparable to Michelle Kwan. But, I am no longer the avid ascending beginner, with all the hunger of knowledge and unwieldy passion in my heart. I am the ragged, battle-whomped try-hard-ne'er-do. This has been my life for a good time now, and indeed it has influenced more decisions than I care to number. But it is true that I would not be here, with some of the best, most loving friends I have ever known without the bicycle.

I travelled with my new team (PSIMET/ZILLA Racing! Whee whoop!) to St. George, Utah for the Tour Del Sol stage race this weekend. A quick look over the event encouraged me: it looked like a local-yokel, B-team sort of event. I could go! I could perhaps collect two dollars of encouragement! I could eschew this idea that I am a fat life failure! And so, urged on by my friends and co-workers to go, go, go! I did.

I drove with new friends Becky and Peg for a total of nine and a half hours through the squalorous redrock west, gasping at the canyons and wondering where such things emerged from. We collected packets and such, did all those race-y things I have come to expect, but it felt somehow different. I did not feel like a bike racer. I was wearing ridiculous lycra, pedaling an expensive-but-somehow-in-my-mind-inadequate bicycle around a strange place--but, this of all times, felt different.

I prepared for time trialing sans time trial bike, as I have always done, and was smashed. I raced the crit, as I have always done, and again failed to achieve any sort of result worth smiling about. Because as I rode, a question in my mind: why? Why, why, why? Dear god, sweet christ, why? Why did these twelve women come here to ride in a sweeping circle in the darkness? Why do I work short hours to train, wish for money, travel to races, wish for money, lose, and cry?

I feel empty.

Road race tomorrow. I feel nothing at all.