Biking

Last weekend’s Swisspower Cup was a bad race. The organization, weather, competition, and course were all ideal, but for me, things didn’t go as I had planned.

I’ve become good at shrugging off such bad days (of which there have been many), but this one's bummerness was compounded by a few factors. Firstly, distractions from racing are hard to come by in Aigle for various reasons that I briefly whined about in my last post. Though single-mindedness seems ideal for improvement, I’m finding that it tends to make me a bit of a head-case. Secondly, when racing poorly at an NMBS race, you can usually find a crew of similarly disappointed but friendly guys to finish with and take solace in the fact that you’re still in front of a big name like Ryan Trebon, who’s likely cursing his equipment somewhere in the woods. You can then pout a bit, drum up some excuses, and call it a day. At the Swisspower Cup though, the short course and thus spectator-friendly style makes agro-euros race till the bitter end, and there’s hardly an English speaker, let alone friend or family member, there to console you when you finally get pulled from the race. Long story short, slow riding met distraction-less atmosphere and caused one of those rare moments when I questioned, though only momentarily and not at all seriously, why I race bikes. Aside from the obvious—chicks and money—I suspect it has a lot to do with rides like the one I did today.


A place where the beer flows like wine and beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano…I’m talking about a little place called…Gstaad. Notoriously wealthy, Gstaad initially seemed modest and quaint compared to many other resort towns. Only when I got close to one particularly dilapidated garage did I realize that it was renovated on the inside to house an Ashton Martin, Ferrari, and Land Rover. It’s as if Gstaad is so wealthy that it hides its ostentatiousness, which is so much more ostentatious than just being obviously ostentatious to begin with.

Did that cow just wink at me?

Maybe it’s just the endorphins talking (according to Science, they’re actually quite potent), but there’s nothing like a long sunny bike ride in the mountains to erase any doubts about why I bike race.