Last weekend I went up to ride in the Solvang Century. It’s a bike ride that offers 3 different lengths, a 100 miler, a metric century, which turns out to be 70-ish miles, and a 50 miler. My plan was to ride in the 100 miler. It’s been an event that I’ve wanted to do for years. I wasn’t going to go all this way and back down to a shorter version of the ride. Truth be told here, it’s not a race, so there’s no real competition, it’s just a glorious ride through the picturesque countryside of central California and the Santa Ynez Valley. There are vineyards everywhere you look and all surrounded by rolling hills. It is quite a beautiful area to ride in.
It turns out, I had a make an executive decision that my ego didn’t like. I’m a guy and a competitive one at that, especially when it comes to my sporting events. I know I’m not the fastest guy on a bike, but I know I can go a far distance. But this time around, I hadn’t train very hard. I think my longest ride was about 40 miles, so to add on a good 60 more miles probably wasn’t the smartest idea, but I’ve suffered before and it wasn’t going to be that big of a deal.
Well, it also turned out, that the night before we headed up to Solvang, I started feeling a bit of a cold. I had been watching the weather the entire week leading up to the ride. I even had a friend who bailed because he didn’t want to ride his bike in the rain for 5 hours. I completely understand how he felt, nonetheless, 2 of us went up anyway.
Friday night we arrived in Solvang, did a short 30 minute ride as a pre-ride, loosen the legs ride. Then we went out to a dinner at the Hummingbird. If you’re ever in Solvang, you must go to the Hummingbird. The proprietor, Harold, is from Barbados, plays loud reggae music, is probably eating edibles or smoking joints in the back, but makes the most amazing Caribbean Cuisine I’ve ever tasted! Then it was off to get a good night sleep.
That didn’t quite happen for me, I was up a few times as that cold got more and more pronounced. At the 5am wake up call, I realized, I could do the 100 miler, but if I was going to be smart and wise, I would drop down to the metric century. Thankfully, I did just that. The 70 miles was not easy by any means, but it was much easier than adding the extra 30 miles.
I had so much more fun knowing I was pushing myself, but not to the point of injury. As a dude, it’s so easy to go overboard and sometimes so natural to inflict unnecessary injuries. I’m so happy I didn’t do that this time and while wisdom does come with age, I’m happy I tapped into that inner voice and elected the shorter ride. It’s a few days after the ride and my cold has subsided. I can only imagine what would have happened if I let my ego rule and did the 100 miler.
I know one thing for sure, I would’ve spent the final 60-90 minutes riding in the rain, which, most likely would’ve made me more sick. Now, I can recover right and get back to training another day. Sometimes it’s better to let wisdom rule and not my ego. I hope you’ll try it out some day too. I’m always here to help and I’m on my way to doing the Mont Tremblant Ironman this August. My goal is to recover well during my training so I can have a great race. It’s not about my ego, it’s about my longevity and well being.
Originally published on the author’s website.
