Time Off

It breaks my heart to say this. I felt awesome and had no pain in my right knee on an amazing 3.47 hr Mountain Bike ride two weeks ago with Ken and Jon from work at the Kingdom Trails in Vermont. Then later that week while taking pretty good care of myself (stretches, bending my knee straight up and not inwards, etc) I was randomly in pain one day. When I came back from my vaca in quebec for the Mountain Bike World Championships on Tuesday my knee was killing me when we got out to walk and stretch at the Derby Line rest stop in VT. So I'm pulling the plug on the Cyclocross season.
If I find something is seriously off to cause this when getting a bike fit, if replacing my shoes and cleats for my pedals was a big part of it, or something else clicks I may make a run for the November/December races. But for now I'd rather wait and be sure I can get this behind me instead of living week to week, forgetting my injury when I'm feeling good and pretending I can work through it when I'm feeling bad.
I'm trying to have a long term outlook for this whole bike racing thing. It'll always be a part of my life. I certainly won't make any progress through the ranks if I'm nursing an injury though. I have recently realized that I can be way too much of an OCD, train too much/too often type of rider and that's not who I want to be. I want to be a healthy racer in mind, body and spirit. Plus there's a lot of soul searching I need to do to decide if this whole racing thing is worth it. There's a lot of resources (human, material, chemical, etc) going into training for and racing bikes. I'm not sure if that's the type of person I want to be if it means having a massive carbon footprint just to pursue glory.
So we'll see.

Until I can see a specialist for my knee (when I get back on legitimate insurance) I have to find a way to pass the time. here's what I can come up with offhand: 1. Do more hikes 2. Maybe even go on a few backpacking trips 3. Go birding 4. Pursue beautiul women 5. Learn to do more of my own bike maintenance/repair 6. Look for sciency jobs 7. Apply for them 8. Spend more time with friends 9. don't stay up till 11:44 blogging.

Goodnight kids. despite the apparent despair of this post I'm determined to make the life I envision for myself a reality