One of my good friend, Italian cyclocross & mountain bike champion Eva Lechner, always talks about "the fighting spirit". The fighting spirit is crucial to race well. It's that "zone" where you are fully focused in the race and you are battling as best you can. You attack each section, you fight for each position.
A race without the fighting spirit is actually pretty boring...those are the days when you are stuck in your own head and can't get out of your own way...the days when if someone passes you, you don't even try to stay with them. I've had many of those days and they are horrible (as much during, as after the race).
Today, I had a STRONG fighting spirit. I've been working on it - on bringing that spirit to every workout, to make sure it becomes a habit and not only something I can "wish" to have on race day.
So from the start, I was super agressive, I was pedalling hard, I was fighting for my spot. My problem?! Maybe the fighting spirit was TOO strong. I kept making so many mistakes and loosing positions with crashes and mishaps. Then, I'd pedal or run super hard and catch people...until I crashed again and lost more spots. The whole race was like that.
I liked the running section because although it hurt, I was really forcing myself to sprint and I would always catch someone. Photo by Balint Hamvas
With two laps to go, I realized what was wrong. I told myself I had to fight when the course was straight, but I had to calm down and be gentle when we were turning in the muddy, rutty, slippery sections. It got a bit better, but I still was making mistakes. I think I wasn't able to accept that some turns would be slow, even if this is what you need to do to perform well in those kind of races.
In other words, I should have listened to this during the race warm up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dkk9gvTmCXY
But instead, I listened to "Animal I have become" from Three Days Grace...
So in the end, am I happy or not? The truth is I am happy. I'm super proud of how I fought. I'm proud of how agressive I was (I normally get hammered the first time in Europe). Mostly, I'm happy because I really tried my best. Sure, I wish I would have done better. And yes, I'm a bit mad at myself for all those mistakes. But when you really fight and do your absolute best, you can actually look back at your race and know honestly what you need to work on. And when you do your best, you have no regrets.
It's true that you can learn a lot in defeat. But only if you really tried your absolute best, and if you were fully present/focus during the race. When you get beat because you had your head in your ass the whole race, unfortunately you don't learn anything.
I can say I made it count today! Photo @ Balint Hamvas
Looking ahead, I'm pretty motivated to come back to Europe and try again. I'll work on managing my fighting/calm mindset, and I'll work on riding those ruts with more confidence.
In the end, 11th is not that bad. I would have been thrilled with that before...and that's another new thing I'm learning to deal with. Yes, I won a World Cup, but it does not mean that anything less than a win is bad. After all, those are freakin' WORLD Cups...like, really good people from many countries show up and try to win. So although I'm not tremendously satisfied with my performance, there is a lot of positive, and to me, it's pretty cool to see that an "average" day now is much better than what it used to be. After all, I'm still 2nd in the World Cup Overall behind Katerina.
We are now going for Swiss Cheese Fondue in Berne with Katerina, Waldek, Katie Compton and her husband Mark Legg. It should be a fun evening :)
The racing was super tight today (except for Annemarie Worst who was a real boss!). That's the best kind of racing because you have to be "on it" the whole time. Photo by Balint Hamvas
Happy and tired :) Photo by Balint Hamvas
Race machine after a good day. Photo by Balint Hamvas