When I was kid I was always described as my own worst enemy. I have always been a bit of perfectionist and have always been frustrated by my lack of natural talent at basically every sport I have ever played. I have never lacked a sense of self-realization about my skills. I know I'm never the most athletic or gifted person but that doesn't make it any less frustrating for me when I'm just simply not as good as I want to be. When I was a kid all the way through most of high school, this frustration with myself would often boil over into acting out against others.
If you read this mental vomit of a blog regularly you know that on Tuesday nights I go do this really fast ride at the Port of Oakland. Recently as the weather gets a little better and more people are getting into race shape the group size grows on a weekly basis. This is both good and bad. It's good because it's really cool to see 50-75-100 people out doing this ride. It's bad because when you start adding riders not all of those riders you add should really be riding in that kind of a group. The more people the more dangerous.
It's simply a factor of the culture of cycling, but a lot of the guys who do this ride forget that it is a ride and not a race. That doesn't mean that it should be as fast as possible. But when guys are diving at other people to get them off of wheels on a Tuesday night ride at the Port of Oakland, it starts to get a bit frustrating. Add to the fact that more and more people are showing up and doing these kinds of moves and you start to wonder if the Port ride is really worth it.
Last night, very early in the ride, a guy, in my opinion, stuck me in the wind. He was coming up the inside and when the guy in front of me slowed I moved slightly to the left so not to touch my breaks and this guy immediately moved onto that wheel. This move really annoys me because I did exactly what I was supposed to do to control my speed without having to touch my brakes. Sure there was a slight opening from where he was but I wasn't falling off of the wheel. In fact, had I kept accelerating my right shifter would have hit the guy in front of me in the ass. So I wasn't swinging off opening up a gap. With him now on the wheel that I was on, I'm stuck sitting in the wind. If I had lost position vertically on the wheel, fine, no big deal, it's yours now. But I moved horizontally and so my frustration at this kind of crap happening weekly bubbled over and I yelled at the guy.
We had an "exchange" that went on for probably a minute. He saying he did nothing wrong. Me saying he did. About half way through it dawned on me that even if this guy did take that wheel when he wasn't supposed to, it was still a group ride, and why was I getting so mad about it? I was almost instantly reminded of all the times when I was a kid that my temper did nothing but set me back. I still firmly believe the guys move wasn't needed, but it wasn't worth yelling at him over. I apologized, we shook hands, and I got out of line and went to the back to float there the rest of the night.
After that I just couldn't get myself mentally back into the ride. I was too frustrated at myself for letting something so small infuriate me. I still got a good workout in by towing guys back into the ride and being on the extreme end of the yo-yo out of corners and having to do lots of sprints to catch back on. All was not lost, but it did weigh on my mind for the rest of the night. I hope that guy did genuinely accept my apology.
I guess as I get older I've come to terms with the fact that my natural athletic talent is low and that doesn't frustrate me the same way it used to. But losing my cool over something so pointless beats me up way worse than not hitting a 12' jump shot. Maybe one day I'll get control of both?
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