Psychology

The Northfield Crit is coming up on Monday. I am dreading it. I raced it last year, and I was pulled for the first time ever in my much vaunted racing career. To be fair, two-thirds of the field was pulled because an insanely fast sandbagger lapped almost everyone (he was something like the state champion time trialist as a cat 4).

Anyway, the course is built for suffering. It has a nasty hill that becomes dreadful after five or ten laps. It is just long and steep enough to peg the heart rate. It is right after a corner where the pavement narrows just enough to make it difficult to power through it. Inexplicably, there seems like there is little time for recovery, considering the rest of the course is non-technical and rather down hillish.

Who really wants to suffer on a holiday? Of course, I probably wouldn't miss it for the world.