Why do we do this ?
   What’s your motivation ?

Last night, after a long and unsatisfying day at work, I dragged my lazy arse out to a cold, damp and spider infested garage to tackle the turbo. It was the first visit of the year and the body just didn’t want to know.

Not too surprising really, I’ve been “in a rest phase” in my training schedule since the end of the season, and the hard earned Watts of last year have escaped from the legs when I wasn’t looking. But more significantly, the mind wasn’t interested either.

I awarded myself a mental gold star for actually getting out there in the first place, but my heart just wasn’t in it. As I sat and slowly twiddled, I contemplated the simple question of “why are you doing this ?”

At best I’m an average rider, likely to finish mid-table in any race I enter. So I can’t be doing this for the Glory of Winning.I once won the £10 Cat D prize in an open 10 (mainly because it poured with rain and I think everybody else went home), so I don’t think I’m doing this for the money.

Maybe I’m missing the company of the Club Run. I cast my mind back to the Club AGM a couple of nights before and mentally surveyed the room. “We are a weird lot” I thought, quite different to the “normal” people I meet in the rest of my life. Each of the people there wasn’t quite “normal”. Each with their own unique soapbox or fetish. Did time trialling make them weird or does it attract established weirdoes ? They are a nice bunch really, but I don’t think missing them was the problem.

In the past I’ve been “excited by the numbers”. Sad I know, but I’m a geek and love the science of it all, keen to read another training book or the latest scientific paper. In the past I’ve been eager to get back into training and seeing how my body reacts to a different set of intervals or patterns. Not this time. This time I really could not care less what the computer said.

Then it came to me. In the past I used to enjoy riding my bike, and somewhere in a dusty Leicestershire garage I’d lost that.


Now all I have to do is find it again…..