I Stand Corrected - A Lesson Remembered

The past two weeks have been absolutely fabulous weather-wise here in Baltimore. This makes it so easy to get out on the bicycle and get some nice miles in. While on one of my favorite routes, at the right time of day with minimal traffic, I felt so relaxed as I rode through one of those almost "to good to be true" moments in time. No cars, beautiful roads, clear good weather, cold water in my water bottles, just ideal conditions. How can it be better?

Don't know what it is, maybe turning the cranks helps my brain turn out some good thoughts but I always have the best idea development while riding. Still, realizing that things can change in a split second, I always urge myself and others not to totally day-dream while riding on the road. But this is not a post on good things gone bad.

It is my recollection of a humorous but potent memory of a lesson that I learned one day at a bike race.

My teammates and I were dressing in our cycling gear, getting ready to warm up for our race which was going to start an hour or so later. At local races, you have all the different categories of racing throughout a day. The original posted timeline for race starts can get totally off track because of races taking longer or crashes for example.

With a vivid memory, I can still hear my teammate asking, "what race is going on now?" I looked up and saw the pack coming around and my reply was, "looks like the juniors out there now." "We still have the girls race next before ours...." Suddenly, as I sat on the ground putting my cycling shoes on, I noticed the wheel of a bike pull in right next to me. A little surprised by the close proximity of the front wheel, which was about 11 inches from my head, the rider of the bike leaned over and asked, in a bit of a biting manner, "what did you call that race?"

My brain scrambled to make sense of what was going on. Then, I realized, it was one of the women racers who, had taken offense to me calling her race the "girls" race. Ouch, what to do?

Well, immediately, I said, kiddingly, "you can call our race the 'boys' race." Well that didn't score any points with this rider. After a short but terse conversation, she rode off and I sat there a little puzzled with myself. My buddies looked at me. We all agreed that she must have had supersonic hearing to catch my words.

A little embarrassed, I quickly came to the conclusion that I agreed with her. Rather than trying to convince myself that she was being overly sensitive about my misguided categorization of she and her fellow athletes. I looked at this situation as a great opportunity to remind myself of the power of words. When we think, we usually think in terms of words. What words we use to describe things, events, people and even ourselves can really determine and influence our world. I enjoy considering the perception and the perspective of those people around me. I'd like to see more of this actually.

So the importance of this lesson is to pick your words carefully. Life is usually better when you feel like you are accurately understood.

In my own athletic pursuits, I want to see what can achieve. And, what I or any of us want to achieve is most likely something that we have never done before. It is a step, or many steps into the unknown. That means we are venturing into the territory of the new and uncharted so to speak. That is often accompanied by a question of whether we can actually attain that goal. We then may not have that same amount of confidence that we usually have. But that is what is what, in my opinion we need to do as often as possible. But, with that, I think it's somewhat easy to get off the track of good self-communication and the positive self-talk cycle that helps to keep pointed towards the achieving any goal.

For the athletes I coach, I can clearly see that I am not the only one who needs to remind himself of keeping on track. It is important as a coach to help athletes through these slips forward progression. It starts with the words we say to ourselves and surely any words that come out of our mouths. When we say things like, "I stink at this..." we create a block from progressing. But when we say things like, "I feel like I'm getting this...." Or even, "that was OK" we avoid holding up our forward progression.

Well, looks like another nice day today! Great day for a ride and more thinking. I hope all of you have the opportunity to do something that is new, exciting and fun. And I hope while you do it, that you will pick the words that you say to yourselves and others that are reflective of a positive direction!

Have fun and say what you mean out there,

Coach Dave