An Image Worth These 871 Words

You may recognize the picture above as one we just used for my blog about the Cal Aggie Criterium, my first road race. There is a reason why I am using it again for today’s blog: it’s because, for me, there is a story behind this picture.

A little over a year ago my wife and I started the journey to get me road racing.  It is something that I had always talked about, but there were always reasons not to do it.  I am not sure what possessed my wife to say it but she told me that I needed to stop talking about racing and get out and do it. 

With a new baby and four other kids, it wasn't easy to get started.  We got lucky along the way when a neighbor was looking to sell his "old" racing bike.  We scraped money together to buy the bike and then entered me into the spring TBF mountain bike series as an introduction to racing. We figured that it would be easier if I entered a race that didn't require team or drafting strategies.  That was a lot of fun but my older mountain bike needed a lot of work going into the race series and continues to need a lot of work.  I decided that I really wanted to focus on road racing and couldn't afford to get (and keep!) my mountain bike running at the same time, so I haven't entered another mountain bike race since.

During this time I was also ramping up my training hours and was looking for creative ways to squeeze the training in despite a full schedule at work and home.  My wife continued to support me and did everything she could to make sure that I could get out for the time I needed to ride.  She did an outstanding job taking care of our baby during this time and I worked hard to make sure that when I was home, I was totally available to help with the baby and kids.  One of the things sacrificed along the way was the TV. I used to have a lot of favorite shows but I found that I wasn't watching a lot of TV anymore. I am too busy living life to sit and watch it staged in my living room (though I must admit to still watching Chuck when I can scrape an hour together).

Later that spring I had an opportunity to ride with one of the local race teams but it involved riding at times that weren't always convenient and occasionally driving a ways to the start point of the ride.  Once again, my wife supported me and made sure that I could get out to the rides so that I could test out the team.  The guys I talked to on the team were cool, but after a few rides with them I realized that I had a ways to go to get into race shape.  Coming into a team after the cycling season is already underway isn't ideal when you aren't ready to race.  So I decided to hold off on joining a team until fall and to focus on training instead.

This fall a friend strongly recommended that I join the Body Concepts race team.  Budget wise, it would be difficult to pull off.  With kids going back to school (endless list of supplies) and Christmas around the corner, we would need to be creative to make it work.  My wife crunched the numbers hard.  She juggled things around and we sold stuff –lots of stuff- on Craigslist.  She pulled through and managed to get everything to work out.

Now, what does all this have to do with the picture I put at the top of the blog?  When I look at this picture it feels like more than just the two of us walking along talking about what happened in the race:  it is the two of us on a journey. A journey that couldn't happen without the love and support of my wife.  I was thinking back to all that we have done: making the tough financial choices and the chaotic juggling of time commitments to make that moment in the picture possible; that moment in time where I had finished my first road race and she was walking at my side, as she has for the last five years.

It would have been easy to quit so many times- to give in to the stresses and roadblocks in our way- but my wife can see how much I love the sport and how excited I get when I talk about a race.  So every time I ride, whether it is an official race or just battling it out with friends or other riders I meet along the trail, I feel very lucky to have such a caring and supportive wife who does so much to make it all possible.  Dawn - Thank you for all that you have done, all of your love, and all of your support.  I love you very much and I look forward to continuing our journey together.

(Special thanks to Robert Hunter for taking this great shot.)