So, Sunday, August 14, 2011, I head out for my Sunday bike ride on my road bike. Its my first ride (other than my daily one mile ride to work) since the Pierre’s Hole 50 (PH50) miler at Targhee the weekend before. As I ride I realize that my rubbery legs are just not waking up. By mile 10, where I am almost always fully awake and almost always ready to go, my legs still just did not have the get-up-and-go I usually have. I guess the PH50 took a bit more out of me than I thought and I was still not fully recovered, (“but it been a full 7 days of doing nothing” - my mind screamed) but I rode on.

My thoughts wandered a strange and meandering path during the ride. With my Nano on shuffle running through my favorites playlist, I tried not to think about the Leadville race I had missed the day before. I hadn’t made the lottery cut to get in and I didn’t qualify at the 100 km Tahoe Qualifier three weeks ago that I somehow, foolishly, thought I might have a shot at. Adding to this depressing thought I reflected on (obsessed about) my terrible performance at the PH50. As I posted on the PH50 website: “the good news: I finished 6^th in my age group. The bad news: there were only 6 in my age group”. And to add insult to an already severely damaged ego, the 5^th place guy in my age group beat me by well over an hour. 1 hr 16 min to be exact. So as all the guys in my group came in between 4 hrs 33 minutes to 6 hrs 6 mins, I struggle in in a ridiculous 7:22. Sheeesh!

And it was the same story at Tahoe three weeks ago. I actually thought I might be able to qualify for Leadville there, i.e. finish in the top five of my age group. In the end, I think I might have beat just 5 people. Not in my age group – Overall! That race, 100 km between at 6100 and 7200 feet elevation, was FAR less technical than PH50 and mostly on roads, just like Leadville. Out of 195 finishers, I finished 179^th. (ok, so I actually beat 16 and several more who did not finish) Ouch! I finished in 7:14. Out of 33 in my age group, I finished 28^th. The winner of the mens 50-59 group finished more than two hours ahead of me in 5:03.

“So what is going on with me” I continued to ask myself as I rode along on legs that just could not get in the groove. “Am I finally getting too old?” Is it junior high all over again, when I realized that I just wasn’t that great of an athlete? And then thinking about Leadville next year, if I could somehow get in, I’d be 57! And even slower!?

This sent me into a deeper funk. And I pedaled on through the pain. Both physical and emotional. And my fear grew and fed upon itself. My fear of old age. Of crumbling and deteriorating physical capabilities. Of future decrepitude. Of senility. Of….becoming my father - wasted away to a mere shell of his former self, waiting to die.

OK, this is a bit overly dramatic and just a tad morbidly self-indulgent, but I always have these thoughts, albeit usually to a lesser degree, after I visit my parents at their assisted living facility and observe all the octogenarians. Add the depressing parental visitations to the compounding thoughts of failure and athletic ineptitude and you have the making for a depressing day. And all this is compounded by knowing that no matter how hard I train, no matter how much I ride, how much weight I loose, how serious I get, I will be only be another year older, approaching 60, and its just not going to get any easier.