Today I participated in the first official race in the WTRL racing league as part of a team that I joined, Lightning Velo. WTRL stands for World Tactical Racing League and they help Zwift run online cycling races. It’s an official organization now that runs most of the racing on Zwift. So essentially we’re talking about me riding my bike indoors.
My team had some organizational issues - I won’t hold it against them, they’re all volunteers after all - but I didn’t really know that I was racing until about 10 minutes before the race started, and I had no idea what the race was actually going to be. Because I didn’t know I was riding, yesterday I jogged/walked 14+ miles, and so I was destroyed just to begin with. And then it turned out that the race was 28 kilometers and 670 meters of climbing. So I was in trouble right from the get go! But I decided to do it anyway. Better to have loved and lost, etc.
Adding to my anxiety was that I was hanging out with somebody today who was telling me about. their adventures with muscle rhabdomyolysis a few weeks back and ended up spending a couple of days in the ER, just because of over-exercise. So that activated the hypochondriac part of my brain for sure. :)
There’s an interesting aspect to Zwift races which is that they start out with this balls-to-the-wall pell-mell super intense effort right out of the gate, and if you get dropped from that, you’re basically stuck. And I got dropped from that. :). But other than that, I had a good race. (So other than having a bad race, I had a good race :). I came in 71st out of 79. :0. Anyway, exercise is always good for me, and now I will sleep well.
As an editorial note, I recently started listening to a particular meditation from my app, Ten Percent Happier, that is all about removing writer’s block by just practicing the art of writing without judging or self-editing. So that’s what I’m going to start doing, trying to blog every day for 15-20 minutes or until I run out of things to say. I won’t say too much about that here because I think I’m going to make it its own blog topic.
