Perseverance

The conditions were perfect and set for a 4:00 ride on Saturday with some friends.  I had done some work on my bike earlier in the week to get it prepared for the weekend, and it seemed perfect and ready to roll.  We set off at 11:30 into blistering headwind and an ice-like snow.  The plan was to head out for 2:00 straight into the wind and then flip around and take the tailwind home.  All was well until about 1:20 into the ride, and then I ran into a problem.  If you look closely at the picture below you can se what my issue was.

If you can't quite make out the problem I'll break it down for you- my chain broke.  It just snapped right at one of the links.  Thankfully, I was able to avoid any injury when this happened.  But my ride was over as we were traveling without a chain tool.

Now my goal for the day was 4:00.  With my chain incident, my ensuing pick from the park and a work commitment later in the day, there was no chance that I could get back outside and finish the time.  So my options were three:

1) Ride the stationary trainer at night for 2:40 so I would total the day out at 4:00
2) Flip Saturday and Sunday's training.  Saturday = 4:00 & Sunday = 1:30.
3) Forget about the plan/goal for the day and just accept 1:20 of ride time.

In a recent comment I was asked about my motivation and where does it come from?  There are a lot of areas and ways that I use to motivate myself, and the one I drew upon yesterday/today was my love of setting goals and accomplishing them.  I receive a tremendous amount of satisfaction when I set up a training goal and then work hard to achieve it.  Knowing that about myself there were really only 2 options above that would have worked for me, either #1 or #2.

I choose #2.  I looked at the forecast and Sunday looked like it was going to be similar to Saturday. So late Saturday night I prepared my gear, fixed my bike, packed a chain tool and readied everything so I could head out Sunday when I was done seeing clients.

This time the preparation and the execution worked perfectly.  And it actually turned into a great ride because the snow started falling heavily about an hour into the ride, and I love riding in the snow.  All totaled up, it snowed about 3" in the 4:10 of ride time for the day.

-Jason