I started doing intervals two weeks ago. Getting ready for ‘cross. Probably a good thing, too, because I watched this preview video of the Zaandercross race and I got instantly tired.

zaander from Bill Goritski on Vimeo.

Anyway. Set a couple of PRs on the ride today, but blah blah blah, for all that they’re worth.

Paul had an amazing race at David Douglas, and I’m hoping the training means we can both keep our good streaks going from short track.

And yet, I feel slightly terrified at what I’ve gotten myself into. The training and the commitment to it. Committing to it means having expectations of success, and if I don’t meet those expectations, then what? Will it be fun? Last year, I had a good short track season and a shitty ‘cross season. Disappointment is a bitter pill to swallow. The potential has me thinking that I need to really — and I mean really — focus on having fun. On being social. On chatting with people and dishing out high fives. On hanging out in team tents that are not my own. I presume I can take the time to do that and not run up a you-owe-me tab with Amanda for being gone too long on race day. Or have Lo get bored and fussy and then we need to leave right now why are you still warming down let’s go c’mon ugh why do we do this every week?

Anyway. Committing to training and eating right and all this stuff? It means opening up my soul for the possibility that I can try really hard and still fail. And if I react badly to that? It will be a sad indictment of my character if I fail and react by quitting or saying, “maybe I should just swim instead…” or “well, I might as well shut things down since we’re going to Montana anyway.”

So hopefully I won’t fail, and maybe it won’t come to that. And maybe I’ll go out to Montana proud, very tired and totally ready to put my body through some new racing — XC skiing!