My marriage finished going to hell in 2013. In 2016, I finally got back to the only sport I’ve ever loved, randonneuring, and came close to completing an SR series (a 200K, 300K, 400K, and 600K brevet in a calendar year), but when I realized there was no way to finish the 600K within the time limit, I ended it a hundred kilometers short.
This is my second try since 2014 marital separation. The 2016 election results laid me out right when I naturally start losing weight and building quads, in November, so I’m a little unmoored and flabby about this year’s endeavor, but today I decided what I want.
Between May and August, I will:
- Prepare as best I can, given the limits of my schedule and my mental and physical conditions, and then ride as though I came to have fun.
- Be the least forgiving observer of my arrival times.
- Return under my own power if I DNF, unless prevented by mechanical failure or rigid calendar.
- Continue an R-12, regardless of how I feel about my performance during the season.
- Spend less time on randonneuring than on my children and the rent; moderately more than on my novel; and way more than on household upkeep. The children can eat water chestnuts and dress themselves out of the hamper.
- Plan a midseason intermission of normal recreational cycling and picking up dropped balls, so that September doesn’t deliver as overwhelming an avalanche of deferred responsibility as it did last year.
- Print this out and put it in my map holder and above the refrigerator, because this is all the kind of stuff you conveniently can’t quite remember when you need to.
There’s been a line of empty sake bottles above the kitchen sink with 100K, 200K, 300K, and 400K written on them since last year. The 600K bottle is still in the fridge door.
So I’ll try not to have too much riding on this, and we’ll see.
Keith Snyder 