As the World Turns

So, I haven't written here for a while.  Long story short, I've been racing a lot.  The track has been good to me (found that I have a bit of talent for sprinting) and the road hasn't been that bad either.  Finished the season with a good start toward a Cat 2 upgrade on the track, and even a few points toward a Cat 2 upgrade on the road.

Big accomplishments...

Had a really good OBRA Track Champs race.  Upgraded from Cat 4 to Cat 3 right at the start of the weekend, and ended up with three gold medals in the kilo, pursuit, and match sprint and a silver in the points race.  All in small fields though, which tempers the glory.  But hey, my times in the kilo and pursuit weren't terrible, and my match sprint performance was not bad either.

Got a silver medal on a breakaway at the OBRA Crit Champs.  That was fun.  Spent over 10 laps off the front; at 5 to go, had a guy bridge up to me and we ended up finishing just ahead of the pack.  The other guy got first, I got second.

Final decent result was a second place finish at the kilo in the OBRA Masters Track Champs.  I raced the match sprints as well, but I really mis-timed my eating (didn't have anything to eat but a bowl of cereal between 8:00am and 3:00 when the race was over) and didn't win a single match.  I could've done better for sure.  On the other hand, there are a lot of very fast guys in the 30-39 age group I was racing against.  Fast and savvy...  I might be somewhat fast, but I have a lot yet to learn about match sprinting.
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With that, the 2010 season comes to a close, except for cyclocross, which I suck at.  Base training for 2011 is right around the corner, and I am in the process of deciding whether to obtain some coaching.  I want to make a serious run at Cat 2 on the road.  A coach will be useful in this.  On the other hand, Cat 2 isn't a destination, it's a threshold.  The aesthetic side of me wants to cross the threshold on "natural" talent (a better term might be "uninvested" talent); the thinking goes if I can do this, I stand a chance of being competitive on the other side of the threshold with the benefit of coaching.

I also have to decide what I need a coach to do for me.  A "generic" coach I have less use for.  I can pull workouts out of a hat more or less the same as any other person.  A "real" coach would be working with me across multiple seasons and get to know my abilities almost better than I know myself.  That might be too much to ask though, either for a coach I hire or for myself and my own commitments to what is still an amateur sport, regardless of category.

Anyway, it's enough to make my head spin a bit.  Having a little talent is somehow vexing.  It seems the path is pretty clear if you are dominant.  Likewise if you suck.  Having a few little successes as I've had this year makes me want to see where the rabbit hole leads, but it also makes me question how much time and energy to place into the endeavor.  But this is the time of the year (with the non-existent training and the play-in-the-mud 'cross fun) to be philosophical.  Wax poetic and philosophical now, put the head down on the trainer in a few weeks.