“... Racing is cycling. Get on your bike and it begs you to race something – a friend, a dog, a leaf blown by the wind, your own best time, dusk, the approaching storm, the rider in the distance, your own mortality. Cycling is racing, and racing is brutal, beautiful, destructive, redemptive, awful and awe-full. You can find these qualities even when you’re racing your shadow, but the pressure of organized races concentrates the feeling.”
- Bill Strickland, page 128: “The Quotable Cyclist” from the intro to a chapter on racing.

So what are you racing against?
Me? at 48, weighing 175 pounds with a 111 over 66 blood pressure -
I race the guy I was on my 43rd birthday.
He is 238 pounds and on blood pressure drugs.
He is slow but he is always back there just waiting for me to let up.

Oh yeah, I can also Cat 6 the heck out of a shadow, a leaf or a distant rider too.


Metaphorically Speaking: What are you racing against?