Sara - My wife was on the phone with her sister when I was typing, and the trip was postponed so no family visiting intervals.

You and I seem to be on parallel learning curves, at least in terms of learning to get comfy in the pain cave. I think the big "Aha!" moment of my breakthrough was going from "This hurts, I gotta stop!" to "This hurts...yup, sure does." I'm guessing that this is a common experience among new racers, with Master's racers also having to smack the s**t out of that devil on our shoulder telling us that we're too old for this.