For the last 2 months I’ve lacked motivation and inspiration in many aspects of my day to day life. It’s important to be happy in your place of work and if you’re not, it’s time to reconsider your situation. This has been me for the last 6 months. I’m a motivated chap, inspired by others and strive to better my self, those are my morals and that’s what I stand by. The fact I wasn’t happy in my work place meant it impacted on everything else. I’m sure many who read this might relate. After a while of coming to terms with why I was unhappy I finally decided to make a push, update my CV and started looking elsewhere. What’s this got to do with cycling though? Well, not everything I write about needs to be cycling related but I suppose this post is inadvertently directed towards cycling. It’s about challenge and putting your self outside the comfort zone. It’s so easy to sail away on the daily grind, follow suite, believe everything you see or hear and do as everyone else does or tells you to do. If you just take a second to question yourself or other people you’ll find a far more interesting aspect of ‘life’. This morning I commuted to work on my fixed gear. I put some effort in and gave myself a mild hernia coming up towards Rawdon – it felt great (after I’d got my breath back)! With all of the aspects I mentioned above it was quite evident that the whole situation was putting a downer on everything, including my cycling. Less motivated, an ‘I can’t be bothered’ approach and a dimensioning interest in anything to do with cycling – I knew things weren’t right. I won’t bore you with the details of my past work place or why I was unhappy, all you need to know is that I put everything into the interviews and came out on top – I got the job!
Cycling to work this morning I revisited a place I’d not been in a while, that subconscious thought pattern where you loose yourself and soon forget you’ve just covered 7 miles without even thinking about it. It’s been a while since I’ve done any sort of fixed gear riding – I lost my love and became a little lazy. This mornings commute made me revisit that love for riding fixed and for pushing that little bit harder.
It’s this mentality which I’ve had missing and as cheesy as it sounds, riding fixed is just that. You don’t have any another gear to click down, there isn’t an easier option, it’s just a matter of digging deep and getting to the top of the hill without stopping. Sure you could just easy off, put less of an effort in etc but it won’t get any easier so you may as well just get on with it. Pushing hard to the top of Rawdon from the centre of Leeds, head feeling dizzy and totally out of breath at the peak – such a great feeling. It’s this feeling of motivation, that although may at times become faded or less relevant, always needs to be something revisited in order to develop.