"Courage...

...is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm."

--Winston Churchill (who else?)

There's a fellow on Road Bike Review's forums who has this in his sig file, with the appended note that he must be one courageous dude, or something like that :)

At the moment, I know how he feels. This year has been a doozy for failing. I didn't hit my August mileage goal because I spent much of the last week in bed with a whopper of an out-of-nowhere sinus and respiratory infection — but, to quote Monty Python, "I'm not dead yet!" (Three Internets if you can identify the source, -3,000,000 Internets if you can't.)

At first, I was kind of irritated with myself for falling short of a good many goals this year — but then I realized that you don't have the opportunity to fail when you're not out there trying.

Last year, I was really unhappy because I always felt like I wasn't doing anything that I wanted to do, and like my life wasn't moving forward at all. This year, I'm doing a lot of things. I'm doing things I would never have expected in my wildest dreams — making friends (non-internet friends, even!), riding a bazillion miles most of the time, planning to race, going to school and holding down a full-time job at the same time (for the moment).

I have a much broader circle of friends than I did at this time last year. I am a member of a community of people who notice when I don't show up and worry about me (I forgot to email my poor choir director on Thursday to tell him I wouldn't be at rehearsal due to illness, and he actually called me to make sure I was okay).

I'm not going to set my September mileage goal just yet — if I do, I will be inclined to start pushing myself right now, and I probably could stand to wait 'til I'm done with this course of antibiotics. Since I have a century coming up in October, I'm definitely going to try to get some good, long rides in, which should also help me rebuild my base for King's Cross (note to self: get on retrofitting Swift accordingly). I'll put my September mileage goal down next Monday: by then, I should be able to get a realistic sense of my capabilities, and pick a figure that stretches me a little, but not too much.