One Proud Cog on the Cassette

Photo courtesy of... Hors Categorie Photograpy

Hey Masters...Just a fast up-date from the Weekend... How’d we do again? Well...From the reports that I have been getting... We the Davis Bike Club had an awesome weekend. In the 35+ 4/5's ... Jason did a great job reporting on the success of the DBC Masters.

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One thing that did strike me a little funny was a question posed by a fellow Teammate regarding whether he had contributed to the Team doing as well as we did. Hmmmm So I thought to myself... What does contributing to the Team involve, and are you a integral part of what causes a Team to succeed?

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How does that ball start rolling? Well I think it starts with something as simple as... Someone naming you as the "A" Racer for the event! After all you have to have someone to work for... Right? Then after you’ve named that person then comes the... WHAT!... WHO?...ME! OH CRAP! After the initial shock of being named the "A"rider for a Race... Comes what we call as the "Emails of Support". They slowly start to trickle in... Coming in the form of "Hey Dude" your Da Man!... "Hey Dude" I got your back! Hey Dude if you win will you buy me a cold one? "Hey" what can "I" do to help? You see the emphasis on the word I... Because if there is one thing that makes the DBC Masters special is the fact that anyone of you would do whatever it took to help a fellow Teammate win! All that pressure, and it has only just begun. You might ask do want to put that type of pressure on the "A" racer? Maybe... Kinda... Sorta. It starts that thing in sports called Focusing. Its starts to get him thinking... Can I do this? It starts to get him to believe that they might be able to actually win. Prior to the Race it’s things like the Club rides, and all that chit chat stuff, you know more verbal support. The "Hey Dude... Let me lead you out! Dude sit in I’ll take you to the front. The scheming, the planing. It's the Team doing something as simple as going to Jamba Juice after a Race Ride. So even prior to an event the Team has already started to contribute to this Rider winning the Race. The "HEY" we believe in "YOU'...

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At the Race we could all sense the anxiety that was building with our "A" rider as the start time was beginning to approach. We would continue with the moral support the you can do it! Breath! Everything to try, and keep him relaxed. Seeing things like Jas returning to Racing to help where he could, Big Chad who our "A" racer respects, putting his arm around him, offering him words of encouragement. All these scenes, and action's all contribute to helping a Teammate win a Race.

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During the Winters Road Race from the start we had from the first Km's, numerous guys in the Orange and Blue that were launching off the front, taking big pulls, and doing what they could to soften the field. As Jason had said in his Race report, we had fellow Racers from other Teams come up, and say "You guys totally dominated the Race from the start to the finish"... So I could go on about the successes of each individual, and what each person did to help win this Race, but each one in there own way would rather just keep it quiet, and leave it at the fact that they just did what they had to do to get the results that we got... That’s just how we roll.

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So back to this one rider that had asked me about "HIS" effectiveness in determining the outcome of the Race... I simply said... Bike Racing is a little like a boxing match, in that you can only take so many blows to the kidneys before it really starts to hurt. So for each and every DBC Masters that threw a punch! You would ask yourself, did you as a Teammate effect the out come of the Race?... Well, ask the 43 other riders that didn’t make the final Seven! Look at the picture above, and you tell me... Ask Jason what he thinks! I’ll go out on the limb, and I bet he would say... "It was the Team"

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Ciao for now... One Proud Cog on the Cassette!