I just don't like having to read books, articles and training materials about how to become a better cyclist. I'd rather dither, avoid, procrastinate or jump on the bike and ride a lot or ride hard (or ride hard a lot).
Despite my so-called `advanced degrees' and educational pedigree ... I got them / did it pretty much with the hope and expectation that somebody as thick headed and slow minded as me MUST have something on the ball if I could get so many diplomas. I didn't think it would just prove that I'm a slow learner with the mousey hope that instructors would take pity on such a hard-working but reeeeallly not very bright guy (who did all his homework ... even if it was in crayon).
At this point I'm not sorry I got the degrees. But I don't have them because they were things I just picked up along the way as I burned through life in a brilliant intellectual fervor. (Did I spell `fervor' right?)
Nope. I did it to prove to myself and others that I wasn't stupid. (Jury is not only still out but the jury is reported to be MIA!) But, still, the evidence is not quite persuasive to that outcome (especially since I have a hard time getting off the right floor on the elevator of my 3-story office building).
I applied the same blunt-force-trauma approach to bicycling. Until now (dammit!): ride hard and lots and you'll be one of the big dogs.
Well,I AM one of the big dogs now. About 40 lbs bigger than I should be. And, though my DNF's are few I've had more than my share of DFLs (dead f*****g last).
RAW is not the biggest challenge I can think of in cycling. But is big enough to injure my ego (source of all motivation in the land of `Fallon') reeeeallly bad if I do poorly.
So, my doing RAW is not the heroic challenge of doing `the hard' thing that `real men' pursue. It is the fundamental and perpetual insecurity in my own worth that scares me into pulling myself inside out for "one more tiny bit of evidence" that I'm not a lazy, stupid slob.
The whole thing scares the crap out of me. (O.K.! I get it! We're back to the `fear and greed' model of why people do things. And THIS has taken me 64 years to realize?!!!!!!)
