Competitive Spirit

A friend and I have been discussing our individual competitive needs and the motivation that sits behind them. As a child I was never encouraged to take part in sports, I always enjoyed participating but never made it into any school sports teams. It just wasn't what our family did. I'd play football, tennis, cricket and so on at the local park and really enjoy it, but simply put I wasn't good enough. For a male child and a teenager, being good at sports was quite important, it usually meant that you were accepted by the "in crowd" and the converse also seemed to be true. To double the problem, if you couldn't compete with more capable participants, you couldn't improve much either. As a result, playing with others who also didn't make the grade on the local park didn't help. But I was still competitive, I still wanted to be good and I still wanted selection, it just never happened. To make it even more difficult, my upbringing was focused on not drawing attention to oneself, being submissive and polite rather than nurturing any aggression in a positive way. Competition just wasn't on the agenda.

Move on a few years and in my late twenties I discover that at a regional level, I'm physically quite good at cycling. I can get placed in pretty much any time trial I ride and I can win a few 1st category road races. Alright, I don't cut it in national events, but in my own back yard I'm respected. Now for someone of my background that's a HUGE motivation to keep on competing, at long last I've found something that I missed out on in my youth. For a few hours a week, albeit on a rather parochial level, I can be someone! I start to train with other riders who are REALLY, REALLY good and become a part of their group, they encourage me and it all culminated in a bronze medal in the 1990 National Team Pursuit Championships. My claim to fame and who'd have thought it!

Move on the present and I find myself in a completely new set of circumstances. The past is long since gone and no more than a distant memory. I've got on reasonably well career wise, especially for someone who never really had aspirations to be anything in particular. I am contented at home and like a lot of middle aged people, within reason I generally have what I want. But I still feel the need to be competitive. It's a driving force in my life, be it to climb mountains in Scotland, to take really good photographs, or in this case to be as good as I can be at cycle races. I now have friends who have been top class cyclists at a national level, and who still are as masters. Even I can still win the odd masters road race here and there and nearly always get placed. I even get placed in open time trials.

All of this is only part of the story though, competitive urge alone is not enough. I've got plenty of it, but I still don't win as much as my physical capabilities suggest I should. I'm starting to confront deeper issues from my past and ones that are deeply rooted in my subconscious. Issues that prevent me from reaping the rewards of the effort I put in. That's the real challenge, not the bike race.