Friends

Friends are amazing in connecting us with ourselves and our aspirations. Today three of them began helping put yesterday's Hillclimb in perspective:

From Alex -
"it sounds like you didn't have too good of a "time" yesterday. But, what the hell, it is a learning experience and something to bitch about over beer :) There is always another year, another
race: haec olim meminisse iuvabit"

With my Latin being a bit rusty I looked it up. It's from the "The Aeneid." In Latin it reads, "Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit." And from NYT interview Robert Fagles says, "One of the most beautiful lines in Latin," he said, "and also one of the most famous. I know the translation police will be looking, as well as good readers." He peered through his wire rim glasses, and read, "A joy it will be one day, perhaps, to remember even this." He looked at the page for a moment. " It is about loss, about overcoming the worst," he said, "but the word 'perhaps' is important. It may not be a joy to remember. It may be a bloody misery."

From Ann -
"You mentioned the other night that your head and your legs have to come together to have a great race day. Well, it seems there's a third factor at play here...your experience, or as we veteran racers say, your racing age. You know this already, but you will learn the most about racing from the races you lost, and you will come to cherish those moments because that's when you grew as a person. Those are the times you'll keep coming back to and saying to yourself "I've been here before, I know what to do now". So keep your chin up because you know next year it's going to waaaay easier and sometimes you gotta ask yourself, where's the fun in that? We race to learn about ourselves. Enjoy your loss and know you've discovered something new about you."

And the third -
the photo above, this morning a climb up Logie from the north, a 12%+ twist in the road - always grounding.