There is great value in things that take a long time

I have started riding my bike a little bit more, as much as my hip and schedule will allow for, and it is weird. My brain still thinks that I am fast and that nothing has changed in the last 1.5 years since I got injured and stopped training. Because of this, I have a tendency to underestimate the difficulty of the road ahead of me in order to get back to racing.

But actually, silly brain, if you stop riding your bike for 1.5 years, you get pretty slow. In fact, I think my quads are half the size they used to be.

So I have a tendency to say "I am slow" a lot, which isn't to mean that I am extra hard on myself, but a reminder that I have a lot of work to do and that I need to remember how slow I am so that I don't get lazy. It's for motivational purposes.

So here are the facts:

1. I am currently very slow.

2. I have a lot of work to do to get back to where I was.

3. This is going to be difficult.

4. This is going to take a long time.

5. It is going to take me an especially long time to get my bike handling skills back.

6. That is okay.

7. There is great value in things that take a long time.

This is a lesson in patience and in remembering that I can learn a lot from things that are difficult. I just need to accept the difficulty because otherwise the task at hand seems too daunting.