On Having Blind Spots, Becoming Envious, Feeling Grateful and Attaining Cycling Success

By Kevin Kolodziejski 

Did you ever hear a line from a song and feel as if it had been written about you?

That’s happened to me a few times. The most recent occurred when I heard Don Henley’s “Heart of the Matter.” The line in question suddenly struck me as a suitable summation of my present cycling situation. “All the things I thought I knew, I’m learning again.”

Okay, so maybe I’m going a little bit overboard here. Any guy who’s won dozens of races and a statewide rider-of-the-year award can’t suddenly become a cycling estúpido. But un poco? To that, I confess mucho and willingly do so to get at the heart of the matter. That you, too, have to have what we’ll kindly call cycling blind spots.

If you recognize them, your cycling will only get better.

How to Spot a Cycling Blind Spot

My bet is that you’ll be able to recognize them by thinking long and hard about what makes you you. About what’s at the core of your personality. Those traits you display both on and off the bike.

For instance, I have a buddy who after races must’ve told me 20 times that he started to go with what became the winning breakaway but then for some reason held back. He’s the same buddy who advised me to buy stock in an up-and-coming company twice. It was damn good advice, too. If I would’ve only taken it, I’d have a boatload of money.

But my buddy didn’t invest in either up-and-comer himself. Clearly, one of his blind spots is his inability to trust his gut. What adversely affects another rider’s gut is, in fact, another fine example.

Blind-Spot Example #2

There’s a club rider I know who told me years ago why he gave up on racing. Doing so on a Saturday, he explained, made him nervous that morning, most of Friday, the better part of Thursday night — and that nervous time included all sorts of intestinal discomfort. Yet when the club rides get peppy, it’s apparent he has what it takes to do well in road races. That makes the hardcore racers who occasionally take part in the club rides absolutely baffled as to why he doesn’t. But I’m not.

Not when I know he’s been on blood pressure medication for years, the need for which in my non-medical opinion stems from his inability to control his nerves.

I think you get the blind-spots picture now, so I’ll pull out the palette once more and paint again for you. Only this canvas will be colored in shades of green, for the goal of these brushstrokes is to make you envious, and for the envy to be directed toward me. A 65-year-old guy who still feels the effects of two fractured femurs, a fractured pelvis, a broken right elbow, and a broken left forearm. A guy who is bothered by the fact that all the aforesaid and Father Time have combined to greatly diminish his ability to pedal with decent power while seated on a bicycle.

So why in the world would you ever envy me? Because I’ve become, as I wrote to a ROUVY representative in a recent email, “totally hooked” on a way to ride that I wanted absolutely no parts of until about 18 months ago.

‘Totally Hooked’: A Cycling Feeling Worthy of Envy

I shared just that sentiment in my response to his email. He works for a marketing agency that works with the cycling app ROUVY and had thanked me for writing about it so glowingly, albeit belatedly.

It was more than nine months ago when I mentioned in my weekly health and fitness newspaper column that I had been using ROUVY once or twice a week and loving it for a whole host of reasons. The biggest one being a direct byproduct of my age, my injuries — and my pride.

For there still are times I ride the roads with relatively younger guys — a few who are former pros or prior national amateur champions. If they decide to put the hammer down, my pride takes a pounding like a ten-penny nail. And I won’t lie. I still find it hard to forget the time when I was the one in possession of the hammer. Yet no matter how many times I tell myself I should be able to crop out getting dropped from life’s big picture, not being able to keep pace when it’s a competitive bothers me long after the fact.

Now I’m willing to be uncomfortably confessional about all this because doing so could help you. For that to happen, however, I need to explain why I’m so thankful for ROUVY.

Giving Thanks for ROUVY

For if I get my mind right, select one of ROUVY’s mountainous routes, do more standing than sitting, and give the effort my all, I don’t get pounded like a ten-penny nail.  I get success. Sweet sweet success, according to the ROUVY Leaderboard. Consequently, as I wrote in that email, “I’m totally hooked on ROUVY — to the point I sometimes hope for bad weather to justify riding inside.” This, despite the fact, “I’m totally turned off by most [new bicycle] tech.”

The way I feel about much of the new bicycle tech means I need to tell you about a guy who truly deserves my thanks, Lars Hundley.  Yes, that Lars Hundley, the owner of this website, RoadBikeRider.com. In the exchange of emails about two years ago, he offered to send me a barely used smart trainer, a Wahoo Kickr circa 2019, for nothing more than the cost of shipping. Since my “dumb” trainer, a Cateye Cyclosimulator circa 1999, was no longer functioning properly — and it is the twenty-first century — I eventually took the offer. That it took me months to do so, however, is now as much a mystery to me as it must be to you.

To Eliminate Any Mystery

To eliminate any element of mystery to this article, let me be clear. Even though it’s obvious I’d highly recommend you do so if you were to ask me, I did not write this article so you subscribe to ROUVY. I wrote it because of everything alluded to in the title.

That being able to recognize your blind spots is helpful, being grateful for the fine people in your life is healthful, and — surprisingly enough — being envious can be sometimes be also. All you need to do is recognize envy as just that and then transform it into positive action.

Action like that leads you to living better, feeling better, and attaining cycling success.

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Kevin Kolodziejski began his writing career in earnest in 1989. Since then he’s written a weekly health and fitness column and his articles have appeared in magazines such as “MuscleMag,” “Ironman,” “Vegetarian Times,” and “Bicycle Guide.” He has Bachelor and Masters degrees in English from DeSales and Kutztown Universities.

A competitive cyclist for more than 30 years, Kevin won two Pennsylvania State Time Trial championships in his 30’s, the aptly named Pain Mountain Time Trial 4 out of 5 times in his 40s, two more state TT’s in his 50’s, and the season-long Pennsylvania 40+ BAR championship at 43.