Do You Want It?

***Jay Schippers at Sea Otter 2007***







Lyd and I were up late Monday night after the horrible defeat of OSU. Hammered on wine, we began to discuss motivation. While playing her guitar, she remarked about how close she was to the big time, and I asked a simple question... "Do you want it?". If you ask that question, and you get any answer other than "yes," that should tell you something. Any answer other than "yes" means that you do NOT in fact want it bad enough, and that answer has to come fast and hard, with no reservation and no qualifiers. YES is the only answer, period.







***Bert and Papo slugging it out in Arizona desert last year****



Mountain bikers deal with the question of "do you want it?" often. Not just in racing, but in everyday trail negotiation. Everyone who rides dirt, regardless of talent or trail, has a technical section that challenges them to the core. "How bad do I want this?" you ask, right before the front wheel drops off a large boulder and into a hairpin, rutted, cliffedge singletrack switchback.





***Lyd wanted curls bad enough, and BANG! Curls.****






As a competitive cyclist, you ask yourself how bad you want it with each and every vomit-inducing pedal-stroke up that hill. Sometimes you want it so bad you end up crashing in flames, or blowing up too early. At least at the end of the day, you can say you wanted it bad enough to go for it, and have no regrets..left NOTHING on the table.
Who wants to be that guy on the porch at 65, bitching and crying about what you COULD have been, when the chances to prove it litter the roadside that is your life?




***Lyd's flier for last night's outing..she wants it, I think!***



So?

How bad do you want it?

C