Motivation and delusion are two very similar notions. The little pep talks we give ourselves are almost always a product of wishful thinking at the very least. When we say to ourselves things like “Get up to that break” or “Get in position for the sprint” or “Try to wear pants all day today”; we are not demanding success of ourselves as we are creating an aspiration.

The real enemy of these delusions are not failure, but reality. Failure can be reasoned away: “The break worked against me”; “I got boxed in the sprint” or “Pants are itchy and the world needs to see my upper thighs.” But once one starts looking at circumstances realistically, motivation and delusion have nowhere to hide.

Personally, I’ve developed a pretty good relationship with reality, we’ve been sharing custody of whimsy and things have been good as of late. I still have dalliances with delusion, but that’s because I’m a pretend bike racer, and a PBR without delusion is just a guy out riding a bike in logo covered underwear.

Saturday morning I called upon my reserves of delusion to go out and play in my be-logoed underwear. As of late, my bike racing season has been playing the role of litter box to the tabby cat that is my competition. Reality would dictate that this is due to my slowness and oldness, and there’s a good argument for this being the case. I decided to remedy this “under tabby” situation by racing in the masters field on Saturday morning, because reality.

Master racing, for those who aren’t familiar with it, is aged-based. The field on Saturday morning was for racers above the age of forty. Masters in general are experienced racers who have faced the reality of racing against those who are younger than all the popular music they still enjoy. Masters have the knowledge to race intelligently tinged with the fatigue built up over decades of riding in circles. Master races are generally raced craftily but at a slightly slower pace. And this was perfect for me after what seemed like a month of Mondays.

After “stretching” in the trees due to a locked bathroom, our Rockstar team lined up with myself and three other team elders: Jaime, Aaron and Pascal, who is on blistering form and won at Battenkill the previous weekend. We’ve done quite a bit of racing together, and we usually don’t need to do a lot of pre-race planning because we only need to take a look around to see how the day will unfold. The pack was a pretty large one, and there were three or four riders who I knew would be animators, so it would be a crime against reality to not keep an eye on those riders.

And that’s what happened. The race was at a slightly quick pace, with any lulls prompting attacks. I was in two of these attacks with two of the animators who could potentially win the race. Mark A and David T. These attacks were vicious, terrible moments that I am still trying to put behind me that also happened to be unsuccessful, as we were three men doing a five man job. Aaron jumped away and stayed off the front alone for a lap or so, but he was dragged back also.

And so we rolled along, I decided that I would play for a sprint, as that seemed to be the inevitable conclusion to the fable we were fabricating. In a normal sprint against people who don’t remember who Pablo Cruise is, I have almost no chance whatsoever, but experience has taught me that I can count on placing in at least the top ten in a masters sprint, and with a little luck, I can hit the top five. So I drew upon my delusion reserves and told myself to get into position. There were a few riders I knew to mark in the sprint, the aforementioned Mark A and another whose I’m name not going to share with you because I’ve said too much already.

As we rolled to the finish, I was in good position going through Summer Stage. Aaron had just done a great pull at the front to stretch the pack out, and I was on the wheels I thought would be successful. As we went past the boathouse, I was still in good position and I had enough time to delude myself into thinking that I might do really well. As we hit Cat’s Paw, Mark A made the corner. And I did not. Mark ended up winning (I’m not delusional enough to think that I would’ve got around him at the line), and due to my loss of momentum, I ended up ninth, but you know, if I hadn’t been boxed and if I really work on sprint this week, I’m sure that I could…