The Meat Grinder

How do things go in your life, how do they work out? Does everything seem to come easy, fall into place, come off as planned? Oh, sure, dinner is done on time, the car starts, you get to work on time, the payments are on time, the check book balances. You sleep well living a low stress, high success life, at least to the standards you are striving for. You planned your work and worked your plan. Now you get to reap the benefits.

But one day, that little bump in the road turns into a cliff and your ACME parachute won't open. You hit the bottom like Wile E Coyote. It's happened to me a couple of times and I lay awake wondering why. In a marriage, it take two to work the plan. But first, you have to agree to a solid plan. If not, life disappears in the distance like the Road Runner after evading one of those ACME traps. That's what happened to me. A lot of people, pretty much everyone I know, plus several fellow bloggers I never met, ask how I handling this hand off from Job.

Well, my head is in a good place, I have supportive friends, and my bikes. Nothing has ever come easy to me, except for the jobs I have had. I think sometimes I made them look so easy due to being very efficient and working a tight plan. I'm a work starter, not harder type of guy. That said,I can grind when it's called for. But not like the guy pictured above.

I was watching the DVD of this year's Criterium International. Jens won again for the 5th time. He summed up his style in one of the short, personal head shot interviews the pepper though out the broadcast. I went something like this:
When I win races, I have to put everybody, including myself, through the meat grinder. Everybody has to, like, suffer, suffer, suffer till they all had enough. That's how I win my races. I just can't jump away in the final kilo and say "thanks for coming".
The guy knows his strengths and how to use them. We can all learn a lot from his racing style and apply it to our lives. Maximize your gains, limit your losses. WWJC. What would Jens Do?