This will be short, I am on my out the door to work. After my last 12 shift yesterday, I decided to take my new bike out for its maiden voyage. Frankly, I was pretty nervous since it was my first time on a time trial bike. I knew it would handle totally different than anything i have ever ridden before.

I was right.

I wobbled, was shaky, and had some basic control issues initially. I even accidentally spun the chain off the sprocket due to improper shifting. It all comes with the territory.

Over the course of 15 miles, I finally started getting comfortable and more efficient. To compare this machine to my mountain bike is like comparing a 747 to an F-16. What really took courage was to go for short distances in the aero position (to be down on the middle bars with your elbows on the pads - see last blog for pics). Once I got over that, I really jammed. On. A few stretches, I really flew. It was what I really wanted to do. Got up to a comfy 25 mph on the Garmin.

Then it happened.

I hit a patch of gravel and the next moment found myself on the side of the road with a flat tire. Wow, that was a short ride.

I called my rescue crew to come get me...aka my wife...to the rescue :)

As I stood on the side of the road, I really felt embarrassed, in the middle of nowhere with this really cool bike that I should be riding and felt like a spectacle.

Then it dawned on me, what is the weight limit on this??? After some research, the weight limit is ME. I am at the top end of what the bike will handle and it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the excess weight on the racing tires provoked an untimely blowout.

That hurt. I haven't been limited by my weight for so long I forgot what it was like. The feeling hasn't changed, it was like a knife in the gut.

I wrestled with it for a few minutes then made my decision..... Hey, whatever. We will go forward. This is the biggest victory of all. In the past, that would have driven me deeper.

Our self image gets so tied up in making sure that absolutely nothing goes wrong in the thing we are trying to do because a perceived failure would be more than we can bear. So we stand back and do nothing.

Doing nothing exacts a high price on the soul.

Today, I am a champion, not because I have never experienced failure and hurt, but because I have learned that to live the dream, you have to be willing to fail, learn, develop an action plan to get around it, then forge ahead.

To embrace failure is the foundation of success because it is one of the main ingredients. The moment we accept that and divorce our self image from this inevitable process, we win.

I will be an Ironman.