End of the Year Diary...

    I know this is long overdue, but it needed to be written once I had made up my mind on where my life would go.

    This year I had a long season, a long year, and it contained more low points than I care to remember. By the time September rolled around I hated my bike, I didn’t want to touch it and I left it in my bike bag for three weeks when I arrived home. What lead me to this point? Someone who loved the bike passionately? The answer is environmental.

    See, I have the belief that your environment has a lot to do with how things happen to you. I arrived in Europe thinking I had placed myself in a good environment that was positive, where I had support to develop, solid advice, and people who respected me, but I was wrong. I gave a lot of people this year the benefit of the doubt, shrugged off their insults, and tried to keep to myself. After a while I just couldn’t stand the audacity of people who would look you in the face and try to be nice, but the second you turned your back they were spewing snide comments and cutting down on everyone around them to make themselves feel better. The day I left this environment was the day it all changed.

    I arrived home bitter, the thought of cycling left a foul taste in my mouth and I didn’t want anything to do with the sport. All I had for 6 months was consistent shit talk, after a while you can’t help but start to doubt yourself. I sat down and talked with my coach and mentor, Steve, and he began to put things into perspective for me. I visited with my old teammates and relearned why I rode a bike. See, the environment I was in took every ounce of fun out of riding a bike. I ride a bike because it’s fun.

    Someone I once highly respected told me this year that riding a bike shouldn’t be fun, it should be hard. That was the day I lost respect for this person. See, anything you decide to pursue in life at the level and commitment I have with cycling better damn well be fun or you will drive yourself into the spiral of misery I started down this year. Every great champion of cycling does it because they love it.

    So I started to ride my bike again in mid-October, but only when I wanted to. At first I went out for short rides by myself, then some longer rides followed. I went out on those rides by myself, alone to think about things and what I wanted out of life. There were so many times I debated quitting and just having a ‘normal’ life, but I couldn’t. There was a deep seeded need inside of me to continue that drove me to get back on my bike. No person or place would tear me from my passion for cycling.

    So I began to train on my own terms, no longer blindly following the advice of other whom I thought to have all the answers, and found my fitness slowly improving. I began to no longer think of my life without cycling. I made a choice to pursue my cycling fully, truly, and on my own terms.

    I cannot begin to tell you how much more passion I have for the bike now. I look back and can’t believe the way I allowed things to progress and the person I was just three months ago, so bitter and unhappy. I have to say I have changed. The Gregg Germer of 2003 was just a glitch, a shell of the reality of who I was. I know now I can do great things with my life, with my cycling, but not on someone else’s terms, but mine.

    So there is my end of the year diary. I am happy to report my two-wheeled friend and me are one good terms now even though I kept him locked up in a bag for three weeks.

    I know not what the future brings; only what I can bring to the future.

    Tot Ziens,

    -Gregg Germer-