Put away wet

Since mental toughness is my greatest limiter, I have difficulties with the 12 minute muscular endurance type cruise intervals. I like the short, nasty, power and VO2 max type efforts just fine; since they are over before you know it. Those longer digs though, they are long enough for the brain to be a factor. The nagging doubt and nausea associated with longish threshold efforts make them a real pain for me. My head tells me to stop:

Why are you doing this?

What's with the Sally watts?

Why don't you just grow a throat beard and do trail work?

You have nothing to prove.

Your body will never recover from the brutal thrashing that was your 20's.

Take a nap.

Those kinds of things. I read somewhere that counting to 100 over and over again by 5's helps to cope with this, but I keep forgetting to try it, and slow down instead.

Rolling through this weekend, 5 of my 7 hours on the bike must have been at my threshold. It seems nature can be quite the motivator when the weather begins to get violent. Trying to get around, away from, or through a nasty storm with tornado sirens blaring in the background; was quite effective at buffering the pain and doubt from the mind.
I get to build a bike tomorrow night with a warm satisfaction from this weekend's riding. The Kona is being retired. I'm gonna hang my parts on something steel and black, listen to Slayer, and drink beer. If Johnny Cash (before he was, um, dead) and Glen Danzig (before he had to suck in his belly) were to have a duel aboard Single Speeds, they both would have chosen this bike. I'm sure of it.