Some interesting thoughts, thanks.
There was a time when cycling was my escapism from a pretty stressful working life. Now, I work for the same people, having left the fold for a few years, but we have a new name above the door and we're all a lot older and more chilled.
Moving back to racing when I became a, ahem, veteran has led to me finding more improvements than I ever expected. Then, though, I started to break the odd club record and get close to others and I got a bit more visible than I used to be. The other thing is that I am now asking friends and family to help me out on the longer events and I really don't want to waste any of their time if I fail.
The early morning thing is interesting and I have found myself in the - I need to sleep as I have to get up at 4, I can't sleep as I'm putting pressure on myself to sleep - loop. I've only had a couple of early starts this year but it's still a problem.
This leads me onto the next point, though, which is for all of the stress in the run up there is the positive of how you feel when you achieve your goal. I had a little blurb at the roadside a few weeks back when I took a decent chunk off my 50 PB.