it seemed like a good idea to finally get my teams submitted. maybe i should have waited a little longer.

after hours and hours of deliberation, calculations, data analysis, reviews of posts on pdc, meditation, sacrifices to the white and black unicorns, and attempts to see what the future holds using various methods of divination (well, more like 15 minutes of what can barely be described as thinking, downton abbey was on, what did you expect?), i have submitted my FSA-DSm team. my team leader this year is Julien Antomarchi. who is he? i have no idea, but nobody is more aptly named to be put in charge of getting my ants a-marchin’. while he might not score me points, i have no doubt that his leadership will be invaluable. and anyone who brings me donuts is a friend of mine.

shortly after that exercise in futility, i focused on what really matters, FSA-DSw. quite possibly the most beautiful game ever: cycling and ladies, what more can one ask for? well, if Ted found a way to incorporate alcohol into it, it would attain perfection. a little more “thought” went into those selections. my core riders remained the same as last year (probably due to the smaller number of participants in that game, i managed to actually be competitive for a while, so why mess with a slightly above average thing?), but i added a couple of ants (Antonneau and Antoshina, to be exact), as well as a few US riders i’ve noticed over the past year (don’t judge me over the appearance of my team. two wrongs don’t make a right.). the submit button was hit, and now I just have to sit back and watch my team destroy the competition.

this morning I submitted my u25 team. you might call it making the same mistake twice, and you'd probably be right, but half of that team is on my FSA-DSm team. it could be a great year in both competitions or generalized failure, we’ll see.

but what now? should i second guess my decisions? should i relax knowing that the hard work is done? should i ignore the “pick 5” posts that have been posted and still being commented on, as well as the ones to come? should i read them and lose whatever confidence i might have in my picks (do i have any confidence)? should i try to help out people still in the middle of the decision making process? should i laugh at their inability to settle on a team? should i beg Ted to let me redo my teams? what’s taking february 25th so long to get here? i used to think the offseason was the worst time of the year, but really, the time between FSA-DS submission and the start of the (real, ie FSA-DS) season is the worst. what if one of my riders gets injured? maybe iI’ll just tune out anything cycling related for the next ten days. speaking of ten days, was ten Dam a good decision? I’ll never know, not until the end of the year anyway. never know, Navarro? was he a good idea? he’s leaderless, maybe that means he’ll get some results, he’s shown some form in the past. this game needs to start right now if I want to keep my sanity. wait, to start in french is démarrer. should I have picked Demare? maybe i should have put a bit more thought into this. there's always next year, i guess.