Metaphors

Everyday I'm amazed at how well cycling has become a metaphor for my life. You have your ups and your downs, you have good sensations and bad ones, you have a tail wind or a head wind. Sometimes life can be like an uphill slog into a head wind and other times you're coasting.

Some days I wake up and I'm just checking the boxes. I'm not really paying attention to the trip I'm on, the scenery, or the good conversation that may ensue - I'm here but not really. I think everyone has these days, but when I get outside I'm forced into the present. I'm forced to pay attention. I'm forced to see myself for what I am in that moment and that's not something I take lightly.

It's hard. Life is hard. Cycling is hard.

But cycling is also fun; life is fun; being myself is fun.

I can't help but feel sad for people who don't embrace themselves once in a while, take everything less seriously just for a minute, especially themselves. It's so fucking easy to be hard on yourself. It's easy to resent. It's easy to be angry. It's easy to let other people get under your skin. It's easy to let people take up real estate in your head.

Experience tells me the hardest things in life are humility, apology, and letting go. I think they are all interrelated.

Some days the hardest thing I have to do is step outside my door and throw my leg over the top tube. Some days the hardest thing I have to do is run some massive experiment with tons of moving parts, coordinating with lots of different people in different time zones and different cultures and simultaneously juggling the associated bureaucratic bullshit.

The bottom line is that some days are easy and some days are hard. Everyday no matter what, is a gift. Being present for that gift, the chain of chemical reactions that leads to consciousness and thus the experience of now, it's pretty fucking awesome. Hands down the best trip I've ever been on, and I've been on a lot of trips.

Some days I have to tell myself it's just going to be an uphill slog into a headwind, no big deal, probability is that I experienced that same feeling on my little jaunt out on the bicycle before work that day - I'm mentally prepared.

Spinning

The easy day after burrying the hatchet for six hours; the trip to the coffee shop to procrastinate before work; the sunny spring morning the day before your first big race of the season; the sanity ride to ease out of work mode for an hour; the social ride you don't do often enough; the mellow trip rolling down the coast with the wind at your back; the victory lap after a hard crit; evening out freshly glued tubulars on new wheels; the sun is setting, what better way to watch than from the top of a mountain?

To much trouble, I'm out

I heard a quote of Lance Armstrong from a friends book. Lance was getting an interview set up by a reporter. There was a very small hickup in the setup and Lance sends a one sentence reply back to the reporter "To much trouble, I'm out."

As an athlete you have to strike a balance in everything. You need to shred stress where it isn't necessary, and you need to prioritize what is important. Unlike Lance, this isn't always possible in everyday life. I can't, for example, just say "To much trouble, I'm out" when I have a job to do. Unlike a professional athlete who gets paid to train, shedding all outside stresses is a must because it would be detrimental to their paycheck. I on the other hand, need to take on those stresses no matter what and still find the legs at the end of the day to get outside to do what I love - even if I have had "one of those days."

It's my knee jerk reaction, almost instinctual... it's an end of the work day superman-phone-booth-clothing-change that has become ritual. I tear off my work clothes, get in the sham, and forget about all the other bullshit in life for three or four hours. I've been at work since 7AM, up since 5AM, I've done house chores, made food for the day, did my job to the best of my ability and now it's time to make room for myself. It's 3PM, I feel good because my job fills in the little 1st place-like finishes that I need to feel complete, making my bike ride icing on the proverbial cake.

This has been one of those testing weeks for me. I did not feel like my usual happy self. I felt like I was falling behind everywhere, and the level of stress I was taking on became too much and my riding suffered. Not only that but my personal life suffered. In fact, I suffered in almost all aspects of my life. That's ok though, because as a cyclist suffering is something I'm good at. And the more I ride the better I become at seeing what that suffering is and learning to cope. That's the great thing about this past week: I survived and learned something about myself in the process, what could possibly be more awesome than that?

Well, great sex is definitely better than that, just sayin'.

I know and am grateful that 90% of the time I realize that life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it and I react 90% of the time with laughter, because you can't sweat the small stuff and in the larger scope of it all, it's all small stuff.