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.