I’m at the station looking down tracks,
can’t tell if I’m leaving,
or just getting back.
I wrote those sophomoric lyrics thirteen years ago as part of a video project. The project eventually evolved into something less ambitious, a triathlon documentary titled Farrago, and the song dropped into the waste bin of neglect, lost and forgotten. The appeal of the tune was its backbeat, bass line and gritty vocal, a bourbon and cigarettes at 3am female voice wailing tones of loneliness, despair and desperation. Lucinda Williams nails my vision of the tune nicely, for the sake of musical comparison.
I bring this up today because this mornings spin session was based upon, as many in the past have been, on time and space. The glorious Ms Williams was the musical catalyst that transported me back in time as we executed a rather tasty tribute to the here and now.
The theme, in conjunction with the numerological time stamp of the day (7.14.18) was simple, yet as all good repeats, aggressive, challenging and relentless. I tried to mix up the recover sequence to add an additional degree of difficulty, asking the group to consider both the power of (and in) the now and our secondary directive of ‘riding away from the comfort zone.’ I asked for presence and commitment. I believe that one can commit to the commitment, a skill that can carry one onward when the going gets tough. Here is the protocol:
10 min warm up.
4 min seated @ 14 (intensity as proxy for today)
3 min standing @ 18 (resistance for the year)
2 min seated 7/120 (July going fast)
1 min standing push (effort, power right now)
Done five times provides a dynamite hour session.
It was in after the first repetition that I launched into story-time. Story one was the classic example, I changed the names to protect the innocent, of the poor soul lost in spatio-temporal displacement, anxious and fearful about the future and angry and guilt-ridden over the past. Kinda spoils the present of the present, no?
Story number two was an anecdote from my actual racing experience. As I confessed in yesterday’s testimony, I am not a big fan of the big swim. Last year was no exception to my response to the first 100 meters of any triathlon. After a few strokes I hear, very clearly hear, my inner coach suggesting that I should have practiced swimming more. Happens every time. And then a funny thing happens.
I quickly recognize the error of my ways and forget about the things I didn’t do to focus on the things I AM DOING. Compounding this mistake is my tendency to project how I will hammer the bike once I finally make it to shore, again removing my presence as that of a fish and projecting to that of a cowboy on a wild mustang galloping at top speed from the scene of a bank hoist. JUST SWIM.
And like a good little Buddha, not looking forward to the future nor backwards at the past, I balance my stroke to provide maximum efficiency, relax my breathing and finish with a splash, no doubt delighting the suddenly silent inner coach.
I had a buddy, an Air Force pilot, tell me once that he found swimming meditative and relaxing. I find similar sensations in cycling, every once in a while I find a brief groove in the water, but no where near as often as from the saddle. The flow is important. Time is a trickster. Sometimes one must go gentler to move faster.
We are moving through the progression. We are putting in solid work. Big value is here.
Thinking that we have taken another step towards our fitness and racing goals, I smile with the team. Our success today has come from within. We defined a goal and got after it with gusto, grit and gumption.
I finished a novel last night with eyes tired from a long day. One italicized passage caught my imagination, a Zen master, in assessing a student's lifelong quest for knowledge, wisdom and understanding, prescribed the following:
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