Perfection

What memory is calling a first ever, last night I DNF’d my workout. DID NOT FINISH. Feeling lousy pretty much all day, dizziness, chronic fatigue, lethargy, chest pain, the usual cast of symptomatic suspects, I tried to rally in the saddle of a 2x20 set. Not having a morning class or workout usually allows a greater wattage number for the evening session, so I started with a robust value and a positive attitude, cranking the tunes and setting the fan on high. Halfway through the first set I had to gear down and hope that a speedier cadence would keep the hope of success alive. Even the Giro d’Italia video mixed with some nasty blues from Joe Bonamassa, Ray Lamontagne and Lucinda Williams wasn’t enough to keep my heart from what felt like failure and legs from feeling like overcooked vermicelli. I took the obligatory five minute break and re-started the second set with a renewed fervor despite the obvious non-recovery heart-rate metric. Made it through almost twelve minutes of agony at less than ten miles per, when the best intelligent response was overwhelmingly agreed to by the inner management committee. The action was curtailing the workout in order to live to fight another day. 

And so I dejectedly hopped off my bike, drained the last of the electrolyte mix, turned off the fan and lowered the stereo volume. Still my heart pumped like that of a hummingbird. 

Last night was the usual mixture of evening news (please vote the scum out), Husky football highlights (there were a few), and two episodes of Season Four of my all-time fave TV series, 24 (Jack and three choppers full of Marines rescue The SecDef and his daughter - Jack’s lover - Audrey). I am reading Neville Shute’s second most popular novel, A Town Like Alice, in bed as I try to control my breathing towards a more relaxed state in order to sleep. A tactic that usually provides an acceptable degree of recovery.

But not this time. I was up at 0600 to prep for our morning weight session, still feeling like an elephant was tap dancing on my chest and now my neck, shoulders and head are throbbing in sync. God I feel horrible. A weak and weary shadow of my former self. 

A thought enters and I consider it. Yesterday when we discussed the adaptation principle as applied to exercise physiology, and the corresponding phenomena that this sometimes plays out in our ever increasing ability to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, our familiarity with the suffering necessary to achieve any type of sports success, could it be that I am getting used to this because I train so frequently with its physical counterpart? I simply accept the chronic symptoms as now normal? 

That is exactly what I am doing right now at this very moment. I feel like I have six hundred tons of mucous in my head, my ears are echoing a sixty-cycle hum and my thumbs are both numb. Then there is the heart issue, it being at the bottom of all this, or at the top of the list, if you want to try to put a positive glass half full spin on it. 

Regardless, we had a good workout. I tried to engage Junior in conversation as we lifted, stretched and planked on the difference between excellence and perfection. 

This will never be perfect. But it can be excellent. Of course the Zen in me wants to counter that seeing this imperfection as perfect is an excellent point of view. 

Perfectly true I muse. Excellent. You may be a shadow of a once powerful light, but you are still on the beach.