Welcome to Monday

It is 1053 on Monday, December 9, 2019. So much has already happened today that I am at a loss to pick one of them and try to extrapolate a lesson, or failing that, simply tell a story. I will split the difference and try to do both. 

I kept the reading light on way too late last night, thanks to the fascinating story being told to me by Garth Stein in A Sudden Light, and also partially due to the most recent trend of delayed muscular soreness (and cardiological response) after a two hour Zone 3 ride. I hadn’t parlayed the overnight rest into adequate recovery. Meaning the alarm sounded earlier than my lower back, right hamstring and wounded ego would have liked. But it is Monday morning and we have a workout scheduled for 0655. On my way to meet up for the session my phone sounds for the second time. It is my brother asking politely if he can borrow my truck. The same truck that has been sitting in the driveway for six months awaiting another round of maintenance. It was just two days ago that I jotted notes to my mechanical self to add some elbow grease and raise her from the near-dead. Lesson one: Procrastination kills. 

I meet my brother and give him the keys to Whitey, my Ford Transit Connect, and text my dear neighbor asking for a ride to spin class. The rigid structure of my routine has been destroyed like an unsuspecting  battleship attacked from above by a surprise air-raid. I try my best to bring a measure of calm to the chaos, watching with interest the amount of grace I can bring to this fire. I immediately complain to my neighbor as we hustle trough traffic, that it would have been nice had the recipient of my calm generosity accepted the keys with a simple than you. Lesson two: It doesn’t matter, the right thing was done, and now move along. 

We get to the club where I am startled to realize that I have no plans for the class. True, I mashed together a fun little set-list for the occasion, but what we actually DO with it, needs to be literally, at this late hour, pulled from a hat. Abra fucking Cadabra, I almost say aloud in the locker room. 

It is time to start and I realize that this has become a challenge. A personal one. It is time to draw on my almost twenty years of experience and, as the term suggests, wing it and improvise. We begin and it feels like something ‘interesting’ is about to take place. The parenthetical I just used is because I initially wanted to say ‘extraordinary’, but that might be too much a superlative so I throttled her back with a couple of cheap apostrophes. Please pardon my punctuation. We begin. I am rolling into the opening monologue fully cognizant that I have no idea where it is going to end. I also know that in order to lead by example and volunteer to go first demands that I must commit and convey. Commit to the excitement and challenge of not knowing what awaits behind the next corner, up the next hill or at the top of the mountain, and convey that sense of wonder, challenge and enthusiasm to the class, my teammates. The tactic I will use, I hear a voice suggest, is that sincerity and total belief in the process. That a level of enjoyment and a commitment to the energies and joy in the attainment of the efforts required are, well, it. That is it. This is it. It is the intensity of effort. We are rocking through it as if it was the most important thing in the world. Which it is, I emphasize, in an Eureka moment of endorphin-powered bliss. We finish with a flurry of powerful movement and it is over. One hour of high intensity cardio. I start to clean up and one of our regulars, a veteran of at least a dozen years, approaches with the compliment that that was among the best. One of the best. In twelve years of three times per week spinning. Lesson Three: Don’t get used to being unprepared. Monday:

Procrastination kills.

It is not a requirement for others to appreciate your efforts. 

Be prepared. 

Welcome to Monday. You may have to carry your bike today.