Sunday, January 5, 2020

Doin the Hand-Jive on TV

5.

The simple fact that it is not a cover - makes it the perfect one. Moreover, I was fully intending to continue my practice, without the reminder and its heavy-handed forbearance. Relax, I consul myself, let it go. All things considered, and they were, this was the best situation one might have hoped for. Maintain your training and carry on with your passion. Roger that!

Walking back to the cabin, the one I was just hours earlier ready to implode in order to leave no trace, I return to my breaths. Inhaling deeply, holding abdominaly for a four-count and exhaling through my mouth. The syncopation with steps along the crushed-gravel pathway creates the back-beat for an improv jam. Remembering the miles in boots and utes (the reference to utilities and not to a football team from Utah) where the troops march in time, chanting with silly rhyming couplets, “I know a cat named way out Willy’, he was doing it now, ‘He got a cool little chick named Rocking Billie.’  Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch-crunch.

Sunday mid-morning and time for a run. The long, steady slog designed to stimulate the automated transfer of fuel from the carbohydrate tank to the stored fat tank. The stored fat tank seemed to be growing in capacity on an annual basis.  I take a look at the wall calendar on the way out the door and see that the date circled in June, the 19th, is less than five months away. The red circle represents a return to the racing distance known affectionately, in some circles, as the Half-Ironman, a 1.2 mile swim, 56, or in this case a 58 mile bike and a 13.1 mile run. It has been five years since my last half, he considered, recalling the associated pain and intense suffering self-imposed by insufficient training and race preparation. A lesson well learned and easily juxtaposed to many other areas in life and especially in his livelihood. I live in a world of no-excuses!

Seriously, he concluded, how difficult can it be to show up on event day, or any other day for that matter, prepared and ready to rock? One foot after another. Start and keep going. Sing your song, play that tune.

“Willie and Billie got married last fall,
Had to live with his sisters and that ain’t all,
Daddy got famous and it’s plain to see,
he’s doing that hand-jive on TV.’

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