The Bubble

Notes to self: No junk food Wednesday. Drink lots of water. Recover from and prepare for. You started with smoke, let's finish with fire. Be yourself. Embrace the reality that you are not perfect. As an example of this I use myself with the following simile: I am to perfect what white bread is to pizza. I make mistakes, many. Some, I have repeated due to ignorance, stubbornness or sloth. Others I enjoy and will pay (gladly) the price to err. The bureaucrats call it a sin tax. This phenomena pops up regularly in our training and racing. I am not a great swimmer. You might have heard. I can and do, however, ride and run fairly well. Which always makes my triathlons a real test because of the mistake I make in thinking that I can bike past or run down the faster swimmers in my age standard. Sometimes it works and I forget about the embarrassment of being almost last out of the water. But when I miss a win by two or three minutes because I spotted Mr. Fish five to ten from T1, the errors of my ways start to haunt like Freddy Krueger on Halloween. 

The counsel (as told into mirror) is to practice your weakness. If you have power issues on hills, and who doesn't, you should consider adding progressive resistance. If you have spinning issues you might want to rehearse your high RPMs, if you want to race long you need to ride long. Same with fast and same with strong. This isn't advanced astrophysics, it is simple. And in its simplicity comes its dynamic. We must repeat until adaptation is complete. That might take a year. It might take ten. You might never get it BUT the act of practice gets you a little closer. Hour by hour, day by day, year by year and race by race.

This is known as the road. The journey to there. Your path. It is imperative, pilgrim, that you be gentle with yourself along this trail as one can easily succumb to frustration, burnout or injury or, worse, boredom, apathy or disillusionment. You must keep the faith, stay motivated and remember who you are and why you are here, doing this. You will never be perfect. One day, with any luck at all, you might put together a very good race, but a perfect one? Odds are against. You are still the dark horse running at 1,000 to 1. Regardless, always bet on you. Big money on me. 

But never give up. Do not quit under any circumstance. Enjoy the ride. Be in the bubble, bask in the light. Toss a little love at it. Feed the fun. It is you being you. Every time you engage in a training session or an event you demonstrate to the universe your understanding of the value of life. How big is that? It is money. YOU are money. 

If you pay attention and listen closely you might even hear the Cosmos respond by showing your weakness back to you. This is the way friends talk to one another. Upon completion of every race (in or out of the bubble) I hear an ethereal baritone whisper laughingly, "Dude, your swim!" 

I know, I know, I know.