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| Photo by bahumut - instagram.com/bahumut/ |
Quietly ensconced in my loft. I am back from the biggest cyclocross race on my schedule, Jingle Cross. Steel cut oats with cinnamon, cherries and walnuts are bubbling on the stove top, my sustenance before I head out for a ride on this uncharacteristically warm December day. I have a few hours to reflect before I hit the ground running in search of work.
In the past, athletic achievement has been the gauge of how I was doing on the grand scale. It was the one area of my life that I felt that I could shape and as long as I had that by the tail, the rest was gravy.
But the reality was that the balance was off. Way off.
During race #1 on Friday night at Jingle Cross, I achieved my very first dfl… Dead Fucking Last. The starkness of it came flooding in as I stood at the foot of the monster known as Mt. Krumpit. Unable to walk for a minute as the mud had turned my feet into heavy birds nests. While children heckled me from the side of that long muddy climb, I stood there looking up, feeling defeated and wondering if this was how it was all going to end. Did I somehow miss my cue to bow out gracefully?
I was not having fun. I was not in peak condition. Mentally, I had been checked out for the entire season no matter how hard I kept trying to kick-start it. And there in that mud hole, I finally gave myself permission to stop the self-flogging.
Sometimes all the hard work and preparation in the world won't stop things from happening and the harder you hold on and fight, the further away you find yourself from the goal. It’s the end of the season and I know that a serious reframing of this entire experience is necessary.
Perspective.
This was the year that everything ground down to a halt. Nothing, absolutely nothing has come easy to me. As the silver in my hair increased, I turned my attention from all the usual avenues of escape and finally stopped running, or at least running as fast, from the work I knew I was going to have to do. The inner work.
Yeah… that work.
So, athletics, my buffer and anesthetizer, for the first time ever… has had to take a back seat while I am figuring out a new way of thinking, and being, with myself and others.
A year and a half ago, the beginning of the relinquishment of the demons that have driven me, felt like death. This year, I have been learning how to think for myself apart from my activities, or a job or my relationships. That isn’t to say I can’t return and enjoy sport. It just needs to be better balanced when I do come back. And, I will be back, after the reasons I do this in the first place get a serious retooling. That goes for the other areas of my life as well.
This is a good place… the correct place for me to be right now.
