Zen and the Art of Speedskating

The crazed, clawing the walls, freaky, I can’t live unless I get my daily endorphin fix is officially over.. I have spent the last 3 days working on all sorts of things, but I don’t have the addicts craving, the rhytmn in my head and heart to go work out… My coaches wanted 4 weeks of downtime from me, I don’t know why 4 weeks was the magic number, but I gave it to them, Week one was easy, I was tired and emotionally trashed, it was easy to rest, weeks 2 and 3, it was hard to sit still, but there has suddenly been a dramatic change from week 3 to week 4

In the middle of week 4, now I just want to lie around, keep working on learning CSS, take long walks, read blogs on the computer, and do the dishes while listening to BBC Radio. I am not a body anymore; I am a brain with feet… The dog takes my spot in bed the moment I get out of it, gives me a furry look, and sometimes its hard not to return. Lilly was very abused before she came into our lives, and now, seeing her all sprawled out and making happy grunting dog sighs, that is rewarding.

I feel the cables, pistons, and reactors within me slowly disappearing under the surface. When I am training my hardest its almost like I am closest to seeing the raw blueprint of how my body really is. I can feel every muscle and small flexor in my legs & hips as independent entities moving with and against each other, I can feel the anglings of the vertebrae in my back, the sheath of connections, muscular and tendons, that keeps me walking upright, and keeps me crouched over in the unnatural skating position. I can feel the astonishing slosh of energy within me, blood and muscle, like tides moving in and out. I eat, and the grand drug of good food, slowly changes my aura (ok, muscle glycogen levels), and readies me for another challenge.

But they are gone, cables & pistons, the blueprint has receded from view, it’s a memory, not a “right now” truth. I miss it. I frigign love it.

Next week I start up again, lots of easy cycling, high rep lifting, and trying to remold my body, to learn how to skate with a more powerful “cat back” instead of the “cyclists flat back” that I developed during a decade of intense bike racing. To learn to skate with my pelvis rotated forward, not down like on a bike.

Technique technique technique… yeah, that is what this whole next year will be about, it’s how I will go faster. But I love this path, this experience, the gift of understanding the blueprint of myself.

Filed under: from home