Mmmm. Indoor training.

Honestly 'cross fans, after yesterday's sufferfest on the Poorest man, I could not envision getting all my crap on again to brave the sub arctic temps raging here at the moment. Although the day ended up getting 'balmy' to about 34 degrees, I needed to focus today on the workout how the body is feeling....and not the weather surrounding me. I've got enough of that and will have even more in the Motherland in January. And so, I finished my 2nd to last block indoors....at Rally Sport. Home to the fittest soccer moms in the country and less-than 4% body fat tri-psychos....who honestly scare the living bejesus out of me. Today required a deep simulation of a course I would normally do on the road....e.g. a Fruit Loops of the indoors. What I needed was deep sustained power with peppered with high thresholds and tempo mixed in to bridge a flat land speed work out with that of being mired in the mud....or sand. When going through the shark's-teeth like profile I created for myself today, I was envisioning the sandy beach on Mol and what I think it's gonna take to get through it, lap after lap. In my best PowerPoint, this is how I would break down what was going on:
About minute 60 I am certifiably cross eyed. I start thinking of the past 365 days this year. I start thinking that I am so blessed to do this...but will in all sincerity not see this level of focus for a long time to come. I'm not 'PRO'. I can;t believe what people who call cycling their jobs have to do day in and out...and I've mapped something like this, this year...of course beau coups % points below the average PRO requires. The family and most things in my eco-system just will not sustain it again next year. But for now...game on. I think of how happy I am with having been able to pick a point in the distance....put an indelible 'X' on it and not waver from it. That X is Belgium for me, and nothing has been able to blow it up. Nothing could have. What I thought of in that 60th minute today is how I long for my boys to do something like this when they come of age. I could give a crap if they did it on a bike, in a pair of hiking shoes, with a paintbrush and easel...whatever. It's about the journey not the destination....and frankly the destination is sort of irrelevant. It's the journey showing you, you CAN do something if you are committed. I said as much to my wife today as she caught in a moment of hallucination at Rally.

What are you going to do next year, folks? Go to Belgium? Get more proactive about calling your mom and dad? Get involved with your kids school more? Try and upgrade from your current category? Eat better? Laugh more? Work less?

Live better.
Live fuller.
Live more creatively.
Live with blood in your veins, not vinegar.

God, the journey. Sick. Write it down/pin it up/look at it every day. It'll happen.

Seriously, what's yours going to be?

Have fun 'cross fans.