2 Hours

I have 2 hours later today and that's just about the perfect amount of time. That's thanks to my wife for adding a little more inconvenience to her day so I could add a little more convenience to mine. I plan to spend that perfect amount of time out cycling. My first ride of 2012. That's right I didn't go out on New Year's Day. I decided to do something new this New Year and I spent a lot of real good quality time with the wife and I played a little bit with my kids. It was a great New Year's Day.

Now it's been five days since that day and I feel like there is something inside of me that has been clawing and scratching trying to get out for at least four days now. I feel panicky that the soft and weak is taking over for the hard and strong. I can feel the fitness seeping and leaking out of my body as this week has conspired with work and other obligations to keep my body from joining my mind out on the road with my bikes.

Looking at my bikes and thinking about riding them just doesn't seem to bring about the honing of my fitness to that sharp razor's edge that I want to move toward. Even during the winter I feel an urgency to feel alive but it's usually too cold or too windy or much much too snowy or too smoggy or too dark or too something so instead I eat goodies and get fatter and lose fitness. It's a slippery slope that is much too easy for me to slide down.

As each day passes without a ride a little bit of will leaks from my mind just like the fitness is leaking from my body. As my legs and lungs get weaker my mind gets weaker too. My will slowly evaporates in the cold winter air. Tomorrow turns into tomorrow's tomorrow which turns into tomorrow's tomorrow's tomorrow and on and on all winter long until that magic day near Spring when you suddenly notice the little buds on the naked winter bleached tree branches and realize it's going to be warm enough that day to ride in just a jersey and bibs.

That day is the day when you are out on the bike and realize that too many days of fat and lazy have eclipsed too few of aiming to make yourself harder. That day is the day you find your mind has grown as marshmallowy soft as your stomach and legs. That day is the day when you try to think back and remember when it was that your lack of will took over for your force of will and your body caved to the peer pressure of the mind to just put it off till the weather was a little bit nicer or the wind a little bit softer or the air a little less smoggy or something was a little more or less something.

I know that day is coming. It seems forever off in the distance now but I know it will be here sooner than I realize. It is a day of heartache and disappointment. It is a day of suffering and pain as your mind tries to spring back from the guilt of slackness and attempts to pull your body back with it to a level of performance it is no longer capable of. It is the perfect day to ride alone because while the day is perfect for a ride it is an embarrassing ride on that perfect day.

I know that day is coming. That is why I love my wife so much. She knows that day is coming too. That is why she is going to go out of her way to make sure that I have that perfect amount of time today. That is why she is going to make her life harder so I can make it easier on my body and mind to stay hard and strong. I am going to plug the leaks. A little. I am going to harden my resolve. A little. I am going to claw my way back up the slippery slope. A little.

I know that day is coming and that is why today is the day I'm going to get out there on the old bike and push myself to the limit of my capabilities. I am afraid. I fear the weakness and the softness and the disappointment and the lost fitness. I fear the fat and lazy. I fear my lack of will will overpower my best intentions. I fear that day of the little buds on the naked winter bleached tree branches. But I have today. I have today and thanks to my wife I have that perfect amount of time today. I have today and today I have 2 hours.