One turn of the wheel...

I almost didn’t get up this morning for the ride. There were crazy bolts of lightening and window shaking booms of thunder around 3am. When my alarm went off at 6am, I thought for sure “cancelled” and hit snooze. At 6:07am, I thought, “Better check email…”-- NOT cancelled, sigh.

Today I, therefore, did, in fact, ride my road bike with TeamZ, a team with which I occasionally train. What I’m training for is a whole different topic. TeamZ is a triathlon training team with a lot of pizzazz, meaning it’s actually social and fun! Again, that’s another entry altogether. I mostly do the long rides with them these days and today was one of them.

The ride was in Frederick, MD. On my way there from Arlington, VA, I turned on the radio to catch the weather report. I had eyed the report at home online: RAIN. It seemed more likely towards mid-day so I thought I was in the clear when I left, but as I approached Frederick, skies grew darker and darker. Better check. Great timing, weather report up next…”Storm warning with high winds and heavy downpours for…” you guessed it Frederick, MD! Sigh! Why did I get up?

I spend a lot of my days in fast forward. If my body isn’t moving, my mind is. I enjoy meditating but the truth is I don’t do it enough. Exercise is a way for me to center and release all the mental and physical stress I carry. It isn’t however meditation in the purest sense. Intense focus. Full attention. I can still fill my mind with other things and voila I’ve finished a 10 mile run or a 60 mile bike ride. Today was not one of those days. Today was intense. It was a ride to be reckoned with.

The distance wasn’t something I hadn’t accomplished. I’d even been faced with challenging hills but today it took everything I had to will myself up them. The initial climbs were at best grueling. When we started, I found myself cursing the rain, but blessing it on these ascents—a reminder that it’s all perspective. It was a fairly hot and humid day and the rain kept me from bursting into flames on the steep inclines—at one point, I thought for sure it could happen.

There were times on the ride I felt like I was using every part of my being, mind, body and spirit just to get the crank to turn once. It was everything I had just for one turn of the wheel. One breath. One turn. One breath. One turn. Nothing else. No worries. No planning for later today, this week, this year, 10 years from now. Just this very moment. Just here. Just now. One turn. Slowly. Up. The. Hill. It makes breathing such a gift. It makes being such a gift. Glad I got up.