Friday, October 11, 2013

ready.



it being the third time in two weeks that i was having the shop do the same level-1 fix to one of only two commuter wheels in the house, the shop owner looked me in the eye at the pinnacle of our exchange and asked, 'are you ready?'

of course, we were barely talking about bikes. 

actually, we had been talking about bikes up until that point and then about how my amazingly nice custom road bike in the corner wasn't getting ridden nearly as much as it should. this is because i've been running. this is because i had the girls with me all summer. this is because it's the work year again. this is really just because i've been running. a lot.

we had been talking about bikes and then about how i haven't been riding bikes and then about how i was going to run a marathon in a few weeks. i don't look like a runner, let alone a marathoner, let alone a marathoner with audacious goals like mine, so he had to ask, 'are you ready?'

and i replied, 'yes...'

i had to think about the reply, but, once it came to me, it was certain. i was ready to run a marathon. i was ready to run 26.2 miles in under three hours. i was ready to hurt a lot. and all that, with a wheel in my hand and a bag on my back and a few hundred miles in my legs since june, that was before tomorrow. and it was before tuesday's tempo workout two days ago. 

you see, strange things are done under streetlights on lakeshore by a man who moils for goals. warm up for three kilometers. jog slowlyish past sleeping houses and ambling hipsters absorbed in their twitter self-updates and trucks that smell like diapers and the bread factory and down to the lake. as soon as the watch beeps the third kilometer done, take off. the first k in this section, under four minutes. the music is blaring. the air is perfect. the traffic zips by, unaffected by the lone figure careening through the dark, two steps per second, one hundred fifty heartbeats per minute, in and out of shadows and highlights. the path streams along underneath. the second k disappeared somewhere. a right at the light not showing the white man walk sign. somewhere into the third k, taking turns harder than usual, testing, breathing. once around the parking lot, looping back, still into the darker of the dark. running alongside a raccoon pinned between the dying man and a plywood barrier, the awkward pause caught in polaroid stillness as cars render it all a scene. the fourth k begins, agony searing all parts. the pavement bucks, coughing up gravel and cracks. a hard left. onto the service road. more barriers. traffic behind while the swollen center pushes toward the dampness of a darkened ditch. just 1200 meters to go. just a thousand more steps. just a million more beats per minute. just five more minutes. grandma always said she could do anything as long as she knew for how long. how long. how long. beep.

so yeah, i'm ready. i'm ready for tomorrow that's going to be pretty damn similar but for 33k. i'm ready for the next day when we host thanksgiving. i'm ready for the day after when i do pretty much nothing but recover. i'm ready.