As I’ve written before, butt cheeks are everywhere these days. From fashion-leading Instagram models to earnest guys sporting thongs on the beach, butt cheeks are no longer banned from public view.
A friend just posted this photo on Instagram of a “gentleman” fishing in some tropical surf. Clearly he’s decided to get a little behind in his work.
The dude may not be ripped or have the perfect ass that people might admire, but he’s happy in his “Sun’s out, Buns out” world. Who’s to say that he’s really wrong? The sight of a male ass may not be ideal viewing to some, but this guy doesn’t care. Deal with it.
A Cosmopolitan view
But for women, the issue of how much butt cheek to show is both a pragmatic issue and a choice of options.
Though my stepdaughter has moved out of our house, we still receive a monthly (or so) copy of Cosmopolitan magazine. These magazines migrate to our downstairs bathroom thanks to my wife, who likes order in the house. So I perused the July/August issue to find an article titled:
“So are we here for the PRACTICALLY NO BUTT COVERAGE swimwear trend or no?”
The single-page article features two opinions. One woman says, “I’m skeptical” while the other says “I’m sold.” I’m rather surprised there was no quiz to go along with the article, because that’s what Cosmo typically does. I can guess the first question from here:
“Will you be showing one or both butt cheeks this summer?”
They never make it easy to answer any of those questions.
Instead, they provided an either/or perspective on the issue.
The first gal stated, “The secondhand discomfort alone I get from imagining there’s only a piece of dental floss between my sphincter and the rest of the world is very, very real. And don’t get me started on what happens when you sit down––have we learned nothing over the past year about keeping public surfaces sanitary?”
Okay, that take goes a little deeper than talking about mere butt cheeks. But you get the picture.
The picture of Gail Gadot above shows the practical issue of dealing with a wet swimsuit no matter how much coverage it offers.
Still, the Cosmo gal less eager to show her butt cheeks closes with a practical observation. “I’m sticking to swimwear that requires a lot less upkeep in the waxing/shaving department and has the surface area for a lot more cute designs.”
The other gal, who happily insisted “I’m sold” on showing her butt cheeks rather proudly stated: “I joined team #FreeYourCheeks on a trip to Rio a few years back. Everyone on Copacabana Beach was thriving in a booty-out environment and it was inspo enough for me to give the trend a try. ‘Twas then that I understood what the entirety of Brazil already knows: Less fabric = less bikini sagging, less drying time, and less sand you-know-where.”
It’s such a Cosmo world out there
The same issue of Cosmo with the Butt Cheeks article also features an article about a woman with two––count ’em––two vaginas. She shares the true story about what it’s like to have a two uterus thing going on, how to have sex and deal with double menstruation problems.
Another article addressed about how men behave in places where the Guy-to-Gal ratio is far out of balance. It’s called the Golden Penis Syndrome. You got it, when the guy-gal ratio is in their favor, some men figure their penis is “golden” in that circumstance. Pricks.
Beyond fashion
Moving on from the world of Cosmo, it’s not just fashion swimwear where women are engaging in the FreeYourCheeks movement. Triathlete competitors have long released the buttock from confinement under fabric. Female track stars from sprinters to pole vaulters to skinny distance runners no longer worry whether their butt cheeks are catching the breeze. Some people object to women competing “in their underwear” while others celebrate body positivity.
The thing that always intrigued me is why women triathletes in those skinsuits riding dozens of miles on their bikes don’t need at least a little padding “down there.” Their bike fit must be superb to not have any weight or chafing problems.
Thus the world of butt cheeks remains a source of grand confusion and great pleasure among men in this world. Some revel in the sight of so much free ass out there. The women wearing less fabric seem to sport a mix of willful defiance and teasing obliviousness. Some show a determination not to be sexualized while others willingly attract hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram for the attention and sponsorship it brings. Even immensely serious athletes post bathing suit photos or beefcake shots because these gain likes and impressions that can lead to collabs, product placement and even outright sponsorship.
Bearing witness to all this skin has some guys (and likely gals too) feeling conflicted about the divide between reality and the digital capture of the human image. The guy below seems to have struck some sort of in-between deal with his brain.
Given the butt cheek world we now live in, it certainly must be ‘interesting’ for women to have to decide where they fit on the whole butt cheek spectrum. Choosing a swimsuit was already hard enough.
Sporting a swimsuit, a track suit or triathlon gear that leaves nothing to the buttagination is an extremely personal choice that comes with the risk of public judgment. But the jury now leans toward the “deal with it” side of the equation.
Replacement Theory
From what I can see, at this point women are taking control of the issue and replacing unwanted attention with aggressive convention. If you remove the taboo of perverse imagination from the formula of public fashion by making partial nudity and body outline normal in society, we’ll arrive at a place that is more honest, authentic and balanced with integrity when it comes to body issues.
The choice is still out there, of course. We all make our own choices in the end. That is what quickly comes to mind in our thong-strolling fellow coming in off the beach. He’s just hanging out, you might say. And to that, I say, “Have a good day.”
If you’d rather hear me share this blog in a Podcast, give the Spotify link a tap.
One of my favorite drinks is a simple Jack and Coke. It doesn’t take much to mix one up. Just pour the whisky in the glass, plunk in a few ice cubes and follow it with Coca-Cola. That was my “wedding drink” during all those years when my friends were getting married. Sometimes Rum and Coke took its place. Or lots of beer.
I didn’t have my first taste of alcohol until the middle of my junior year in high school. Until that point, I was adamantly against drinking or smoking of any kind. Then a bunch of friends picked up a six-pack of Stroh’s beer. Somewhere in the middle of a football practice field with the lights of the stadium throwing manic shadows across the grass, I took my first swig of beer. I hated it. It burned my throat.
This isn’t a tale about how, from that point on, I secretly descended into a private alcohol hell that I’ve kept concealed from friends and family for years. Gladly I’ve avoided such a fate. Yet in many ways it has still been a long, strange trip with drinking alcohol.
College drinking
The boys and I admittedly drank a bit in college. No doubt about that. For a bunch of skinny guys who ran 80-90 miles a week, we could sure pound the beers. Some of those college running teammates even struggled with drinking. One of them ultimately died of alcoholism. We used to go for runs around town on Sunday morning to find his car after a night of his drinking. Few of us connected these seemingly collegiate habits with genuine problem drinking. But they were real problems. Many of us flirted with them.
After cross country season during my freshman year, our team held a massive party with a giant vat of booze mixed together from all sorts of high-alcohol-content liquor. I drank too much too fast and wound up having to be carried back to the dorm room where I lay collapsed in an overnight stupor. It was a blackout. I awoke with a soreness in my back that I’d never experienced before. That was pain in my liver. I could have easily died from alcohol poisoning.
I had one other incident like that when a college girlfriend got me wicked drunk one night out of spite that I spent so much time running. That was obviously not a healthy relationship, and I broke it off not long after that.
Incidents like these didn’t really recur after college, and I’ve never struggled with anything close to alcohol addiction. Yet recently, the habit of having a drink every night struck me as something more than a treat. It felt like a habit. I caught my brain thinking, “Oh boy, it’s almost 5:00. You can have a drink then.”
That made me re-think my habits because it was a warning sign I take seriously. Some people might say, “Well, that’s a natural product of the pandemic. Everyone was just trying to cope.” Others might say––and they might be right in my case–– that drinking was a rational response to the brain-numbing idiocy of Donald Trump.
I’ll buy that. The stress I felt the last four years to the madness of insurrection… welled up from an underlying sense of betrayal to an anger that I found hard to reconcile. I care greatly about social justice and all I could see out there in the world was a selfish brand of evil and blatant cognitive dissonance that was sequentially being denied through gaslighting. In the face of lies like that, it actually made sense to have a drink now and then. I sincerely wish Trump had turned out to be a good person. I really do. But he didn’t, and that’s because he’s addicted to one thing far worse than drugs or alcohol. Himself.
Self-examination
The reason I take potential warning signs about drinking so seriously is that I know drug addiction is a serious problem. Once it gets in front of you, it is hard to push out of the way. Good people close to me in all stages of life have dealt with drug addictions of one kind or another. On the basis of my own experience, I view each of these situations without judgment. My only instinct is to help people any way that I can. And yet, it is hard to know what to say to people you care about when they’re in a cycle of disruptive drinking or drug addiction. Everything feels at risk.
It takes a village sometimes. At one point a close friend called me to ask for help with a mutual buddy. “I’m too close to him,” he admitted. “He’s out of control sometimes. Can we get him to some counseling?” What happened next was valuable and instructive. That hard-drinking friend accepted help because it was offered in kindness. He took steps to moderate his drinking. But as every person with an addiction can tell you, the hard work of sobriety is never through.
The most classic case of addiction denial is the singer/songwriter Amy Winehouse. Could there be any more heartbreaking story (and name) than hers? The lyrics to her song Rehab are indeed sobering:
I don’t ever want to drink again I just, ooh I just need a friend I’m not gonna spend ten weeks And have everyone think I’m on the mend
And it’s not just my pride It’s just ’til these tears have driedThey tried to make me go to Rehab But I said no, no, no Yes I’ve been black but when I come back You’ll know, know, know I ain’t got the time
Self-medication
The reasons so many people choose to drink are manifold.There is no doubt that drinking is a form of self-medication. That’s the first thing one needs to realize. Last winter I was having fun each night downing a glass of Fireball cinnamon whisky to ward off the cold winter chills after walking the dog through two feet of snow and temps of five-below-zero. A couple nights I imbibed with a second glass, then a third. One night wound up a bit drunk. I walked smack into a chair on the way to the kitchen, and stopped to consider what that meant. That’s when I started to moderate that drinking, and eased off considerably. When the Fireball ran out, I said, “Enough’s enough.” I didn’t buy another.
Since that time, I’ve kept a closer eye on alcohol consumption. We all should. Today’s Chicago Tribune published a lengthy article about the fact that women are now tied 1:1 with men in having drinking problems. The ratio used to be 3:1, advantage men. So while women are catching up and passing men in many worthy categories of life, that is one category in which gender equality is not that desirable.
The article shares that women have unique challenges in coping with alcohol addiction. Some are physical. Others are social. Studies are being done to ascertain the source and symptoms unique to alcohol consumption among women.
Avoiding habit drinking
So I’ve done my best to keep away from habit drinking. I write instead. I’ll admit that I do have a writing habit. I have three blogs, a Medium page, articles on Linkedin, and work as a writer for a living. So I’ll say it clear: I am addicted to writing. That is one confession I’m here to make. When people in writing groups say that they don’t know what to write about, a voice in my head goes, “What the hell are you talking about?” I can’t not write.
Problem: my writing spills into social media. That can be an addiction unto itself, along with my iPhone. I know that some people in my life see that as a problem. They’ve told me so. I’ve also made mistakes getting into arguments online. Oversharing is a problem. I’m aware of that. It’s hard to quit. But like all things in life, I’m almost tired of the weight it brings. It may self-resolve. So here’s apologies to all I’ve offended, if need be.
To that end, some people in my life are actually estranged and no longer engage with me. Some of those I miss, but others not so much. It’s a product of the times we live in.
My “excuse” for writing so much is that writing helps me deal with anxiety and to process life in general. I write about religion and politics, the environment and nature, caregiving and character. Writing helped me through fifteen years of caregiving for my mom and dad and my late wife. Despite massive amounts of help along the way, there were many times when I felt entirely alone in those endeavors. I struggled making the right decisions along the way. Such is the case when the life of someone you love is on the line. Writing helped me sort all that out. For that process, I feel no need to apologize. It’s called “dealing with it.”
Productivity matters. Over the last year I’ve completed work on two books scheduled to be published in the coming year. So while my writing leads me in many directions, it also has a central focus. My dream is to become a well-known writer. If I don’t achieve that, I’ll die trying.
Relaxing into it
This weekend, while my wife is away visiting her mother, I plan to drink lots of ice water, do some running and riding and swimming, and walk the dog in pretty places. This is also part of my concerted plan to reduce a bit of weight around my gut that I credit to years of ingesting too many carbs (an old runner habit) as well as alcohol. I have friends that cut out booze entirely (Hello, Carolyn and Forrest…) and have lost 10-20 pounds of excess weight. Let’s be honest: beer and wine and spirits are nothing more than liquid calories. Borne of sugar and intensified with the brain-pleasing effects of alcohol, we grow fatter by degrees. I hate unnecessary fat.
There were times when I was too skinny as well. At one point in my late 20s, I realized that I was a bit addicted to running. My body fat percentage was 3% because my running habit consumed nearly 100% of me.
Whenever things went wrong in life, I’d turn to running in an “I’ll show them” state of mind. For many years, it did help me cope with exasperation and anger wrought from earlier experiences in life. There was an approval-driven motivation that vexed my soul. I worked through that and collared those instincts eventually.
Now I run and ride and swim to build balance in life because they make me feel good physically and emotionally. Those activities are proven tools in helping people deal with anxiety and depression. They also promote better physical health. My resting heart rate is 47. My blood pressure, 118/78. My cholesterol just got checked and it is right where it should be. I just want to lose ten pounds of fat around my middle and back.
Without those physical releases, perhaps the drinking thing might have more control over my life. I would no doubt regret that. History shows that many great writers struggled with alcohol addiction. We all need extra balance. Some got that through booze. As this Psychology Today article notes, others actually wrote while under the influence.
The article observes: “One psychiatrist actually did a study to try to figure out why so many great American writers drank like fish. Donald W. Goodwin of Washington University argued that there could be a genetic link between writing ability and alcoholism, with manic–depression perhaps the common thread. Fitzgerald, who was the poster child for the image of the imbibed author (he called alcohol the “writer’s vice” and was known to introduce himself as “F. Scott Fitzgerald, the well-known alcoholic”), appeared to suffer from the condition.”
Writing a different story
I may not be a “great writer” (yet) but I know some of my limits and how to drink socially without going over the line. That said, like many dopes, I’ve done and said a few stupid things “under the influence” over the years.
Over time, it is important to realize that relationships and life are much too important to let drinking or drugs get out of control. That goes for pot as well as booze. As pertains to pot, the term “addiction” carries too much cultural weight and throws people off the fact that while not technically “addictive” that drug can still formulate the mind around a desire to use it.
To its credit however, pot is a medically-approved and now legal drug in many states across the nation. It has been persecuted for decades as a supposed “gateway” drug, but much of that was a political jargon to disguise efforts at filling profit-oriented jails and to fulfill wrongheaded (and racially charged) assumptions about certain cultures. Now, one of the best athletes in the world is being prevented from competing in the Olympics because she smoked some pot to cope with news––delivered by a stranger––that her biological mother had died.
Lying to ourselves about drug use is one thing. Lying about the reasons why some drugs (like alcohol) are culturally tolerated while others are used to punish people is utter hypocrisy. Sha’Carri Richardson should be running in the Olympics because she proved herself worthy on many levels. Not just athletically, but honestly. There’s a major lesson in that for all of us.
Reach out
Thinking about all this gives me even more empathy for people caught in cycles of their own habits. I have my daily struggles with life’s complexities just like everyone else. But here’s an offer. If any of you reading this feels like you’re in that space where you wish you weren’t, reach out to me. Know that you have a person who cares about you whether we know each other already or not. If you want to talk, email cudworthfix@gmail.com. I’m serious as heck about this. We all need each other. I’ve been given so much help in life. My offer is made in gratitude and sincerity.
Because we’re all in this long, strange trip of life together. It’s a road trip of sorts, and it’s never safe to drink and drive.
Our family once had a blast setting off fireworks on the 4th of July. For the most part, they were the legal kind easily available here in Illinois. On several occasions, we also brought home louder, more dangerous fireworks from Indiana or Wisconsin.
The smell of fireworks smoke always lent a romantic feel to the 4th of July. It was also my late father-in-law’s birthday, so the grill would be smoking with red meat as well. Come evening, we’d sit on the front lawn facing the town of Addison and watch the big displays burst across the night sky.
Over the last ten years the 4th of July celebrations have dissipated a bit as our family spread out after the passing of my late wife and her dad. For a few years, we gathered to watch the city firework displays in Batavia, but coordinating everyone’s schedules became too much.
In the wake of this year’s annual fireworks orgy several new stories emerged that captured the conflicting nature of this country’s love affair with ballistics. A professional hockey goalie took an errant firework to the chest and died. Here in Illinois, the local news reported that another man died from fireworks injuries while another lost an eye. It’s hard to argue that fireworks (or guns for that matter) are “harmless fun” when people die and suffer life-altering injuries. Many Americans are in love with notions of ‘harmless fun’, yet in reality their actions cause genuine harm to themselves and others.
Not a fanof fireworks
I spent the twilight hours on the 4th of July holding our dog next to me in a blanket as she shivered with fright at the sound of fireworks large and small. She crept under the living room table for an hour or two after that, and when the neighbors started blasting firecrackers at 10 pm she ran upstairs to huddle in bed with my wife. Finally at 11 pm I coaxed her downstairs to sleep in her crate.
Dog-tired of the bluster
The 4th of July lost its luster for me over the last few years for other reasons as well. Watching the American flag turned into a symbol for neo-fascism by Trump supporters made the whole pro-American patriotism thing feel like a sham.
This morning I listened to an audio broadcast of the January 6, 2021 insurrection coaxed into being by the lies and fascist calls to action uttered by Trump leading up to the election and for weeks after he lost. The vision of those people bashing into the Capitol sent a clear message that there are people who really hate the best of what America has to offer. They’re a boiling group of spoiled, selfish people with a cult-like admiration for a proven fraud.
Their actions were not a sign of independence, but of fealty to a rabid authoritarian with an unapologetic selfish streak.
Riding and running through the holiday
My latent notions of carefree 4th of July holidays are gone for good, but my instincts for mind-clearing recreation still hold true. On the morning of the 4th, I got out for a road bike ride with some longtime friends. That got me thinking about past July 4ths and running road races. In particular I reminisced about the Firecracker 4 Mile in Glen Ellyn, circa 1984. I was supremely fit and ready to run. When the gun went off with a bang, another athlete and I engaged in an intense race and traded leads multiple times. The hilly course tested both our resolve, and local fans urged on their hometown hero, my prime competitor. And he won.
He passed me in the last 100 yards, but I was not disappointed with the outcome. I’d truly given it my all and was proud of the pace we’d achieved on such a tough course. I finished second at 20:01, a pace of 5:00 per mile.
Honest efforts teach us plenty
U.S. Capitol Police scuffle with demonstrators after they broke through security fencing outside of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021. The House and Senate will meet in a joint session today to count the Electoral College votes to confirm President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, but not before a sizable group of Republican lawmakers object to the counting of several states’ electors. Photographer: Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images
To me, there is a purity and honesty about such efforts that people who never test themselves and learn to accept the results can never know. Both winning and losing purify the soul. When I witness the bloated, angry, screaming faux-patriots attacking the Capitol I admit to feelings of disgust that these people somehow feel superior and entitled to complain that this country somehow mistreated them by conducting a fair election. They’re the kind of jerks who never admit that a contest of any kind is fair.
Muscle and brains
For years our park district softball team comprised of former college baseball players competed with a bunch of muscle-headed blowhards on a team known for screaming threats and intimidating umpires whenever they fell behind. They counted on muscle to win the day. But our hit-and-run team with a strong defense beat their home-run based offense every time. Once we’d thumped them during the first season, we beat them for eight seasons in a row. We had their number, and they knew it.Yet they kept on yelling because they could not stand the idea that their muscle was not superior to our more studious approach to the game. They viewed the results with suspicion because they couldn’t stand the idea that they somehow lost in a fair game.
That’s how I view many Trump supporters, whose loudest ranks constitute a bunch of denial-driven blowhards. For sure, there are honest, hard-working people who vote Republican no matter what. They may not like Trump, per se, but they defend what he delivered in the way of tax breaks or support for farmers and ranchers…even after blowing up their markets with brainless tariffs. None of Trump’s presidency really evidenced winning policies. It was largely Trump doing what Trump does: paying people off to support his notions of wealth and victory.
Vain claims
Yet the people who ardently support Trump demanded respect for self-righteous campaigns to overturn the election. They paraded around with Stop the Steal banners and gathered as a mob to lead an insurrection in a threat to overthrow the government. It was an attempted coup. After the reality of the situation was exposed, the domestic terrorists who were involved all rushed to wipe their social media of evidence of their crimes. Those indicted have tried to claim innocence after storming our nation’s Capitol building, destroying property, and threatening our government officials.
Worst of all, they cynically excuse their horrific actions by engaging in “Whataboutism” to point fingers at civil rights protests to bring attention to police violence and the continual deaths of Black citizens. The insurrection was a blatant attempt at covering the failure of their supposed hero, Donald Trump, who bragged about so much “winning” until he lost by seven million votes. Then he could not accept the reality that so many honest Americans rejected his dishonesty, his racist rhetoric, his incompetence in the face of a pandemic and his narcissistic attempt to steal an election by driving people into a brand of furious denial that led to violence, injury and death earlier this year.
Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump gather at the west entrance of the Capitol during a “Stop the Steal” protest outside of the Capitol building in Washington D.C. U.S. January 6, 2021. Picture taken January 6, 2021. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith
Independence Day was once a sign that Americans value their freedoms and respect the processes and social order by which their values are installed. But no more. Donald Trump and his sycophantic followers claim patriotism while disrespecting everything the country ostensibly stands for.
They almost blew up the country in a fireworks accident of devastating proportion.
Here in Illinois, you take your hills where you can find them. This peak is about nine miles from my house.
Those of us who live in the Illinois part of the Midwest know that hills are a rarie-sh commodity. In our section of Kane County we have Johnson’s Mound, a glacial esker rising some ninety feet over the surrounding flat landscape. That’s about six miles from our house. There is also Campton Hills, a rise in the greater landscape visible from miles away that tops out 800 feet above sea level. Not exactly Alpe du Huez, but it’s something.
I live at about 550 feet above sea level. That means that the most climbing we can achieve in a single shot around here, albeit in a long stretch of riding, is about 300 feet.
By contrast, it’s possible to get that much elevation in a single climb up in Wisconsin. That’s why we go riding up there. The area west of Madison is known as the Driftless Region. It is called that because the glaciers that slid down from the Arctic during the last Ice Age gouged out the Great Lakes and flattened much of Wisconsin and Illinois, but left the northeastern portion of Illinois and Southwestern Wisconsin alone.
The topographical evidence of glacial activity is clearly shown in this map of Wisconsin.
Hence, the hills originally formed of limestone deposited by inland seas are still there.
We ride out of Verona, right at the edge of all those hills where the Military Ridge trail shoots west from Madison through Mt. Horeb and on to Dodgeville. But we don’t ride the trail. We ride the roads of the Ironman Wisconsin triathlon course. For eight years now, we’ve started either in downtown Madison or parked at the Rocket Bicycle Studio that sits on the “stick” of the course. The climbs start quickly from there, with flat or rolling sections filling the valleys as you head out toward Mt. Horeb, an arrival that includes a mile climb going into town.
It’s a beautiful, somewhat epic place to ride. Already this spring we’ve ridden in another section of the Driftless Region out by Galena, Illinois. The Ups And Downs ride has some 18% grades on it that require full concentration and smooth pedaling to ride. Plus there were 20-30 mph winds that day. Ooof.
Things are looking up for us this weekend. Or, we’re looking up at them.
My wife is building strength toward racing in the Ironman World’s 70.3 this fall in St. George, Utah. I’m building strength for whatever else I choose to do this year, which may include a race (or two) in August or September. The Ironman loop we’ll be riding tomorrow is just over 40 miles. She’ll ride two loops for 80 miles. I’ll probably do 40-50 depending on how the legs feel. I rode really well up in Madison doing 56 miles last September in my first 70.3 effort. My time in the first ever 70.3 was just over 6:15.
Sue’s going to be on her new Trek tri-bike and I’ve adjusted my road/tri-bike seating and tri-bars this year so that I’m riding more efficiently. For the climbs, I’ll miss the additional gear I just added with a new cassette on my Specialized road bike, but down the road (pun intended) I’m working on a solution to add clip-on tri-bars to that bike as well.
It’s going to be a moderately warm day, with temps in the mid-80s by about noon, so a good day for riding most likely. We’ve ridden up there on beastly hot days, so we know the deal. Sunscreen will be called for, and I’ll bring my Roka shorts to do some swimming after the ride.
Then I’ll sit down in the Rocket Bicycle Shop or a local Verona eatery (it’s a really cute town) and finish working on the bibliography and references on my upcoming book. I finally finished the corroborative research and listing of references to list in the back.That’s taxing work and now it’s done. That means Honest-To-Goodness: Helping Christianity Find It’s True Place in the World is finally finished and I can prep the book for publication.That is my first big writing goal this summer. Then comes the completion of my other book, Nature Is Our Country Club.
All other avocational activities come second to these two goals. But riding helps me think through the writing and inevitably stokes ideas for improvement. See? There are many reasons to ride in this world. That’s what I’ll be doing among the hills of Madison, Wisconsin. The mind scenery is beautiful and the mind is free to flow and explore. This cycling thing? It’s not all about racing. That can come when it comes.
Ready to ride in the Mondrian-inspired kit I designed for my sister-in-law’s 50th birthday
The cycling season has ramped up kind of slow for me this year. For the last few seasons, we’ve gone to a triathlon camp that kicks fitness into gear. Like most athletes, I need that sustained period of training to break through the physical malaise of winter. Usually the first day goes well, the next day is a struggle and the third or fourth day I rise from the ashes and start to ride much better.
It worked that way back in the scholastic and collegiate days of running. I was not that dedicated to summer running in high school. Mostly I played half court basketball. That kept up a degree of fitness, but not sustained running. That first week of cross country each fall was a process of breaking the body down and building it back up from scratch. Soreness and all, it always worked. But like they say, “It never gets easier, you just go faster.”
College was similar, only a bit more volume and just as intense. We raced too much in practice and ran too many miles. That first two weeks of training was revelatory no matter how much I did or didn’t run the summer before.
Post collegiately I tended to train steady all year around. Still, the push through spring always involved an increase in mileage and series of training days that cooked the inner engine.
So I know what it feels like to sense a better stage of fitness. It’s like something clicks within the muscles and lungs. Pace that seemed impossible just weeks before turns into a baseline. But you have to push through some mental and physical barriers to get there.
I don’t have a series of races lined up this year, so my motivations are a bit different. My wife’s race calendar is sufficiently busy that adding another weekend would be counterproductive to both of us. I’m figuring to pick a race in late August somewhere, or mid-September.
If not, I still enjoy challenging myself to swim, ride and run each year.
Time trial time
Yesterday, I set out on a time trial of 23 miles with a goal of riding at an average pace over 19 miles per hour. Most of my rides finish between 16-18 mph. That’s been the case since I started riding back in 2007. I haven’t gotten substantially worse with age, but I’m not really quicker either. The one “fix” I’ve been working on is the position on my converted road bike with tri-bars. I pushed the seat forward and raised the stem almost an inch. That feels better and I’m riding faster. It’s no Cervelo tri-bike, but it’s what I have right now.
My wife is still faster and stronger than me on the bike right now. To train with her on longer rides, I need to hit the roads at faster paces, and more often. Plus I want to prep myself in the event that a do-able Olympic triathlon pops up this summer or fall. My goal is to ride at least 20 mph in that event. So it was time-trial-time.
Taking off west, I faced a headwind/crosswind for ten miles, but for the most part I kept the “needle” above 18.5 mph despite the resistance. I reasoned the difference could be made up on the return trip.
Six miles west Main Street drops downhill for half a mile toward Route 47. Then it climbs back up in two stages lasting over a half mile. My pace dropped to 12.9 at one point where the grade rises more steeply. “Ooof,” I though to myself. “I’m going to have to go hard to make that up.”
Rolling into the pretty little town of Kaneville, I spun the pedals a bit to let my legs recover from the climbs and that last mile of headwind. I’d hit the ten mile mark by that point.
As always, the turnaround didn’t exactly deliver a tailwind. It seldom does. This is because the wind hates me. That much I know for sure. I can hear its conspiring tones in my ears wherever I ride. Perhaps you can hear it too.
However, going south certainly felt better than fighting the full headwind. I set a new time record on Southbound Dauberman Road from Kaneville to Swan Road. Yay. 22.2 mph.
Turning east the route was again affected by a crosswind, but I hit the one-hour mark at exactly 19.20 miles. “Good,” I thought, I’m on pace. Now to finish the last four miles solid.
Aftter another set of small climbs I crested the bridge over I-88 and was headed toward home. I cranked the bike up to 29 mph on the short downhill and tried to clear out the lactic acid cause by the climb up the other side.
By that point, I could feel the pressure of the day building in my legs. “That’s good,” I volunteered. “Now go for it.” One more short climb and it was time to pedal the false flat up toward Deerpath and the turn toward home.That hurt.
Rolling up to the garage, I clicked the Garmin to finish the ride and get the summary. “19.20,” I said out loud. “Good job!”
The best reward you can give yourself is a congratulatory kudo at the end of a ride. No matter what else is going right or wrong in life, it feels good to push yourself and achieve a result. Even if it matters to no one else in this world, the feeling of going fast and being built to last is worthwhile.
If you watch the Tour de France, you’ve likely already seen the results of the horrific crash produced by a woman holding out a cardboard sign to bearing a handwritten message to her relatives. She wanted to gain TV coverage for her family. Instead, the lead cyclists in the peloton smacked into the woman and her sign. That crash up front caused a chain reaction that left dozens of riders crushed and bleeding in their wake. One cyclist broke both his arms.
It’s bad enough when crashes happen because one rider touches the wheel of another. But the fact that this woman in her ignorance stepped in front of cyclists moving at least 25 mph on the road is heartbreaking.
We’ve seen crazy incidents before. Lance Armstrong once got tossed to the ground when he hooked his handlebars on a purse strap of some sort. A few years back a Tour cyclist named Johnny Hoogerland got rammed from the side by a motorbike. He was tossed through the air and landed on a barbed wire fence, tearing his kit and leaving bloody slashes on his buttocks.
The motivation for that woman to hold out that sign might have been innocent enough. Yet think about that: now she’s famous around the world for having wrecked the hopes of dozens of riders who trained all their lives for the chance to race in the Tour de France.
It’s hard to think of an example of a more ignorantly selfish moment in sports. Sure, Chicago Cubs fan blame the gentleman called Bartman for catching a foul ball that might have turned the game in favor for the home team. But he was legitimately parked in his own seat, wearing a baseball glove, doing the one thing fans dream about when they buy a ticket: catching a game ball.
One could argue that woman by the side of the road was doing what Tour fans do. The scene is always manic. Yet when asked if the race was better without fans present last year, cyclist Richie Porte gave a polite and obviously constrained reply that things like this are bound to happen in the Tour.
Porte is a class act for saying that, but I’ll bet that the cyclists at the Tour actually have a far less tolerant view of fans, especially on the mountain climbs where only a small corridor allows them passage up the slopes. I recall when Tour leader Alberto Contador punched a fan in the face to keep him from colliding with his bike, or him.
It’s a fact that people go insane in circumstances where crowds gather. They get caught up in the excitement and imagine themselves an integral part of the event, or even part of history. We’ve seen how crazy that can get in circumstances fueled by political motivations. The insurrection on the United States Capitol saw thousands of people go insane and break into the Capitol to loot and even threaten the lives of elected officials. The confessions of those caught and arrested for their treasonous exercise are telling. Here’s one example:
WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 06: A protester is seen hanging from the balcony in the Senate Chamber on January 06, 2021 in Washington, DC. Congress held a joint session today to ratify President-elect Joe Biden’s 306-232 Electoral College win over President Donald Trump. Pro-Trump protesters have entered the U.S.
Capitol building after mass demonstrations in the nation’s capital. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
From the KLTA website: “Images of a man hanging from the Senate balcony during last week’s riot at the U.S. Capitol were plastered across TV screens and social media feeds with many people wondering who the dangling man might be.
According to CBS 2 in Boise, he’s a resident of Idaho who is now asking for forgiveness and saying he got “caught up in the moment.”
The man, identified by CBS 2 as Josiah Colt, had not been arrested as of Monday morning.
Colt deleted his social media accounts following the events. He then released a statement to CBS 2 that read in part, “I realize now that my actions were in appropriate and I beg for forgiveness from America and my home state of Idaho.”
That is no excuse. Nor should any of the people crushing police and waltzing through the Capitol be shown mercy for their participation. Their ignorance should be no protection for their insolence.
U.S. Capitol Police scuffle with demonstrators after they broke through security fencing outside of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021. The House and Senate will meet in a joint session today to count the Electoral College votes to confirm President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, but not before a sizable group of Republican lawmakers object to the counting of several states’ electors. Photographer: Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Whether by ignorance, choice. or chance, there are plenty of people who do stupid things in public places when excited by the notion of personal fame or accomplishment. Some aggressively embrace identities such as the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers, the KKK or lately, Antifa or the GOP or Trump…while deriving ugly amusement from the chaos. They feel it somehow empowers them to carry signs, fly flags or pledge loyalty to those who breed chaos for self-interest.
It’s always a heartbreaking sign bearing witness to such moments. Such is also the case with the lives of those cyclists involved in the crash. Their futures were forever changed by the careless and selfish actions of one woman “caught up in the moment” and trying to claim fame for herself and her family at one of the world’s biggest sporting events.
Donald Trump giving the “two thumbs up” sign that Covid is not a threat. We now know he almost died.
Yet there are many kinds of signs. Some are rhetorical. The most potent example is the Make America Great Again signholder who stood in front of America as a pandemic rushed full speed at the nation. All the selfish brute did was stand in front of the crowds to wave and claim, “It’s not real.” He even pretended all was fine when he almost died with oxygen levels in his body dropping to 80%. But he wanted to send a sign to the American people that Covid was not threat.
600,000 people died as a result of his heartbreaking lack of prescience, honesty, or grip on reality. Thousands more still fight the effects of the disease and we’re not even out of trouble yet because some people are still too stubborn and dumb to wear a mask in areas where Covid is still a threat. They refuse to protect themselves and others. They would rather focus on their self-interests than accept any call to be responsible citizens.
Thousands of people were dying every day from Covid-19 and all this man cared about was his haircut.
The woman wielding that sign at the Tour de France proved yet again that selfish interests are often the most damaging of all. But she’s not alone, that’s for sure. And that’s the heartbreaking sign of our age.
While this guy obviously doesn’t care about his haircut, his attire is a heartbreaking sign of cult worship.
Today I rode just over forty miles in a rectangular route straight north to the western reaches of South Elgin, cut over to the east side of the Fox River to catch the bike trail, and headed all the way south to North Aurora before wending my way back home.
I was doing what I call riding, not cycling.
To me, cycling is the more serious side of biking on the roads. When I’m cycling, it’s usually with another person or a group of people pedaling at a consistently fast pace, usually between 17-20 mph. When my wife and I head out on tri-bikes and finish 56 miles in under three hours, I consider that “cycling.”
By contrast, when I’m riding, the pace is not quite as important as other aspects of the journey, such as taking new routes or accepting the limits of riding a bike on public bike trails. It’s not safe or possible to hammer in some situations, and avoiding traffic just feels right some days.
Today’s “ride” was satisfying because I averaged 15.5 mph on a route that included some solid climbing in the Fox Valley. The bike trail crosses the Fox river at the number 5 on the map shown and then goes up a long incline about a half mile long. There’s a slightly steeper section in the middle of the climb, but the grade as a whole is not much more than three or four degrees in gradient. It’s always fun to test yourself there.
To add some more climbs, I spun down a steeper street and looped around the neighborhood next to the river. Those climbs felt good in my legs too. I didn’t hurry. Just spun and rolled uphill. That’s plain old riding. I’ve always loved that.
Climbing drops your overall average pace, but that’s the point of a ride. Enjoy the process. My top speed on the ride today was 34 mph. I still like going fast downhill and climbing back up while letting the legs do the talking.
Cycling and riding are both good ways to spend time in the saddle. Perhaps it’s only my goofy brain that distinguishes between the two. Yet I find it helpful to get into a mindset of one kind or another. I do the same thing with running in many respects. That’s a topic for another day.
My goal is to do both some cycling and riding this weekend. I plainly need to do more of each. I’ve had no “double ride” weekends this year at all. In other years I never missed a weekend double if I could.
For inspiration, the Tour de France kicks off tomorrow. That usually gets the brain juices flowing and the cycling/riding legs going.
This weekend I’ll write about what I’d like to see happen in the Tour and what I think will actually take place. I’ve heard predictions about who will be on the podium and what teams will dominate. It promises to be an interesting Tour, that’s for sure.
Can I ride all 21 days while the Tour is going on? We’ll see. Sounds like a nice challenge.
The actual tick I pulled off my body yesterday. I squashed it dead. It was tiny. And deadly.
Here’s something I can say without remorse or equivocation. I hate ticks. Regular old dog ticks are bad enough. They find their way onto my socks and pants in the fields and make their way up my body until something tickles my skin and smack: I find a tick right there on my body or up the back of the neck.
You can’t kills the little fuckers easily. Squashing them with a finger doesn’t work. They take the pressure and keep on walking. They look up at you with their little tick-tock eyes and squint back as if to say: Fuck you. I’m a tick. You can’t kill me.
This makes me respect ticks even as much as I hate them. Their ability to grab onto prospective hosts is enormously impressive. Once in Colorado I stepped off a highway to look at some distant mountains while wearing shorts. Within seconds there were ten to twenty ticks crawling on my bare legs. Ticks are the professional magicians of the natural world.
Back in the days of attending Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, I often went running or birding in the woods. One late afternoon I laid down in bed to rest after a training run and felt a bump or two on the top of my head. Four fat dog ticks were embedded in the skin of my scalp. They were already engorged with blood. I trekked to the campus health clinic and a nurse plucked them off with tweezers.
That. Was. Gross. Absolutely gross. I hate ticks.
Look! No ticks here.
Thanks to my rad hairstyle these days, that tick infestation could no longer happen. I buzz my hair so close no tick has a chance to hide long enough to do its dirty work. Being bald has its advantages. Plus I haven’t paid for a haircut in twenty years.
My other gross tick encounter happened back in 2003 or so. I had gone for a run in the morning and started out on an extended bird walk in the fields north of St. Charles. For three hours I wandered through woods and wet fields counting birds for the Audubon Spring Census. I was already dealing with wicked case of poison ivy from an unfortunate brush with a plant rich in oils that spring. My left leg was covered with pink calamine lotion to quell the itching.
That meant I didn’t quite notice that a new source of creepy feeling inflicted my leg when I got home. That afternoon when I peeled off my pants to change for a run I noticed a tiny tick embedded in the skin just below the knee. This was not a fat old regular dog tick. This was a dreaded deer tick. The kind that carries Lyme Disease.
I dug that little bastard out with tweezers and soaked the already itchy leg with a bath of antibiotics. It was too late. Within a couple days there appeared a ring rash, a halo of red inflammation just above the patch of poison ivy infection covering my shin.
I rushed to the doctor and received a prescription for antibiotics to fight off any chance of Lyme Disease. As far as I know, that treatment worked as I don’t have any symptoms that would indicate the disease got hold of my system.
To say that these days I’m super-sensitive and hateful toward ticks is beyond an understatement. I’ve picked them up even while running out at the restored prairie near my home. The little buggers grab onto my shoes even when I’m sticking to the limestone trails. Then they hang on for dear life until I get home. Patient like terrorists about to attack a target, they sit still letting their bloodthirsty little brains work on the idea of sucking my blood. They are as crazy and persistent as horny 20-year-old males lusting after women.
But once things settle down and their target lies still, they start to creep and crawl, sometimes navigating multiple layers of clothing, even passing under a waist belt in search of the perfect soft spot to stick their suckers into the skin.
I hate ticks. They’re too perfect at what they do.
A closeup photo of a deer tick. Watch out for these tiny monsters.
Have I told you that I hate ticks? Hate. Hate. Hate. Nature is merciless in its creation of parasites and pathogens. That is not the result of a Fallen World or Original Sin. Religion has nothing to do with why ticks are so doggone good (and you should always check your dog for ticks) at latching onto bodies of one kind or another. They are highly evolved to do what they do best. Millions of years of trial and error drives ticks to suck your blood. They feed on it. Live on it. Then they drop off leaving you with something horrible if they can.
Nature didn’t need God to create ticks. It is perfectly capable of doing it all on its own. That’s why we also have perfectly awful human beings among us as well. Bloodsuckers and liars. Some of them crawl up the chain of human society to feed on a nation and its citizens.
On the morning of the Des Moines Certified Piedmontese 70.3 Ironman, the rains thumped the roof of our hotel and race delay notifications buzzed on our phones. The lightning storm was a dire threat to anyone caught out in the open or in the water. The rains also made cycling a difficult proposition at best.
So we sat in our hotel room at 7:00 a.m. with bit of breakfast culled from the offerings at the Fairfield Inn. I brought back eggs and sausage, but one bite from that gray-looking pat of meat was enough to realize that it had no taste and the texture was soft and mushy.
“No thanks,” I thought. I warned other folks at the hotel about the flat-tasting sausage, and word got around. “Did you have the sausage?” people asked with a laugh. Ah well, nothing’s perfect in this world.
Those are sriracha spiced Goldfish
Everything else about the weekend was pretty darn fun. On Friday night we dined at a restaurant called the Angry Goldfish. One of the appetizers served is a bowl of sriracha powdered Goldfish Crackers. They were spicy little mites, so we washed them down with a cold draft of locally brewed beers.
Saturday morning my wife Sue had a pre-race swim-bike-run to do, so I linked up with a friend and former college cross teammate that lives in Des Moines. We’d seen each other a few weeks before at the funeral service in Indianola for our mutual friend Keith Ellingson. I mentioned that we’d be heading back to Iowa for the triathlon and we agreed to meet up for a bike ride if time allowed.
In between, we talked about an artwork that he wanted for his condominium in downtown Des Moines. His favorite bike path goes through a restored covered bridge deep in the woods south of the city. He sent me a photo of his bike leaning inside the structure and I painted an acrylic for a spot he’d identified in their home.
My friend Jeff and I ran cross country together at Luther College
During our 26-mile bike trip we rode through the covered bridge after miles of pleasant riding on shady trails. I’d worked from a photograph to create the painting so it’s always a treat to see the real thing. After the bike ride we unveiled the painting with his wife and it now hangs where they can see it from their living room sofa.
After that fun rendezvous I met up with Sue back at Gray’s Lake, the center of action for the triathlon the next day. We got cleaned up and had brunch at Mullet’s, a great joint overlooking the river south of Des Moines with a fine view of the downtown skyline. The food is excellent (I had chicken and waffles) and the vibe is laid back and welcoming.
You should try this place. It rocks.
Before walking into Mullets I struck up a conversation with a cyclist standing next to the trail. It turned out to be a Des Moines local legend named Carl Voss, for whom a new section of bike trail is named. He’s one of the leading figures in regional recreation for running and cycling, and it was an honor to meet a guy with so much history and influence in the state.
The legendary Carl Voss of Des Moine, Iowa.
The afternoon got warm on Saturday and there was some serious trekking required to check bikes in transition. The participant and spectator parking was a mile from Water Works Park, which itself is a big property, even larger than Central Park in New York. So we hoofed it over there in the heat, but on the way back on the long walk, my wife felt like she was starting to melt, and I was concerned about her experiencing an energy drain after all that training and prep.
The only thing I could think to do as she started to complain was listen and make a few encouraging jokes about how long it was taking to get back. Before we’d left the parking lot, her new Mitsubishi Outlander had rolled slightly backward as I turned off the motor and a warning sign appeared on the dash. “Immobilization…” the words said. I looked up the cause and the Mitsubishi website says…”The electronic immobiliser is designed to reduce significantly the possibility of vehicle theft. The purpose of the system is to immobilise the vehicle if an invalid start is attempted. A valid start attempt can only be achieved by using a key “registered” to the immobiliser system.”
I’d called the Mitsu dealership service department in Des Moines when the problem first happened and the guy had never heard of the immobilization deal. But it had been ten minutes since I’d tried to start the car before calling him so it started right up again when I tried it with the key fob. “See, all you have to do is call me,” he laughed.
Such is life.
The scene half an hour before race start. Rain. Mud. Umbrellas.
That incident symbolized what was about to take place with the race the next morning. The storms caused a series of stops and starts, and the entire Ironman enterprise was immobilized for ninety minutes while the rain pounded Des Moines. It was a much-needed rain, however. The grass in town was all torched and brown from early summer heat. The river is so low the city is concerned about water supply for residents, and Gray’s Lake where the triathlon swim was scheduled to take place had a big dry ring about the edges.
Some kids came prepared for the rainy morning.
Finally the gun went off and the pros came storming out of the Swim out. From there, the race when off well, but the bike segment had to be shortened for logistical reasons. My wife rode fast and came in with a smile on her face. “That was fun…” she said. That was a smile coming out of the water and a smile coming off the bike. We were two-for-two on the day so far.
The race ended in downtown Des Moines where happy crowds of hopefully vaccinated people gathered to cheer on the finishers. The energy of a triathlon finish area is always a bit manic. You have the exhausted Sherpas milling around and looking for their road warriors to finish the run. There are moms and dads with baby strollers and dogs of all breeds panting in the sun or shade. The announcer calls out the names of the bedraggled and the triumphant alike. The same inspirational music that’s been playing at races for the last forty years blares over the loudspeakers.
I stopped for a quick drink at a pub before Sue completed the course. The air inside felt cool and welcoming. A solid Jack and Coke hit the spot.
Sue the last fifty yards of the bike. The sun had come out by then.
Then she came trucking down the block with yet another grin on her face. She’d had a good run to go with her swim and bike. “That was great!” she told me with shining eyes under a bright white Zoot hat to match her can’t-miss-it Zoot triathlon kit.
Fortunately the rain dissipated and the city of Des Moines got to show off for the crowds. The local news channel estimated that the event would bring $6M in revenue to the city. Between its investment in bike trails and the little food and bar joints and cultural attractions, the city has much to offer. “It’s the New York City of Iowa,” my friend offered.
Thanks to my Sherpa instincts, we were parked just a block from my friend’s house so my wife got to shower before we headed home. On the return trip we passed through major storms through eastern Iowa and across most of Illinois. Lightning flashed and heavy rains blasted our windshield. Then we hit a short stint of hail and slowed to 55 mph to avoid hydroplaning on the wet roads.
Somewhere near DeKalb we both happened to look north when a lightning bolt struck something large on the horizon. A massive greenish flash and halo of light rose up from the strike point. What it hit we’ll likely never know, but the weather reports stated that there were more than 263,000 lightning strikes in Illinois as well as a tornado that mowed down houses in Naperville and Woodridge.
These big weather patterns are so accentuated these days. It makes you wonder what it must have been like to live on the prairie before all this civilization planted itself across the Midwest. In any case, it’s here now. Des Moines finally got its day in the sun, and it showed off pretty well. Thanks to all who organized and managed the event. Nice job.
And by the way, those burgers served to athletes at the finish line? My wife grabbed me one and…they really were delicious. I guess Iowa beef is legitimately better.
Yesterday I wrote a short lament about the way sports consumes so much of our lives if we let it. That’s not a total regret. I’ve gained quite a bit from sports, including the aptitudes of perseverance when called upon, and patience too. Those were valuable skills during fifteen years of caregiving for my late mother, late wife and late father.
So it’s not exactly regret that we bring to the table when looking back at athletic endeavors. Many of us would like (or choose) to have a crack at life all over again. Perhaps do things differently. Or more things, anyway.
The fact remains: There’s only so much time to live and only so much carpe diem in all of us.
Leading a pack at a college cross country race.
I’ve analyzed whether I could have done better in sports at certain points in life. Trouble is, that’s a fruitless exercise, pun intended. You either perform in the moment, or you don’t. There is no value in woulda-coulda-shoulda. The only regrets one can legitimately apply are those concerning the choice to hold back on a big performance because of circumstances. If you “take one for the team” and save energy for another event rather than running full steam in a race, then the regret of not blasting it that day is balanced by the character it take to be a good teammate. Life is often a balance between personal and team objectives. It’s true in work, family and the global community.
So those bittersweet regrets must be forgiven and forgotten. If you gave it your best shot as often as you could, you’re in good company. As the lyrics in the musical Hamilton suggest, giving it all in the moment is a highly respected trade:
I’m not giving away my shot…
Marty Liquori one wrote in his book at elite distance running that doing your best (as a runner, for example) when life and age and opportunity presents itself is no small commitment. That feeling of obsession to succeed is strong within many of us. Some work it out at an early age, while others find it later in life. “In the end,” Liquori said (and I paraphrase,) “If you do your best you won’t have to prove yourself at the family picnic.”
We don’t want to find ourselves in a cycle of perpetual regret like Uncle Rico in the movie Napolean Dynamite. Good old Rico was living so far in the past that unfolded glories haunted him every day. Yet even Rico seemed to find love at the end of the movie after so many vainglorious attempts at local success. Sometimes self-forgiveness arrives in the simple gleam of a pair of shining eyes. I hope he’s happy now.
This much I do know. Having stood at the starting line of races with thousands of other people and carving out wins was a challenging and exciting time. That was a once-in-a-lifetime period, and despite the realization that other things could have taken place if time were a parallel universe, I don’t feel there’s much to prove at the family picnic.
That does not mean I don’t still enjoy the feeling of training or participating in races occasionally to test myself in real time. Those actions are good for mental and physical health. I plan to continue that journey.
But if you’re haunted by regrets of any kind, reconcile yourself to them. It’s okay. None of us is perfect. All of us have fallen short. That makes the feeling of achievement all the more better when it comes around. And it will. Just keep trying.
We Run and Ride 