Perspective

When I got home last night, I didn't feel like riding. I didn't really feel like doing anything. The sky was light but dark clouds loomed and it looked like rain. But a ride was on the schedule and I'm sticking to the schedule so out the door I went. I was cranky, grumpy, kinda depressed, a little hungry and my legs felt like lead. The first hill isn't even very much of a hill but I was swearing to myself as I ground up it, feeling it in every part of my tired quads and hamstrings. (Note to self: DON'T spend two whole days planting seeds - standing up and kneeling down repeatedly - unless you plan to have a hamstring transplant before EVER biking or running again...) I just felt like crap.

But Amelia has a way of talking me out of my funk. The soothing click of her gears, the quiet whirr of her wheels, the smooth ride she always delivers...how LUCKY am I to be able to be out there, just riding? Why all this wasted energy on feeling bad when I could be putting it into getting up this hill? Be in the now, she says to me. She always gets me out of my own head. She gets me to appreciate all that I have and all that I am grateful for. She is an amazing woman, that Amelia. I'm keepin' her.

The first leg of the ride was into the wind, then the turn up the mile long climb...by the time I got to the top of the climb I had let most of my "stuff" go... and I rounded the corner to turn home, with the wind at my back, and was treated to a scene much like this:



I rode in and out of showers and sunshine and remembered that I was ALIVE, that there was nothing but NOW to worry about and that everything else could just be DONE. I know it sounds cliché but by the time I got home, I'd left it all out on the road. And I slept like a baby. And when I woke up this morning, I still had that calm, quiet aura.

Life really is great. Make the choice to live, EVERY day.

Train hard....