The Drive

You have this routine--when to eat, when to train, when to sleep, and it is ALL you are doing (you fit in the rest of life in there somewhere), you get used to it, and even though you are tired and things hurt from time to time, you come to accept that this is the way it is, and it makes your life feel simple and under control, and you don't even have time to make stupid decisions like do I really want that piece of cake because there is no question the answer is NO I AM IN TRAINING and you are going full speed and people think you are nuts and call you Crackhead or want to know why would you do this you're not going to win the race are you and they say they never see you except wet or wearing skimpy clothing and you are going by in a blur but then you go run with one of them and they can't keep up and then they know that what you do has made a difference RIGHT NOW and you feel good about it and remember back to when that person was someone you thought was so much faster than you and they have been running for many more years than you and you don't even think you're fast but you are and people tell you either you look good or you look skinny and some even recognize that it's just that you are lean and you smile at them no matter what and you keep up the routine it feels good in an odd sort of way and you realize that you haven't even tapped into your body's POTENTIAL if only you didn't have a damn job but then again it's all so sweet because the focus of training carries over into the job and people wonder why you are like a laser beam no matter what you do and for all the hyperactivity you have learned to become so CALM and understand the value of patience and it's easy to stand in line every now and then because good things come to those who wait and you are used to the inconvenience of your body hurting or needing to be fed and you have reframed "inconvenience" as "opportunity for growth" (which it is!) and you hope you can figure out a way to reap all these rewards someday without engaging in THE ROUTINE but you aren't certain it's possible so you read and read and find out that many other endurance athletes are EXACTLY LIKE YOU and have this constant struggle with the TRAINING WORLD vs. the REAL WORLD and doesn't the real world suck while the training world is all pure and nice and INSIDE YOUR HEAD even though it's your BODY doing the work and then you get to the point where you aren't sure you can separate the two and you think you've made the BREAKTHROUGH which is not the ability to go faster but the ability for your MIND to keep up with your BODY isn't that funny you thought it would be exactly opposite but see we are crazy people and have discovered our bodies are much less limited because we know how to train them whereas training our minds seems counterproductive (at least according to some books we are just supposed to let it happen without too much invervention) so you keep going and sometimes you wonder if you are depressed or whether that mind of yours is leaking into your TRAINING consciousness and whether that is a bad thing or not so you entertain the thought and you just let it go which really is what MEDITATION is about so you can feel good that you aren't really shutting out thoughts by keeping up the THE ROUTINE you are learning how to have thoughts and let go of them and oh wasn't the point of the TRAINING to RACE but then you do the race and it's BANG GAME OVER and only then do you realize that the point was NOT THE RACE it was the journey and you try and shift into a lower gear and you have fits and starts with your body and your mind because your body likes THE ROUTINE as much as your mind does but you hold back and you notice subtle differences like I am not sleeping normally and I don't have a good sense of when, what or how much to eat and you forget to mix your bottles and your schedule is all thrown off and you think you feel like crap and are getting slower but it's just your body adjusting to REAL LIFE and doesn't it suck if that's what REAL LIFE is I don't really want it but everyone tells me I should try and so I keep trying and I find myself falling back into THE ROUTINE just maybe a little less of it and then things feel better but why do these things that aren't important keep cropping up and making me think about them it's just not fair but at least I am fortunate in that I KNOW what THE ROUTINE is and I can always go back to it whenever I want even though my body gets older because it REMEMBERS and when anyone asks me how I can keep up THE ROUTINE but then they see me smile like the Cheshire cat they know and then they say they are so amazed to see what a person can do and that I seem so happy when I'm doing THE ROUTINE and somewhere along the line I must have figured out how to turn THE ROUTINE into my REAL LIFE so I guess the secret is to always have the THE ROUTINE but maybe not so much of it all the time, yeah, that's the ticket, and it still takes some adjusting to but we can handle it, but right now, all of a sudden, your mind is free to wander and think (some would say too much), you have TIME to make those ridiculous decisions like should I eat this or should I accept this invitation and you start to second guess yourself and you get out of THE ROUTINE and life is no longer simple and there are too many possibilities and you have no immediate goals so you tell people "I'm just out to have fun" when deep inside you know that the pursuit of "fun" is as silly as the pursuit of "happiness" because fun and happiness are fleeting sensations that exist momentarily but you don't learn anything from them--what you learn from is when you are hurting, when things are going down the toilet, when you are putting yourself on the line not to have fun but to have consequences and to have to make HUGE decisions like can I keep putting one foot in front of the other until the finish line and how am I going to get through this muck when I am frightened and then you realize you can't call it by any other name except THE DRIVE.