Two months of feeling sorry for myself – enough. reset to ought.
170 for the Hilly. This one is about goal setting and hard things as much as it’s about moving through the world with arms wide open. The Chilly Hilly is a bike ride of 35 miles, all hilly, in February. Need to have a loose light body that’s resilient and strong.
21 weeks from now. 32 lbs and 10 lbs of muscle gained.
21 weeks. Add 25 miles. With hills.
21 weeks. Max out the facial softness and the healthy metabolism.
Max out the cold training.
What am I talking about?
Hot Yoga.
Swimming.
Biking and Hi Intensity training.
Do the hard thing. Do the Chilly Hilly. Possibly fail? Yeah. But learn from it all. Learn from the effort. A long time ago, my Aikido Instructor said something like “It’s all training.” He said it in an inclusive way, like all life is training. I rejected that. Still do.
Life is for living.
But now, I’d say what he said, with some nuance. Yeah, it’s all training – in hindsight. Laughing and loving while your going through it, that’s living. That’s staying soft. That’s how you break through hard walls. Learn from the path, but enjoy the path.
Be soft. Be present.
All that to break through. Break through the myths. And the myths of hardness are as much about that being false, as about the idea of being all that. The idea that you’re going down a wrong road is a myth. Being a guy and doing hard things is fucked up they’ll say. But that’s wrong too.
You could say that the false male myth is one of hardness, one of goal only. You could say.
Instead what it needs to be about is progressive iterative and cyclic moves towards a goal. But the goal is softness. The goal is open arms, strength resiliency and love.
Staying content with the cycle itself in order to maintain balance, maintain health, sometimes just maintain.
At some level I want to say it’s about not caring. That’s not quite it. It’s about staying relaxed while going through the work. It’s about that being the achievement. And in staying relaxed, to keep caring and feeling.
My Nutritionist said most of what I’ve gained was inflamation. Some fat, yeah I know.
Right now: 201 lbs, glucose 131. Tomorrow the numbers start.
Tomorrow, you suck. I know. Let it go.
I feel fine. Just not good. So, time to go. Time to get to good.
Right now, my biking is at 11 miles (last week did 16). Cycle that up to the Chilly 35. Slowly.
And if I’m going to really be writing. If this is supposed to mean anything, then I have to say: diet-wise, switch to fat, cut the carbs, stay loose, move gently but move.
That’s what breaking through walls is. Staying soft. Staying. Sticking. Sticking with it. Never giving up.
Never giving up on yourself.