On The Surface

I noticed a crack on my front Carbon wheel about 10 minutes ago.

My heart sank.  This could derail my whole Epicman race.  I have no backup wheel set.  I have no money to buy another wheel.  I'd have to borrow a wheel and it would probably effect my performance.

The bad performance would, no doubt, cause me to be a complete failure in my eyes and lead to utter despair over how dumb I could be.

I worked out the equation (possible series of events)  to me being homeless and a burden on my friends and family.

Then I decided to really look at the crack.

It was really a harmless decal peeling in a strange way.

And so it goes.  The constant trials of beating ourselves up over false beliefs. 

Looking at things properly is important.

Mindful Thoughts

Intelligence comes from awareness.  Just as emotional intelligence comes from emotional awareness.

I'm going to infer that physical intelligence comes from physical awareness.

Regardless, this all rests on awareness being synonymous with mindfulness.

Two weeks before racing Epicman I will tune into feeling my body instead of ignoring it as I pound it into submission.  (If I were a gifted athlete, I'm sure I'd be able to pound my body into submission while feeling it instead of numbing out.  There is a wise athlete!)

This leads to me trying to dial my mind into my body so that the distance becomes irrelevant.

Why?  Because I can't wrap my head around the distance of a Triple Ironman.

7.2 Mile Swim, 336 Mile Bike, 78 Mile run.

So because I can't be mindful of the distance, I have to really look into my body now.  (And get to know it as best as possible, because I have no idea what will happen then.)

For what is the entire event  but many millions of tiny moments that I have control over processing and interpreting? 

I will happen.  The event won't happen to me.

The triple ironman will be the unfolding of myriad nows.

Working on Now

The known is our past.  The known is nothing other than the prison of past conditioning.  And when there is no evolution, there is stagnation, entropy, disorder, and decay...Uncertainty, on the other hand, is the fertile ground of pure creativity and freedom.  Uncertainty means stepping into the unknown in every moment of our existence.  
...Without uncertainty and the unknown, life is just the stale repetition of outworn memories.  You become the victim of the past, and your tormentor today is your self left over from yesterday.  
-Deepak Chopra

Sometimes on the trails I get confused as the fatigue sets in.  I get disoriented.  I don't always know the answer to 'where am I'?

I, however, have unconditionally accepted one axiomatic expression of knowledge.  And it is the answer to 'when am I'?  Which is now.  When now? Now now.

Snowshoeing slows you down.  And like trail running you have to be attentive to each foot strike lest a miscalculation take you out of the racing equation.

All the mountain side contracts into one point of contact where you root yourself into the data stream beneath you.  The contact point is now.  You can't step into the same river twice.  But who cares?  I don't want to.  I want my feet underwater, now.  Once.  And then again.  Once again.

When?  When I'm there.

I'm not by a river bed at the moment.  I'll cross that bridge when I get there. When it's now time for stepping into streams.

The data feed of my consciousness is often riddled with sensory perceptions of extreme pain as the hours of training go on.  In the midst of racing the last place you want to inhabit is the now.  You stretch your mind to that cold beer after the race.  Or, as things really begin to become agitated in my brainwaves I want to be anywhere, than 'here'.  You want to be anywhen but now.

I'm coming to realize that you've stopped racing for intrinsic purposes at this moment, or should I say, this non-moment.  You have been affected into a state of being other than what you are, which, in this case, is racing.  What you are doing, then, at that time.  That present.

If you are not inhabiting the race moment, what are you doing?  I don't know.  Probably whatever it was that I was doing for the last 7 years.

And that is striving for results.  Calculating.  Looking at things through a lens of pros and cons.  Becoming benchmarks - not the transitions between them.  In fact, I wasn't becoming because I wasn't even there.  I wasn't.

It's all the past now, anyway.  And I'll let the disillusionment slip aside when I side-step the obstacle of then and focus on now.  Now now.

All the pain, and fire in my legs.  The delirium of now in mile 50 or 50.01.  The moment that I couldn't possibly want extended indefinitely in the present I hope to, one day, welcome as the manifestation of a goal that was never a goal.  Something that was nothing but a signal that I was moving in the right direction.