Recently in Obsessive athletics Category

Oh wow am I tired. It's been two days of windy windy riding (I took a rest day in between them, but it didn't exactly make me feel rested), and I feel like I've ridden 40 miles today instead of 20. Lordy.

It was fun as hell, don't get me wrong. I growled at the wind coming over the bridge. I gripped the bars like I was holding a shotgun and hurled myself bodily at the headwind.

And I made it just fine, and then flopped down on a stool, and ordered a macchiato purely by giving the coffeeman a look. I love that. He looks a question; I look an answer; two minutes later there is a strong, gorgeous little cup of coffee in front of me. Delightful.

Really, I could have wished for a nap in a glass, but you do what you can.

So here I am, at home, and it's too late to have more coffee, even though I'd dearly love some. I made soup. It's yummy. I ate some things. And some other things. And still more things. And somehow it all made me even sleepier, and yet I know when I finally get in bed, I won't be able to sleep.

Why?

Well, apart from my inherently nocturnal disposition, I've been highly sleep-resistant lately, due to being incredibly, incredibly distracted by thoughts of a particular boy. Let's call him Thing One, shall we?

I try to sleep and all I can think about it is what I'd do to Thing One, were he at that moment (or any moment) next to me.

And then, when I give myself leave to just dwell and fantasize and go crazy over it, Thing Two intrudes, because, you know, I kissed him the other night.

And then, as if that weren't enough, I start thinking about Blondie (you remember Blondie, right?), who tends to come up in my head for the simple and powerful reason that he's the best kisser I ever had. Sigh.

Upon hearing about the little carnival that is my head lately, my friend Miz Fury says it sounds like a circus. And then, because this is how my brain works, I think, hmmmn. Maybe I should just recruit myself a little harem.

And you wonder why I need all that exercise?

I sometimes think that everything, absolutely everything, takes place along a continuum. That is, at one side of the spectrum - or some place in the middle - a quality is positive. It helps you to navigate the world, it allows you to do meaningful work, it tells you what your own particular shape of human life is about. Or maybe it simply keeps you sane.

On the opposite end (and for some things, at either extreme), the same quality has a deleterious effect on you or those who have to be in the same room with you.

Today's example: focus.

I have this in spades, as does my dear adorable brilliant brother. We are both hugely creative people - great big engines of ideas. We never, ever run out of things we want to do, try, or make, nor of the underlying impetus, which is something we want (or rather, need) to say.

That's great, right?

It is. But...we can both veer off into the extreme of focus, which is obsession.

A certain amount of obsession can be good - it provides the necessary drive to get things done.

On the other hand, it can lead one to do something stupid, like, say, get on a bicycle and ride up an uncleared bridge or three before the ice has sufficiently melted to be safely traversable, resulting in broken collarbones and wrecked bikes.

Now before y'all get upset, I did not do this. I had a little Yoda-like talk with myself and amped down the level of urgency and took myself for a brisk little slidey-ice walk instead. No major mishaps.

Not as good as the bike ride would have been - by a factor of about 2,000 - but I don't have a big bloody smear on my chest requiring X-rays and tape and 8 weeks off the bike, either.

Tomorrow it's gonna rain cats and dogs, and I am gonna ride my little ass off in it. Because the temp's going up above freezing and staying there for a few days. Patience, grasshopper.

"Send me in, Coach! Send me the fuck IN!" - Me.
"You know, there's a reason pro athletes retire before they're 40." - Physical therapist.
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for." - Roy Batty.

It's a well-known adage among historians that civil wars tend to be the bloodiest. Well, it's official. I and my body are at war with one another. And I have no doubt that whoever can be said to be the ultimate victor, we'll both die in the end.

Yesterday I injured my rotator cuff. While swimming. Yep, that's right, swimming - the last refuge of the wounded athlete. God fracking damnit.

To say I am in a fury about it doesn't do justice to the emotion. I am pissed, sulking, simmering, infuriated, enraged, frustrated beyond belief, and losing my freaking mind.

I call to mind, in fact, a wonderful cartoon from the '80s, "The Angriest Dog in the World." It was, it turns out, created by film director David Lynch, but I didn't know that until four seconds ago. I did, however, remember, verbatim, the caption: "So angry he cannot move. He cannot eat. He cannot sleep. He can just barely growl."

When Annabelle called me to say hi earlier in the evening (I was just as angry then as I am now, and had not yet whacked things in my apartment to the minimal extent that I felt I might do without tearing my other rotator cuff), I mentioned this comic strip to her as an illustration of how I was feeling, and at the end of our brief chat, I told her I was glad she'd called, even though I was still angry. "You've cheered me up by one-eighth of a percent, which I would not have thought possible."

"So you're able to growl now?"

"Yes, I can growl now. Thank you."

I then spent the rest of the evening working (what else is new, and believe you me, that is helping nothing: not my tailbone, not my knees, not my shoulder, and not my mood), while half-watching "Deadliest Catch," which is soothing in its extremis - its raw danger, ice-laden ships, crab claws, men dying in pursuit of quick cash, and so on.

At one point I realized the kitty was hiding under the coffee table, convinced that it was she with whom I was furious.

I coaxed her out, reassuring her that she was the one creature in the world whom I do not hate at this moment. We had a little feline-human snuggling time, and I think she believes me now. Such a sweet girl.

I was hanging out with a friend and her cat (or rather, her boyfriend's cat) the other day, and the cat revealed a disturbing tendency to suddenly begin hissing and spitting and attacking while my friend was petting its head. One moment, all sweetness-and-light kitty, the next moment, wild fanged creature.

It made me realize how very nice my cat is. Sure, she likes to get into trouble, and chew my shoelaces, and sneak into places she's not allowed - just to see how much she can get away with. But really, she almost always does what she's told (eventually), and she has never bitten me, and she hardly ever hisses at anything or anyone. She is just a nice, nice creature, and I am lucky to have her.

Which is good, because if I were to go kitten-shopping at a shelter right now, in my Big Angry Human self, I doubt I'd be able to reassure a frightened little stray into coming home with me, as I did to her lo those many years ago. I guess she knows what's under the towering inferno.

Though if I can't get at least one of my sports back, I cannot answer for what will be under there in future. Look Out, Manhattan. You've been warned.