Observations — momentum

As a training ride goes, I was on my game— the saddle felt good; legs were getting stronger as I went; my wind was good, and I was enjoying a beautiful day. This momentum would carry the day until I had to come to a hard stop because of cars on a country road. It was all gone and I stood there watching them go by.

There was an audible grunt of exasperation as I got the pedals going again — I was nothing more than potential energy* at that point.

Figuratively speaking, I did get my momentum back and the training ride went as planned, but I couldn’t shake the figurative concept of momentum and worked it into my training out there on the trail. I would like to point out that a buddy of mine looks at training much differently; he’s all about data collection for optimal performance, focus, and the determination to ride the fastest time possible — he’s an engineer by trade so it comes honestly. I ride for the adventure, which for him, is a seat of the pants approach to training for a race. It will make him bat-shit crazy to learn half of my training focus was on figurative concepts of momentum.

Our momentum, figuratively speaking, is always being challenged — life trying to slow you down. We work through it and continue, much like my cycling example.

But sometimes, things happen that take you to a knee, or worse still, take you to the floor. The little events can add up but mostly this falls into the big event category: a death; the loss of the love of your life; a demotion that that strips you of your identity; an addiction that spirals out of control — there is a long list of horrors that can take you to the floor and destroy any and all momentum (figuratively speaking).

You are now on the floor, all momentum is gone, and it is all seemingly unfair — although the choices are easy: stay on the floor with all the rationalization at you command to justify staying where you are or get up and build your momentum again. I don’t think I mentioned building momentum is fucking hard, energy intense, needs willful intent, as well as time. Like anything worth achieving it is hard work.

You need to get up. Staying on the floor is no legacy, no matter how you try to rationalize the situation, it offers nothing but regrets, bitterness, and missing out on the potential of a lifetime.

How do you get up? Start at the beginning and build it back up. I will take the cheap way out and say you will know how that’s done when you have done it, and in fairness every situation will be different. But what I do know, is you have to fucking get up; you have to be willful, push through the pain, claw yourself to a knee, find a way to stand and put one foot in from of the other, and move. All figuratively speaking of course.

Can’t wait to continue my training — I can feel the momentum building.

iamgpe

* Potential energy is the stored energy in an object due to its position, properties, and forces acting on it.