Heavy Legs

My life seems to be about two things lately: Work and Cycling.

I enter a highly creative world every day. My job, one could say, errs on the strategic side of creativity. While I don't float around the third floor chasing after dreams and ideas, I do coral all the ideas that trickle down the stairs and make sure that they are dressed neatly and say the right things. I have to be sweet 80% of the time, hard-core 20% of the time and alert and one-step-ahead 110% of the time. It's a fun world to enter 5 days a week.

Then, when I eventually succeed at turning my brain off and closing my moleskin (that's right- I'm one of those people- lap it up) I race home, don my lycra and cleats and hop on my bike . From a world of pictures, words and strategic intelligence, I turn to one of numbers and ratios. It's all about heart rate, cadence, time spent in the saddle, kilometres covered and average speed. I have to watch my beats per minute, keeping them in a specific zone. I have to keep an eye on the odometer and make sure that the time spent in the saddle matches (or is complimentary to) it. I have to drink a quarter of a bottle of liquid every twenty minutes and eat half an oat bar every hour to keep my body in balance.

All of this results in three things:

1. Heavy Legs. For two days after a long ride my legs get heavy and cease to work. This is particularly fun when it is required for me to climb into a pair of high heels and walk up 12 flights of stairs, continuously, every day.

2. Increased muscle- self explanatory. More of a useful thing when I climb into the heels and tackle the stairs- I have been known to leave some colleagues eating my dust during a simple walk up to the 6th Floor. Bonus. 

3. Increased fitness - the goal of the number-watching-ration-building-scientific-training routine. The reason for all the lycra fashion and cleat-pumping. It's the secret weapon come race day, when fat men are wheezing while pushing their bikes up a hill and I'm just getting started.

So, once again, I lay back on my excuse for a lack of writing like someone would lie back on a picnic blanket after devouring the entire basket of cheese and wine. I have neglected my writing, my friends and my family- putting my training and my job ahead of them for the time being.

That's the magical thing, though. All of them will be there when the race is done and my legs feel lighter. They'll understand and keep a place for me at the proverbial dinner table until it's time for me to return to my real (Read: Normal) life.

Until then, it's back to being strategically creative with heavy legs.

Love and Gratitude
xx