Die to Live

Yesterday evening I cleaned one of my two bicycles. The endeavor was painful because one of my arms is both weak and injured. I live in an apartment and use Muc-Off products to make the bike shine and glisten. I then topped off the tires with sealant (I ride tubeless) and oiled the chain with dry lube.

I am preparing myself mentally to ride the bike again, though I am still far from fully healing after my collarbone break.

I woke early this morning and ran for about an hour and fifteen minutes at an easy pace. I then did an hour of strength training with resistance bands (mostly lower body excercises such as banded squats) and foam rolled to promote mobility.

By the end of all these activities I found myself pretty languished, and my work day hadn’t started. Dawn barely broke. I find myself pushing forward regardless. I am preparing for a marathon.

Why do we endurance athlete types push ourselves to such long distances, day in and day out? Well, I have a theory: over the course of our lives, we accumulate a hefty weight of baggage, which we have to carry around with us in our daily affairs. The added weight worsens the already-debilitating effects of gravity. Some of us have accumulated so much baggage that we barely know what resides beneath the layers.

So we find a challenging activity like running or cycling, and in the back of our mind we want to see “just how far we can go.” Fatigue accumulates, mile by mile, and the layers of baggage seem to fall off, chunk by chunk. And maybe what’s left on the long run is who we truly are. Or maybe what lies beneath is the answer to a question we didn’t realize needed asking.

The question is, “What do I need to do?”

And the answer is, “Live.”

And in a nutshell, it’s our way of dying a little to live a little.