Albert

When he was a young man, Einstein spent some time courting a couple theories about math and physics and the nature of the universe and such. He locked himself in his room, chasing a theory around the desk for a couple weeks or a couple months, thrashed out an answer, then he chased another one out and and so on. He was like thirty or thirty five when he thought those big thoughts. Then the world knew his name.

I don't pretend to understand what he was talking about. I read some of it and it seems like a bunch of hoo-haw to me, but what do I know? Now, I am two or three years older than Albert was when he did his best work and I don't have a bunch of math ribbons or physics trophies on my wall. If I had to guess, I bet Albert's floor was littered with ribbons. When I spend too much time thinking about my lack of accomplishment, I get depressed, so I don't do it.  To be fair, I do have a couple of tattered ribbons gathered over the years, safely tucked into a fire-safe box that could potentially survive a non-nuclear missile strike, so that's good, but I can't quite remember where it is currently hiding.  I am pretty sure its around here somewhere.  Anyway, none of my precious ribbons are stamped "First Place" or "Winner" or "Best in Show" or anything good like that.  My best ribbon says "Participant".

If the ebooks and estories are true, in centuries past, Monks and Clerics, Friars and members of all the old fashioned religious clubs lived their lives by a fairly rigorous set of rules. They wore itchy, unattractive smocks, they spoke rarely and had to sing in glee clubs, they ate the same boring food day in and day out made out of tree roots and weeds; Essentially they complied with a set of rules that they didn't have a hand in creating, and in doing so, they gave over control of parts of their lives.

In many ways, I think we triathletes sometimes live a faded echo of those monastic times, even when we don't mean to. We wear unattractive spandex and lycra, we are often too out of breath to speak or sing and we eat nasty tasting gels and bars and we drink sports drinks that taste like old socks.  We cede control of parts of our lives, we give away parts of ourselves, our destiny and our ability to choose for ourselves.

In my time, a young man such as myself, with no talent but possessing a substantial interest in starting a high paying career in the rock star profession had to follow a very restrictive value system. I had to dress a certain way - jeans and a led zeppelin t-shirt. I had to talk a certain way -“That's cool” was an appropriate response to just about any situation. I had to listen to certain music - the commonly acceptable music collection consisted of Boston and Ted Nugent.  Optionally, the extreme version of that chosen life style also held that, if you were a real outlaw, you could throw in some KISS and Alice Cooper but I just couldn't listen to that stuff since the makeup scared me and it gave me nightmares.

Last week, I was on a bike ride with some folks and I wanted to go one way, they wanted to go another. Up a mountain. Of course, I gave in to the group and rode up the friggin mountain.  I lost all control of my destiny.

The past couple weeks have been hard like that.  Today, I hit the wall and I just had to stop.  No swim, no bike, no run.  At some point, your body or your mind or something says you have to take a break.  For me, that was today.