This is not a day for glory (rough draft)

This is not a day for glory, even the imaginary kind of glory where you willfully ignore the quasi-woeful material facts of your fitness. This is the kind of day where you self-effacingly call yourself a “badass” just to taunt your legs to dance a bit more lightly on the pedals as you crest the rise at the top of your neighborhood and see the starting edges of the rocky mountains stretching out in front of you. This is not a day for glory; that day was two days ago when you pre-rode stage 4 of the USA Pro Cycling Challenge. That day was when you convinced the spectators who had begun to gather for the KOM in the Garden of the Gods to cheer for you by name as you ground out each increasingly steeper roller, and somehow your name traveled up the climb so each successive group of spectators knew it was you and urged you on, and part of you wanted the KOM to be around the next switchback, and another part was so entranced by the improvisational cheering of the crowd that you didn’t want it to end because you knew it was a purely seminal event, and you wanted to savor it for a few moments longer.

This is not a day for glory, this is a day to let the legs feel the work, and remember how the day before was a day where only the lungs felt the burn. This is a day to let the galactic acid in the quads and glutes and hams float like a lazy river, propelled by the gently oscillating flagella of the mitchondria into tiny and tasty digestible packets.

This is not a day for glory, not a day for the kind of small context glory where you try to move from the top 20% in a strava segment to the top 18%. This is not a day where you pretend to be crushing the soul of your riding buddy as you climb ridge road (when he is actually simply not trying as hard as you are on that particular segment). This is a day where you don’t focus as much on the momentum at the bottom of a perfectly paved roller, but instead carry the momentum in your memory of the day before where you tucked a bit deeper, held the top tube of your frame between your knees a bit tighter, pulled your elbows in under your chest a bit closer, and used only a few quick glancing strokes to crest the next rise after a similar hill, keeping your profile compact, and maximizing your speed down the next short descent.

This is not a day for glory, this is a day where you have enough attention to swerve a half inch around a small iridescent purple and green beetle in your path. It is a day where you don’t yell or gesticulate at the white-haired prius driving lady who nearly right hooks you on her way into the church parking lot, but instead simply shake your head and refocus on the road in front of you.

This is not a day for glory, it is a day for re-assimilating the rides of the last weeks and months, and feel how each of them has founds a place in your muscles, back, neck, instincts, memories, and how all of them have (without any kind of drama or overstatement) have led you to the ride you are on this morning, solo, and reveling in your legs and lungs, and young does watching you spin up the last subdivision hill to the best overlook in the neighborhood. 

This is a day for a unique and silent kind of glory, a self-contained self-satisfaction that you are living the life that you want, and that this life contains so much more than the ride you are on. This glory is the understanding that this morning’s ride has simply allowed you the clarity to fully enjoy everything you have and everything you have experienced this year, and use that clarity to push the window of optimism open wide for the rest of the challenges ahead that have nothing to do with pedals, nothing to do with physical effort, catching a rider ahead of you on a hill by imagining a tractor beam emanating from their rear wheel, the challenges ahead are of a completely different kind of ascent, and the past days of glory are packed away in your soul, and are all the ammunition and fuel that you need.