When the alarm went off at six this morning, that is exactly how much enthusiasm, desire and willingness I had to crawl out from under the warm covers for this morning’s ride.  It was not helped when I pulled my phone under the covers and pried my bleary eyes open enough to check the weather.  “Current conditions -2, feels like -6, wind from the SE at 15”.  Urgh.

Not only must I rouse myself from a too-short sleep in a perfectly warm bed in a silent house, I must do it in the knowledge that the house is cold, it’s cold outside and I get to fight a headwind all the way to work.  I’m unprepared mentally and want nothing more than to crawl back under the covers for another hour.  So I do.  Or rather, I try.  For the next 30 minutes my ego successfully forces me awake by reminding me that Adam will have ridden this morning despite the wind and chill.  I’m pretty sure Adam would have ridden with one foot chewed off by a cougar this morning, furiously pumping along with one cleated foot – and making good time of it too.  Such is the nature of my esteemed co-worker and co-rider.

Ego won.  I dragged my sorry self out of bed, cursing everything and everyone and my ego for good measure.  I crawled into the shower and fought back against Ego telling myself I might be up, I might be in the shower, I may have all the stretchy-gear in the bathroom with me, but I haven’t said I’m going to ride.  I rode.  Ego won again.

I was just over a click (a kilometer for those not versed in Canadian slang) into my ride when I tried to adjust my Fredly mirror and realized it wasn’t there, nor was my helmet.  Safety said go back and get the helmet but Lazy ignored it and pushed on.   It was a poorly played move on Lazy’s part as I’m certain that upon arriving at the homestead, Prudence and Lazy would have teamed up, pointing out the late hour and the certainty of being late for work and I would have driven.  Lazily.  As it turned out, too lazy to turn around  meant riding into a headwind for the next 35-ish minutes, getting passed and watching others drift further and further from my reach.

Gone is the rabbit-hunting Cat-6 predator of last summer.  In its place sits a doughnut-fattened gelatinous blob masquerading as a rider.  With each rotation of the pedals I cursed the doughnuts, the chocolates, the cake, the jelly belly beans, the second and third helpings.  I cursed my slothfulness and my remarkable ability to find an excuse to avoid the fluid trainer all winter.  I cursed the cigars I’d so anxiously saved to smoke in my new heated garage.  I cursed  the wind, the cold, my frozen head.  Then I ran out of things to complain about. Not that I’d let that stop me.

The constant awareness that this moment, this unpleasantness (for we can’t really call it suffering in the broader scheme of things), the burning legs, the lungs that feel four sizes too small – that working through and around and over, this is what creates success.  It’s a metaphor for life.  Taking the car and driving to work gets me to the same destination in less time, but at what price?

I arrived at work a mixture of sweating and freezing, out of breath and out of steam.  I felt ill.  I had a headache.  I wanted a nap.  Actually I always want a nap, that’s not new.  I want a nap right now in fact.

Calgary’s wind has a rather nasty habit of switching directions late in the afternoon.  A headwind in the morning often spins into a headwind for the ride home – I find this unfair.  The wind it turns out, is entirely indifferent to my judgement of it’s fairness or lack thereof.  Occasionally however it works in your favour – a tailwind in the morning and another at night.  Or, like today, you have a headwind in the morning and tailwind at night.  And oh, what a tailwind it was!  30km/h push from the south.  That’s what I’m talking about!

It struck me on my flight home this afternoon that when we have a headwind and we’re working exceptionally hard to maintain a pace, it is a grinder wearing at the psyche, a bully pushing you around.  Turn it around and throw the same effort level into your cycling and suddenly you are FLYING!  You pedal furiously, you’re sweating like mad and your air speed is the same.  But the sensation is not the same at all.  This is rewarding.  This is exhilarating.  We are hard-wired for ground-speed ladies and gentlemen.

So it was in this glorious wind-assisted cycling daydream that I was rudely awakened by the arrival of what is now known as the Sherpa climb.  Playtime was over and it was time to pay.  Up, up, up we go getting slower by the meter.  My legs are burning, my lungs are burning and I’m a little dizzy at the end of the first rise.  I pedal on, now with a crosswind towards the next section.  I roll up to the stop sign, clip out with my left foot, fail to get my right foot unclipped and immediately begin falling to the right.

There is a flurry of activity in my brain as pain centers begin to register the incoming signals.  We’ve got early reports of gravel damage to the right hand but nothing in the region of the previous break.  Confirmed surface damage to the right knee, extent unknown.  Hold up!  Incoming from the right sit-bone vicinity…sounds like there’s going to be some swelling there.  Pride reports major damage!

I watched my little black bell, or rather pieces of the little black bell bounce out beside me before I finished the roll onto my back.  I laid there for a moment, an embarrassed smile on my face as if to tell the cars whizzing by on Centre Street that while my pride had gone into hiding, I was in fact fine.  In reality, I was laying there thinking Damn!  They got me.  That’s what I get for thinking I beat the clips without paying my dues.  Pride goeth before a fall.  Literally.

I must give props again to the rather amazing ability of my MEC stretchy pants to withstand the abuse I dish out.  In the fall fall that broke my wrist and bruised up my right side, the pants came out with nary a scrape.  I am pleased to report that while my flesh suffered a reasonable scrape and exposed some of the tender stuff lurking beneath the skin, my stretchy pants are no worse for wear after today’s spring fall.

I think I’m going to go have that nap.