White noise and chicken feet

on being stuck in the cold, hard middle

It doesn’t matter how much I train.

Nor how well I show up with my food.

When I go off riding a hundred miles off road in a couple of weeks, there will come a time when I’m as saggy as the titties on hundred-year-old Jersey cow.

Thirty five miles hurts.

Fifty is worse.

But things get really bad when I start getting cold.

Eventually, around the 70 to 75 mile point it feels like the calories I consume go directly to my legs.

There isn’t a lot left over for making heat and even fewer to keep the brain operating.

For those without much imagination?

You’ve spent the day with your shoulders fused to your ears, your hands knitted like chicken feet and your arse beaten black and blue by a small seat over very bumpy roads.

That’s the seventy mile mark.

And that’s the time in every ride where I’m ready to lie down in the sunshine and give up.

And I keep going.

I get to a point where the calories I’m consuming are just enough to keep me going, but not enough for me to be making any sense. I start calling out to the sock that Neff used to wipe his arse when he shat in the woods the last time we did this ride.

When it gets really bad, the sock answers back.

That, dear reader, is where I am with my creative processes right meow -including this foolsletter.

I feel like everything is stuck at the 70 mile point on a hundred mile ride.

I’m taking on enough energy to keep moving, but most of the noises are incoherent grunts and most of the pleasure is gone.

Each day lately, I’ve debated packing this thing in and giving up.

I guess this is why there’s snow on my desk lately.

But, fear not dear reader!

I’ll keep posting, day after day.

Soon enough, I’ll break through.

Soon enough, I’ll hit those ultra sweet final five miles.

Pedal, pedal, glide - all the way home.

Unless I get hit by a truck,

Keep spinning, you fools!