The first faltering steps at the beginning of my quest, my journey, my exploration, my …..
Yes, it’s many things, and will perhaps become more things, less things, who knows. It’s unknown. And that’s part of the attraction and part of the, my cycling buddy and friend of many many years, hates me using this word, fear.
I started the quest a couple of days ago, but looking back, I hadn’t, not really. I hadn’t committed. It was foggy, diffuse. So I had….
Committed.
I had.
But hadn’t.
Honesty. Truth.
I have started on many quests previously, given them grand titles, made contracts with myself etc etc etc
And what happened? In the words of Kurt Vonnegut, Diddly Squat. I even coined the phrase at one point “A Fat Man Plan”, but that’s a separate story that I will find time to post another day.
This one has to be different, otherwise I wont even make it to the bottom of Sa Calobra.
It will be a lie, a betrayal, a real let down to arrive the morning of my 67th birthday (late September) and to not honestly be able to say to myself
“Well, I have done what I can with training and weight loss let’s give Sa Calobra all I can today”.
I once wrote, in a feverish moment of wisdom,
“When you set up a plan that you believe in :-
Faith is believing that if you follow the plan honestly and truthfully that it will take you to where you want to be.
Hope is that if you cheat and don’t stick to the plan that you will get lucky and get to where you want to be anyway”
Faith, It has to be faith and honesty.
So, this will be posts of honesty.
I don’t have a training plan as yet, that will come. I will publish my eating plan, simple as it is in another post
Honesty:
I weigh, as of this morning at 08:00 116.9 kgs. At my height and physical build I should weigh around 85kgs lets call it 86.9. Which means I should lose 30kgs to get down to optimum weight. Honestly I don’t know if that’s achievable and maybe its foolhardy to aim for that by the edate, but I think in reality in order to have a good go at Sa Calobra on 30th September I must lose at least 15kgs. That must be possible with the exactly 170 days from today.
That is around 1kg every 10 days. That must be achievable. But will still need focus and awareness, especially as I have fallen off so many times after a period.
So to sum today,
It wont be “turning up” in the sense of really turning up on 30th September, if I cant honestly say I have lost weight and trained diligently and honestly enough.
And if I am not serious about it then why even start now ?
If I am not 100% committed why even start ?
So are you ? Are you really ready to start, Brian ?
Are you really going to go for this ?
And with faith applied every day, and every evening, bear yourself forward to the big day.
I am certain, and again my buddy will raise eyebrows at this, I am sure that even if I have lost all the weight and trained as much as I possibly can, then on the day, at the bottom of the snaking slope I will be be still nervous and fearful.
In fact, the only way I won’t be nervous is if I am not really turning up that day, and know already that I will stop at some point,
So young old man
!!!! TURN UP !!!!
A photo of me from last year in Ronda (halfway up a long climb). I look pretty much the same today
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