For months we spend our time carefully crafting training plans, preparing post-ride meals and maintaining our space-age machines after battle with winter’s wet. Every day our season approaches faster and faster, our first ‘Monument’ faster. It seemed like October only yesterday; April, a distant future.
Now, after our director orchestrates the day’s tactics and the commissaire drops the neutral flag, the day is here, the day is now. We trade that all-encompassing focus for every element of our training and recovery, tunneling all of our energy on only that which will get us to the finish line fastest and in front of those who we now ride with. Like when shocked into an emergency state where only one thing can and should be thought of, the present moment, nothing outside the barrier-lined parcour penetrates our over-stimulated minds.
A deep breath, relax into this moment’s stress. Attention, affection, appreciation, acceptance. Enjoy one’s own acknowledgement that the dice are airborne. That disaster may strike at any moment, that doors may open and close in front without a moment’s notice . However it is in this place, this present moment where anything can happen that opportunity presents itself. Do we go full throttle now? Is this our moment? Or do we holster it and wait for a more opportune moment down the road? However betting on a future opportunity conflicts with one’s newly adopted state in the present. It is now that we must go. We must risk everything now. We must roll the dice now and worry about the next lap, day, month, year when that time comes. For it is only what we do in this present moment that matters.
Besides if we are really prepared to go full throttle but the opportune moment has arrived sooner than expected, shouldn’t we be able to adapt and deploy immediately? Now?
React. Race. Relish this moment now and relive it for years to come.
