Hard hard work!

An elegant dismount

Whatever happened to it? Well if you ride cyclocross once in a while, you don't need to ask the question. The pic to the left is yours truly trying to get off of his bike and failing (flailing) at it! (Thanks for the pic Chris!) It's a challenge to describe the Mennocross course, on CMU's campus no less, without the visuals. It would have been a fast, fun, grassy course. Except for the rain. Which turned a lot (A LOT) of the grass into mud. And riding on grass that's become mud is really a lot like riding on three inches of wet sponge. There was not a lot of easy ground to cover on the course.

If it wasn't gravel pits or hills, it was muck. There were a few reprieves in the way of a sidewalk transition, a gravel parking lot, and a gravel road, but other than that, two-thirds of the course was hard-sluggin'. It was great!

Which leads me to the question: Who wants to work hard these days, just for the pure, painful, protracted, pleasure of it? Have we forgotten the wonder of fatigue? The simple ecstasy of stopping, after having worked your sorry ass off? There is nothing, really nothing, like working until you suffer deep physical distress, to develop a sense of accomplishment, as well as an unfettered understanding of how much you deserve to eat, drink, and be merry. You see, until you've worked, really worked, you can't fully enjoy excellent food (maybe just any food) and party drinks. Every time I ride cyclocross (which isn't often enough; my second and last race this year will be on Oct 18 in Altona - see this Southern Cross link. I'm reminded of my mortality, and I'm pleasantly (indeed?) surprised that my heart can beat that hard and fast, and not blast through my chest like an Alien spawn.

It's a miracle! Good times indeed!