MUSINGS FROM MIDLIFE
My Stories
The Hurt Box Haircut
Dragging myself up a mountain in Lake Annecy five months into my cycling, I was riding with a woman who was noticeably sturdy as she paced herself up the climb. Me on the other hand, well eyebrows were raised.
Later, over a croissant she told me she trained with The Hurt Box. Ouch.
Seed planted. Really, she had me at croissant. I left France to hike 235kms solo in the Swiss mountains. A fan of distance shall we say.
On my return home I found a remote endurance coach. I ticked off Three Peaks and grand fondos. Training weeks tallied 450kms and serious climbing. I was fit, and tired.
The Journey
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice — though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you did not stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognised as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do — determined to save the only life you could save.