The Agony and the Ecstacy...

The year was 1965, and Rex Harrison and Charleton Heston (Pre NRA-Spokesman days) were on the screen together in "The Agony and the Ecstacy."  I don't suppose many people my age remember or have seen this film - or if they have, they remember it as, "one of my parents' ideas of good film - before Die Hard came out" - but it is a classic.  The story is about the trials of Michaelangelo (Heston) as he painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel at the urging of Pope Julius II (Harrison).  One line has always stuck with me from this film:

Pope Julius II:  "When will you make an end of it?"

Michaelangelo: "When I am finished."

I SHOULD remember this exchange - as they keep saying it over and over, but the point here really isn;t about my fantastic ability to memorize lines that were repeated several times over in movies made well before I was born.

No, the point is, even in the off-season of cycling, the work is never done.  You have to keep going, keep riding, keep stretching, keep thinking, keep doing.  You can't really let up.  If you want to race, there really is no off-season at all, there's simply "training season" and "racing season."  I know what you're thinking:



Yeah, it's tempting to be like Elmer Fudd and just give up.  Oh, so tempting.  Luckily, the Fat Kid, co-founder of Masochism Central Industries, Inc. has JUST THE THING to keep you going:  Initiate the P90X lifestyle!!!!!

The idea behind doing this, of course, is to become the Kid formally known as "fat."  And, it might just work.  If not, I will develop new thresholds of pain tolerance that will enable me to get back on the bike and push myself harder than ever before, and no longer care about the feelings of intense agony my body is telling me that it is experiencing.  How do I know this?  Well, day one was basically an hour of rowing, pull-ups, and pushups....on arms that haven't done those sorts of things in a very long while.  Day two was an hour of plyometrics - or, the art of making muscles jump that are not supposed to do these things.  Day Three...I have no odea what it was - frankly, I'm glad I don't have that DVD, because I might have exploded...or imploded...but I rested instead, to get ready for day 4, which will be an hour of yoga tonight. 

Wait, yoga?  Yep, Yoga.  Not this guy:


or this guy.....



but something more like THIS guy!

(No, seriously, this guy's pretty good - but I haven't bent that way since I was three years old))

At any rate, because this is P90X - just yoga isn't good enough.  No, it's time for fast-paced, super-yoga-fighting-force-extreme-troopers-with-roid-rage-on-caffeine....yeah, that type of yoga.  Which means one basic thing: Tomorrow, I will be in pain, I'm sure.  Either that, or I am going to be the most relaxed person on the face of the earth, for I will have worked everything out of my system.  I'm voting for the former of those options, if the past couple of days have been any indication.

Now, here's where it gets odd (I know, it's already too late...):  I can't wait!!!!!  Yes, it's tough, and yes, I have a hard time keeping up.  Yes, it's only been a couple of days of pain and I already hate the S.O.B. in charge of these workouts.  But I want more.  Why?

Because- I cannot make an end of it until I am finished.

Thanks for reading,

The Fat Kid