Sometimes the world decides it’s time for us to take a few rest days. Whether it’s divine intervention or a random visit from lady (bad)luck, there are times where forces beyond your control keep you from the regular day to day. When you’re like me and the regular day to day monotony is comforting and just so happens to include your passion… well, it gets really hard to adjust to the new normal, even if it is the correct (and often only) thing to do.
Basically,
I got some sort of Staph Infection and had to take a few days of required rest
off the bike and away from regular training. For someone as obsessed with numbers and
consistency as I am, missing a few scheduled training days is akin to shooting
myself in the foot, which honestly would’ve produced a similar result to the
infection. Quick backstory for context… for a long while I’ve had two bone spurs
hanging out on the top of my feet, a nice result of having incredibly flat feet
and spending too much time in tight shoes. Last week my left foot randomly swelled
up around the spur, turned bright red, and decided it was going to cause
excruciating pain. Thinking that I was paying the price for not getting my sad
feet looked at by a professional, my initial assessment of the pain was that I had
a stress fracture or something… I guess my midday walk to the coffee shop was decently
quick for someone who doesn’t like walking, but I didn’t jump off any stairs or
anything. Turns out I’m still a dumbass and stress fractures don’t swell and
turn red; that’s called an infection. Long story short I have a staph infection
which decided to cause my foot to go full balloon mode and provide me with a couple
horrible nights (I’ll spare you details from the midnight bathroom episodes).
Thankfully
I’ve got an ace in my pocket, and Dr. Steve Noble was once again able to come
to my rescue. Providing some antibacterial medicine, energy work, and some
needed words of comfort, Dr. Noble got me back on my feet (ha) in no time and
saved the day… yet again. Being on the mends, however, does not mean it’s a
good idea to jump directly back into training, and there was no way I was
fitting my still-swollen elephant foot back inside a dainty little cycling shoe.
So… it was couch time for Payson. If you’ve ever spent time with me, you
probably know how good I am at resting. Here’s a hint: I’m terrible. Recently I’ve
gotten better, but sometimes even taking a rest day sometimes feels like a step
backwards. When I’m required to take a full four days off, well, that feels
like I’m plunging into an un-recoverable hole.
At this
point, you may say that I’m being unreasonable, and that taking a few days completely
off to let your body recover from a decently gnarly virus is the smart thing to
do, and resting is most likely actually helping you get faster. And yes, you’d
be right. But I’ve never been one for reason, and when you put my slightly obsessive
character trait on top you’ve got a recipe for disaster. So yes, it’s
absolutely the smart option to take a few days off, and I’m going to do it… but
let me tell you… goddamn it's hard. For two main reasons:
Reason
one. When your life is dedicated to training and racing, two specific mantras
come to define your life: FTFP and HTFU. FTFP stands for Follow The Fucking
Plan, which is pretty straightforward in its general meaning. When you’re
looking ahead at a full season of racing, it’s important to look at the big picture,
and understand that the only way to get faster is to trust your coach, your
plan, and yourself. It’s hard to improve in one day, but stick with it and soon
enough that one day turns into two, then a week, then a month, then three
months, and all of a sudden you’re flying. It’s not one workout that’ll make
you quicker, but rather the collection and combination of months of dedicated
workouts that all add up to real performance gains. So, when something happens
and suddenly you have to stray from the regimented plan of training and
recovering, everything gets thrown out of whack and any OCD athlete such as
myself begins to panic. On a similar note, HTFU stands for Harden The Fuck Up,
which is also decently self-explanatory. Sometimes training sucks… racing at a
professional level is a job after all, and nobody has only perfect days at their
job. There are days where the weather is doing everything in its power to dissuade
you from going outside, or sometimes you have to wake up at an ungodly hour to get
in the required training hours. Times like these it’s necessary to HTFU and just
buckle down and get the work done. I’m fully aware that having a dangerous
virus coursing through my body is definitely not a time when Hardening Up is a
solid choice, but when putting your head down and pushing forward been a defining
part of your life for basically every scenario… it becomes hard to turn that
switch off. As dedicated athletes or simply motivated individuals, it’s easy to
think that we can mentally will our way through anything, and that taking a
step back to actually take care of ourself is a sign of weakness. Which when
you think about it… is the absolute worst thing to do, but for some
reason I seem to be hardwired for self-destruction in the name of progression.
Reason
two. There’s a sinister downside to defining yourself as an ‘athlete.’ When you
make training and athletics defining qualities of your character, it’s
shattering when you get sidelined from training and athletics. Again, I know
this sounds crazy, and it is… but it’s worth talking about and bringing up, because
I think it affects more people than just myself. Right or wrong, I classify
myself as an athlete to the core. I love training, pushing my limits, and the
continuous improvement which accompanies dedication. Obviously, this has benefits
and it’s important to have a healthy self-image of who you are and what you
want to be. But we’re multifaceted beings, with many different aspects to life
and have many different roles. It becomes insidiously dangerous when a single
self-image begins to dominate all others, as this sole identity begins to take hold
of all your self-concept. If this one defining aspect of your life is suddenly
removed, put on hold, or even just altered… it can have outsized and
overwhelming effects. It was explained perfectly by Simon Marshall in “The Brave
Athlete.” The concept of a self-schema includes the thoughts and beliefs
that people have about themselves as a something-or-other (in this case, as an
athlete). This self-schema then builds into your personal identity, which in
turn creates your overall self-concept. There are many different identities we have
throughout our lives (athlete, student, partner, employee, etc…) and each of
these influence others. We also give individual identities more worth than
others, which in turn gives them a more outsized role on our overall self-concept.
For example, I believe that my athletic identity is more important than my
identity as an employee (don’t tell my manager), so how I perform in the
athletic sphere has more of an effect on my overall self-concept.
This is all fine and healthy, as we
all have different ideas and thoughts about the hierarchy of things throughout
our lives. Things become dicey when one specific identity begins to become the
sole influencer of our general self-concept. Therefore, if I believe that I’m
defined by my athletic identity, I assume that to be a successful person in all
aspects of life I need to be performing well (or even just performing) as an
athlete. It’s irrational, yes, but my brain has proved it’s anything but rational
at times. So even if life is otherwise great, poor performance or lack thereof in
the one thing that I put too much priority on can wreak havoc in ALL unrelated
aspects of my life. Simply put; when I believe I’m defined as an athlete and
then can’t perform as an athlete… it has an outsized and negative effect on the
other (usually unrelated) aspects of my overall life. And there’s the problem I’ve
been wrestling with the past few days: I understand that allowing my athletic
self-identity to encompass too large an influence on my overall self-concept is
unhealthy and potentially self-destructive, but I simultaneously have lofty
goals for myself… and achieving these goals require a level of commitment that
is borderline unhealthy. So, is it worth the risk?
For me, and at this stage of my
life… I believe it is. Ten years down the road, maybe not. But hell, I don’t
even know what I’m having for breakfast tomorrow, so trying to plan even a year
in advance often seems to be an exercise in futility. Maybe I’m kicking the
ball down the road for future Payson to deal with, but I know that right now I’m
dedicated to exploring how far I can travel down this path. It seems like the
proverbial warning of eggs all in one basket, but I’ve never been one to heed
warning signs too well… which brings us full circle to how I found myself in
this situation in the first place. So, you can probably take my words as someone
having an illogical argument with themselves and shake your head at my
unwillingness to actually learn from my mistakes. Some things never change.
