Days and days of work do their damnedest to get me where I’m going, draw me thin with fatigue, a wire of potential energy pointed at the ground. All this so that my soul can exit through my feet and become part of something bigger, much bigger, than myself.

Can I be ductile? Can I be a conduit for that energy? And does that power flow down, from me, into the trail, and then maybe back up, into me? Am I pouring myself out to tap a much larger source?

The alarm goes off and wakes me from a predictably bizarre dream, chaotic air flights, labyrinthine offices, stilted and and nonsensical meetings with people I don’t know. I’m not sure I can push back the blanket and get up, but a group of people, real people, is waiting for me. My body complains, my legs, my back. I pull on some pants.

I am supposed to meet with Suffer Club and then run home to don cycling gear and meet another group for a few hours of pedaling abuse, but time and responsibilities won’t permit it. I have to beg off. I feel relieved, drinking coffee back in the kitchen, but also disappointed that I am missing the ride. It’s another chance to be drawn thin.

The truth is, despite my rush to arrive somewhere hard to define, fitness, sharpness, comfort, it will all happen in time. Day by day. If I can push back the blanket. If I can put on a pair of pants. If I can show up.

And at some point, without even seeing it on the horizon, I will arrive, a slender channel of connection with world outside, the energy flowing down from my churning legs, and back up into my still mind, a perfect circuit.