Baristing

The oft-repeated training axiom "listen to your body" is, like most oft-repeated things, both true and not in ways that reject even that notional dichotomy.

It is inoffensive precisely because it means nothing, and so it can--and does--mean whatever you want it to. Training theory is often this way, of course. With the full expanse of Internet wisdom perpetually available, we're free to find an expert to tell us to do what we wanted to do anyway.

So when one is compelled to listen to their body, should they give priority to the lungs, the heart, the raging IT band, or that whisper of bursitis? And what of the mind, which is certainly not outside of the body, for all that it projects itself thus. A word, too, for heart, by which I mean "heart". Passion, that is. Desire.

Perhaps one doesn't speak this language fluently. Thus a HR monitor is strapped on, or a GPS watch. Sometimes this voice is a compliment rather than a replacement; but other times it is that petulant whine that you needed ten today at 7:30, 8 is too easy, 9.73 is too short; are you really that lazy? What good is our training, after all, if it cannot be precisely measured, those increments our daily subsistence rations.

I don't know. I say that a lot, which is because it's one of my most persistent truths.

I'm sitting presently on a low box one might jump on to at the gym, but only if one couldn't jump very high at all.

My body says my mind is muddled my calves are tight my left ankle is too and my mind is directed at those things which are persistent problems for me it says that they will be my undoing I will run slowly for one mile and die an ambling death trying for 100 because there is no fitness which could ever be equal to that and yet this morning all of this was gone and my legs felt great after a long and hilly day and I felt vibrant and aspirational but no more not tonight because I'm listening to my body and it's just such a goddamn cacophony I'm going to go read a book.