The Secret to Inner Peace While Living All Out
We live in a world where everyone wants to get someplace yesterday and proceeds to generate piles of anxiety that leads to fear motivated rushing to everywhere.
Once we realize that no one and nothing can make us fearful or anxious unless we agree to give away our inner peace, then and only then can we choose to let go of what we cannot control or is irrelevant to our inner peace.
When I am fully engaged in a 100+ mile high speed ride on any given day, all my bodily systems are cranking out all the fluid force I can muster at just at my anaerobic threshold (that pace where you can not possibly hold a conversation with anyone who might have come along or biologically speaking we are operating at the maximum rate of power output possible while breathing in oxygen. Any increase in effort from that line or heart rate or power output creates a deficit and we go anerobic, which is very painful as lactic acid build up in the under oxygenated systems creates a burning sensation that forces those untrained at tolerating such to shut down or back off)
How is this relevant to inner peace?
I get asked a lot about “Do I meditate?”
Anyone still attached to any level of identity other than pure consciousness will find themselves wanting to avoid high tempo anaerobic riding. training or racing because these kinds of experiences causes one to “Love their Minds” - Identification with ones mind or thoughts causes a fight or flight reaction and takes ones focus away from what is witnessing all that’s going on at flat out speeds.
Peace is not a place of nothing going on but one of mental and emotional detachment or freedom from all that is going on.
The almost 1 million human powered miles I’ve traversed so far, were possible because of my willingness to let go of trying wrangle with the discomfort of riding all day across endless flat lands where every direction seemed to have a head wind. Riding fast in big gears was a coping mechanism towards compressing the time it took to cover the massive distances I’ve always loved to “Land Surf” across.
If I rode any slower that just meant I was out there in the sun, the rain, the wind, the clouds of bugs native to the midwest, riding with inadequate calories and water for that much longer.
Think of it this way: If a runner wants to run a 26.2 mile traditional marathon and takes 5 hrs to reach the finish line and well trained threshold bumping runner takes 2 1/2 hours to cover the same distance who put their body through more suffering and trauma during the marathon?
The fit runner who has found peace within his or her body (think of your body as meditation temple) settles into a Zen like Flow State soon right out of the gate. The less fit runner might begin to find their flow state around mile 17 which is way too late as they’ve probably run out of muscle glycogen - or stored glucose, are dehydrated and their feet, knees and hip joints are hammered from poor running form, inferior nutrition and lack of digestive system health or hygiene, and because of all the pain alarms going off throughout his or her body, the mind is struggling to find the fire extinguisher!
The Fit Runner has mastered all those red flags in training. The Fit Runner has sought the edges of pain and discomfort and made friends with them, opened dialogues and learned tons of valuable insights from the miles instead of expecting just pain and discomfort and nothing else to come from it.
It is our conscious mental intention to become reflective within our playing the edges of our comfort zones instead of projective: more or less negative self talk that mentally shuts us down long before we’ve discovered the gold in going beyond our previous inner boundaries.
Make it an intentional practice on most rides to have some segments or a growing length within a given ride, dedicated to pushing your power output with a higher cadence and tempo to motivate your body (Your Avatar) to want to grow. To want to not just adapt but to over adapt.
Next post will dig a little bit into what’s it take to “Over Adapt” or Regenerate Cells and Systems” towards having considerably more capacity ride to ride on a never ending regardless of age manner
Erskien
