Omne trium perfectum

The Beginning

It might just be me, but have you ever noticed how much in this world can be divided into 3? Is this the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth or is the division a human attempt to categorise and define processes that in reality lie along a spectrum?

With a head full of 24 hour racing, a day can be broken into 3: morning, noon, night... For which you can have a 3 minute egg for breakfast, a 3 bean salad for lunch and round it all out with neapolitan ice-cream after dinner. As far as we know, at an atomic level we are divided into 3: an energetic buzz of protons, electrons and neutrons. Freud broke up our bizarre personalities into the id, the ego and the super-ego and there are blind mice, pigs, musketeers, bears and wise men galavanting around in 3s all over the place.

The past week has been a journey through 3 levels of physical wellness (or illness, depending on your perspective). From top of the world 'I feel amazing', back to the usual 'I'm doing my everyday riding thing' to the sickest I believe I have ever been 'will somebody please make it stop'. I have also had an opportunity to balance out one of the 3 pillars in my life: family and friends (the other 2 being sport and work). Enjoying the full spectrum of experience that life has to offer is a gift, often gratefully received in hindsight.

The Middle

The elation that follows from a good, hard race is amazing, and despite leaving you without much punch for a day or so (up to 3?) afterwards, the post-race glow is still worthwhile. The fall-out from the Kowalski Classic was typically that: heavy legs, able to keep up a tempo in the bunch, but only able to lift for 3 second efforts before going lactic. All-in-all, as expected with post-race recovery trundling along my usual timeframe.

The real twist came on Wednesday night. Finishing off a ride, feeling ok then very, very suddenly: not-so-ok. Whether it was food poisoning, a virus or demonic possession (the symptoms were all there), something had taken over and decided to play havoc with my immune system. In retaliation, my body decided that a whole-body cleansing, spring clean was in order. Somewhere, a big red button was pushed and I spent the night completing an extremely efficient abdominal workout and weight-loss program. The next day was dutifully spent drifting in and out of a hot and cold sleep, trying to get some fluids to stay put. If we were conceptualising wellness as a continuum, I was at least 3 standard deviations away from the mean.

Several days later I have returned to 'normality'. A happy place somewhere in the middle of that wellness bell curve. Dare I say, the timing was even not too bad: I was able to quite happily join my Grandpa (a legend, might I add) and a host of family and family friends in celebrating his 80th birthday in Sydney today. It was a lovely, timely reminder of the importance of family and of the people close to you in your life. Each holds a piece of your collective history and when brought together creates an image from a much bigger picture. Just brilliant.

The End?

Turning from the family pillar back to the sport pillar and we've not quite reached the end: it is now about 2 weeks before WEMBO. The revised course has now been published (here, if you're interested): a much more inspiring single-track heavy course than what was up previously and sadly, without quite as much climbing. Although perhaps this is one of those gifts that will be appreciated in hindsight, say at 11am on October 13th.

2 weeks and I appear to have begun my taper a little earlier than anticipated. My fingers and toes are crossed that this bout of illness will not have affected the riding too much and that I will be back and rolling within 3 shakes of a lamb's tail. Although, I'll put it out there: if anybody is willing to complete 3 hail Mary's for me or loan even a single wish from a bottled genie, that would be just perfect.