Once again, it’s been a while, hardworkers. Cyclocross season finished with a manic but entertaining nationals in Rhode Island, where I started at the back of 170 guys. The highlight of the race had to be the off-camber muddy section just after the first turn. If you’ve never seen close to two hundred cyclists sprawled on the ground in one place, your life is missing something. Winter vacation hit, the kids went home, and I headed off for the kind of school break that ends up being more tiring than relaxing: Portland, New York City, Quebec City for New Year’s (for those of you penciling in Q.C. for next December’s festivities, consider Montreal instead; if you’re going to get stopped and searched by the cheery fellows at U.S. Customs, you might as well go to city that celebrates New Year’s Eve), back to Portland for a few more days of trying to see friends and sleep all at the same time. I came back to Putney exhausted, hungover, and few pounds heavier.
I only ran, during the 19 days I was away from Vermont, as pools were hard to find in the various locales of my vacation, so the training hours were fewer than normal. But instead of returning to training exhausted and discouraged, I found myself enjoying the workouts again this week. Thinking ahead to races this spring and summer, I felt anticipation, instead of the weary dread of last fall. Instead of wrestling with “Why?” I found myself thinking “When do I get to do this again?” Some of it is a month without racing. Most of it is the sense of possibility that a January brings. This is the time of year that you hear a lot of things like “Your body totally replaces its cells in a year (or seven years, or five; there’s a lot of dissenting opinion that associates with questionable science), so what are you going to make your body out of this year?” Also there are resolutions to save receipts, keep the sink free of dishes, get more sleep, quit smoking, et cetera.
When I left for a semester abroad in college, I crowed that I was going to be a totally different person, I would experiment with a new identity. Someone who’d been through the program advised me not to, saying it was too valuable an experience to waste parts of it crafting a new self. As if crafting a new self were possible. A few weeks into the semester I had established myself as…myself. My friend was right: the program was too demanding to think about something as radical as self-redefinition.
So these magazines that line the shelf this month, promising so much but really only lining their pockets on your best intentions, they rile me. Changes in behavior are not easy to accomplish; they require flinty determination and focus. As Annie Dillard says about being a writer: “You have to take a broad-axe to your life.” Luckily, most of us are good at that kind of determination and focus. And in some cases we are too good. Although I returned from my vacation less fit and seeping the excess alcohol of celebrations, I returned refocused. Dipping back into your past identities can remind you of the work you’ve done to efface a new one. I have made one goal as the calendar flipped over, but it’s the somewhat modest goal of keeping a food diary. Getting down to race weight will be easier with some accounting system in place, but other than that I’m just a refreshed version of last year’s Workharder. So here’s my take on it: you can only change one thing about yourself over a long period of time. Sit yourself down at a table or take a long drive, and try to figure out what you’ll work at this year. Meanwhile, ignore the promises shouted at you from magazine covers.
