Pedal Strike

You know those moments of slow realization combined with a sinking feeling of dread, like when you read Youtube video comments and realize that some people just shouldn’t have Internet access? And that feeling sort of deepens even more when you masochistically keep reading said comments and someone [and it always has to be someone with a generically retarded handle] makes an even more idiotic comment in response to the first mindblowingly stupid comment? And then you’re like wow, this world is fucked?

Okay, I won’t go that far. But I’ve been feeling that these days. Because apparently, I really need to start stretching.

A pair of rollers will do that to you, I guess. Jumping onto them eagerly after almost a week away, with minimal stretching, my thighs were instantly twitching and burning, my forearms and hands shaking from gripping bare bars. Sprawled out on my floor, completely spent, I almost couldn’t get up when my bike decided to crash to the floor.

But when I did, my calf seared. Being a champion of making really stupid decisions, I was like oh, that’s interesting, then proceeded to ignore it for a day. In retaliation, my right calf wound itself up so tight my sciatic nerve felt stiff all the way up to my lower back. I couldn’t even lie down without feeling like I needed to crack my back. Of course, when I tried to, I couldn’t. Fuck me.

Fighting the urge to ride the rollers anyway, I took a full day off the bike; stretching, massaging, stretching, and massaging all day. It was feeling loose enough to get back to spinning the wheels in place the next day. I even managed to get outside, dicking around downtown just because. Then it was back to stretching, massaging, stretching, and more stretching.

Yeah, I know. This whole not-stretching-until-now makes me as moronic as the aforementioned Youtube commentators. It’s no excuse, really, but having never been a proper athlete, the only thing I can think of when I’m done imposing physical pain on myself is a shower and some activity that involves being motionless for some [extended] period of time. Instead, my body decides to act like a melodramatic suicidal emo-goth by threatening to inflict pain on itself if I don’t pamper it by stretching.

I’ve been calling its bluff until now; but apparently that shit is for real. Which is incredibly annoying in a sense, but I’d rather suck it up and stretch a bit than spend another weekend gimping around my apartment.

Sigh. Back to stretching, I guess.

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