Going Full Tilt

If I were forced to reveal one of the secrets of my personal fitness regimen I would say that it isn’t something that I do strictly for exercise. I suppose that it isn't much of a secret if I'm talking about it here. A secret also implies that it's something someone else would care to know. We will just have to assume that I have something worthwhile to say about fitness which has heretofore been kept mum.

I'm talking about something that I do on an almost daily basis. I wonder how many people never do this. What is my great secret? I ride flat out as fast as I can every time I'm on a bike, at least for a little bit. When was the last time you ran, swam, or rode as fast as you could? For me the answer is yesterday and that is only because I haven’t left the house today. I’m sure that at some point today I will be sprinting as if being chased by an Al Qaeda death squad. Like Huck Finn asking about the behavior of the genie, you might wonder why I tear around so. It’s a long story.

The movie Titanic was a long story so I will use it as an analogy. My diet can be compared to the iceberg in the movie that laid waste to the ship. Other aspects of my lifestyle are sort of like Kate Winslet’s murderous boyfriend. You may be thinking that anyone can out-run or pedal faster than an iceberg, but I live in Spain which is the cholesterol equivalent of the North Atlantic which is chock full of icebergs. Up there a penguin could skip from one iceberg to the next and never get his or her feet wet while crossing the entire ocean. What’s that? Penguins don’t live up there? Don’t change the subject. Now I forget what I was talking about. Let’s go back and read the second paragraph again.

So I ride as fast as I possibly can almost every day because I am being chased by a cholesterol iceberg and a jealousy-crazed ex-boyfriend disguised as all of the other vices in my life. So far I have kept them at a safe distance but I know that they are close behind me and mean to do me great harm. You are probably asking why I don’t eliminate these dangers from my life but I would then counter with: Where’s the fun in that? If I haven’t mixed enough metaphors already let me just say that I enjoy my life of having one foot firmly on the gas and the other pumping the brakes.

I love the feeling of making my heart pump as hard and as fast as it possibly can. I actually have a device to measure that pleasure. I guess you could say that I am addicted to the feeling. Whether that addiction counter-balances my other addictions is probably something only the coroner will be able to determine.