It's coming. The sport that keeps me alive and motivated is coming and I'm not prepared...not even prepared to 'get' prepared. Too much floating around in life these days. Too much of everything....and yet I day dream of it. Arms up, flowing fast, smooth, free. I'm fit and flying in these day dreams. Age means nothing. I just accept the pain and I am driving.

Each year I hurl the anchor forward. I can feel its weight as I wind up and throw it in front of me. Allowing it to land and settle into the dirt. The anchor marks a point in the calendar year and gives me something to use all my strength to pull against and drag myself, and my often waning motivation, towards it.

Cross is the point of the year that keeps me moving forward. It is what I think about when I am knee deep in problem solving for work, stressed to the core, or when I need to find solace in my health. I know that 'just being there' at a race, with any training in my legs or not, that I've made it...again. It helped me stay alive through the year and gives me focus when it seems everything is blowing up around me.

This is season 14. Amazing. Each year after my first year I hurled the anchor forward in anticipation of the leaves changing and the temperatures dropping. I did this before my wife and I met. Before my children were born. Before I had any 'real' responsibilities and yet the exercise of dropping anchor on a place in the calendar continues to pulls me through year after year.

3 months.

 (photo by Joe Sales)