"Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.
Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.
What do we do? We swim, swim."
-- Dory, Finding Nemo
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| Swimsuit 2-12-14 |
"Don't stop 'til you get enough."
-- Michael Jackson, "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough"
My demons have been breathing down my neck a little too hot and a little too heavy lately.
I don't know what you do when your demons get clingy, but I like to take the little bastards for a swim.
At first they think it's a fun adventure. They're like a dog on a car ride that hasn't heard the word "vet" yet. They're all jumping and excited, like "Yay, swimming! We love swimming!"
An hour and a half later, when I'm still swimming hard and they can no longer keep up, when they're exhausted and limp at the bottom of the pool, they're more like, "Fuck swimming. We HATE swimming."
That's when I know it's safe to get back out of the water.
When the weather is warm I like to take them for long bike rides. Forty miles of hard pedaling in the hot summer sun shuts up a chatty demon like nobody's business. When I can, and even though it hurts, I like to run 'em into the ground. Sometimes I take them to the gym to lift weights -- rep after rep after rep after rep until they finally pipe down.
I guess it goes back to when I first heard the phrase "exorcise my demons." I guess I misunderstood. I thought it was "exercise my demons." And so I do. Regularly. And hard.
I've been an endurance athlete for a lotta years. And long, hard exercise has always been one of my favorite coping mechanisms when shit gets difficult. It's a good pressure valve for me. It's good therapy. It clears my head. And I've always gotten off on wasting my competition.
So it's what I do. I keep swimming -- churning away -- until I can no longer see anything over my shoulder. Until I win.
Sometimes it takes an hour.
Sometimes an hour and a half.
Sometimes ... well, I go for as long as it takes. My shoulder aches. My hair is ruined by chlorine. My skin is itchy. The goggle marks around my eyes are permanent. Even after a shower I still smell like pool.
But I can breathe again. I can think again. I can deal again.
Plus, I have abs like Dara Torres and a resting heart rate of about 40 beats per minute.
Take that, you little bastards.
