B2B block done — fog on Djouce, a low on the climb that wasn’t a bonk, and the turn into taper before the big day.
Fog-wrung, day-dulled, Djouce gave nothing back today — no view, no valley, no far grey glint of sea, only the climb, and the climb pushing, and the legs answering slower, slower, till something in the chest said no. Not the sugar-drop, not the bonk’s quick mugging — something older, something earned: the body’s own push-back, weeks-deep, peak-steep, B2B-battered deep, saying I have given what I have, and today is not for giving.
O the Garmin agrees — body battery bottomed, HRV never climbed back from the high road, from the big peaks, from the long runs stacked like unpaid debts — and still, still, the training took. Absorbed. Held. Somewhere under all this fog and failing, something grinds and gathers that doesn’t announce itself, that doesn’t care for views or Strava-glory, that only shows up when it counts, on the day, when the tank gone empty here runs full again.
So: taper now. Let the heather keep its fog. Let the legs forget the argument they lost. The big day’s coming, and this body, for all its pushing-back, its low, its empty-handed climb, knows — grit-sure, bone-deep — exactly what it’s for.
Inspired by Gerard Manley Hopkins