Bonking Before Breakfast

There have been better days. After my best and hardest training week in 10 months; after 25 straight days of training; I woke up beat; bonking before breakfast, you might say. Things often come around, but today, not so. The bonk got worse. My fatigue could not be massaged into feeling more energy, and my appetite could not be satisfied. OK: time for a day off. Good time to go see my one hundred and two year old Mother in the nursing home.

A different world there - residents having to be fed like infants again. My Mother was at a feeding table too. When I came up they put us at a regular table and I fed her, bite by bite - feed, wipe, feed, repeat. In the creases of the aged face I could imagine the years of care that face had expressed to my childhood. Now, the eyes and the hearing are practically gone. The once quick mind that could respond to my poking fun at her, can now barely hold a thought for a moment.

Back in her room she sat in her wheelchair looking down, or looking about the room like it was the first time she had seen it. Conversation was impossible. We just sat there many minutes in silence with me looking at her and her looking about the room. I noticed the hands: discolored, frail, and drawn now, the same hands that for years did much work. Yes, the same hands that I reached for in the night as a child when I was afraid. Now these precious hands lay impotent and fragile on her lap. My bonk seemed now much worse. Even after I left, that picture of my Mother sitting helpless in her wheelchair kept doing reruns in my mind. Training seemed far away, senseless, and unnecessary.

At home the hunger was finally satisfied, but the fatigue seemed to have moved in and brought friends. It was not the best of days. After this a day off like this one, I wondered where I will get the energy and the motivation to train tomorrow. I knew I would have to re-find the reason; revisit my purpose; envision my goals, but mostly I will have to ask God to get me through from all this to a better, brighter day.