Drift away

Most nights I lay awake in bed. Trying to sleep but understanding it won't happen. Sometimes it's the pain of grinding out workout after workout without proper nutrition, recovery, cool down. Other times it's the aches and pains of my back or knees that remind me I may be human after all. Or it may even be the stress of work keeping me on my toes.

Other nights it's my mind replaying a scene over and over and over again. It's never a long scene, never a race. Usually a couple of seconds of real time slowed down to last a minute or two, over and over and over again. One corner of one lap of one race maybe. Just a mistake, maybe a couple of inches here or there, maybe a split second of lost balance, or a lapse in mental judgement. Over and over again. Never changes. Never visualize it the way i thought it would go before it happened. This repeat is different, the repetitiveness is simply to prevent it from ever happening again. To dwell on it. To get angry about it. Sometimes it's not even a race. Sometimes it's not even to get angry over. Maybe it's a corner of one lap of one drill of one practice. Maybe it's something done correctly. It stays and lingers and plays and plays over and over trying to create muscle memory through a simple slowed image.

Sometimes it's just motivation. It's not easy to wake up and run your mind and body into a wall everyday, over and over again. It could be a word. Maybe a thought. A feeling. It seems to always be a similar theme, someone else's voice or thought describing exactly what I can't do and why.

Then right before I finally drift off it's always there in some concept or another, some phrase, word, or emotion: watch me.