It happens in the cold dark of morning, before the paper hits your doorstep. It happens outside when the rain blows horizontally, inside where the stench of sweaty bodies assaults your senses. It happens in an 86-degree pool on a subzero winter day, in a spare bedroom in front of an old TV playing years-old Ironman videos while the house shakes with bitter-cold wind.
My training mantra is "No one else does this." And watching Rocky Balboa run through the streets of Philadelphia in the pre-dawn chill brings that home better than any other scene from our media-saturated world.
I say that to myself as I deal with my first-world problems the only way I know how — by elevating the heart rate and getting sweaty. Even if I know it's a bald-faced lie —that everyone else has to train through a six-month winter in hopes of being ready when the gun fires in early May — I tell myself that no one else does what I do, day-in, day-out. Like Rocky. See how he has the streets to himself? See how the world sleeps while he gets ready to go the distance? See how he drags himself out of his warm bed to punish himself, so that he might punish someone else someday?
Don't worry, I'm reminding myself, too.
