Four a.m.

Volume 4, Issue 4, May 1997

This was a fun column to write. Looking back on it now, though, I call bullshit on the premise. 33-year old me was more familiar with bar-closing time than 61-year old me, and my circadian rhythm has ratcheted back several hours since 1997. So, even though I was always a morning person, 4 a.m was a great time for 33-year old me to be enjoying some good REM sleep and vivid dreams, and it felt like a long stretch from that darkness to when I was accustomed to starting my day. It made sense then, but…

Now? If I wake up at 4, and that happens often enough, it may as well be time to get up. Guess those clichés about aging have some basis in fact. That, and being ready for bed by the time it gets dark, leaves ample time to get plenty of sleeping and nightmaring done.

This “what I said then and how I feel now” deconstruction of ego is an ongoing and evolving thing. Aside from the biorhythmic shift away from the 4 a.m terrors, I read back in these columns (and features) about riding and racing, and feel light years away from the identity of that person. This same issue has a feature I wrote about a summer of 100-mile and 24-hour races, and it’s as if I am reading about someone else. Nowadays, 20-miles of singletrack feels pretty sweet. 30-miles is a big enough day. 100? Eeesh. That sounds like a real hard row to hoe.

Unrelated/related… another beauty of an image from Colin Meagher. Absolutely not taken at 4 a.m, but I am willing to concede that there may have been a mushroom or two involved in the writing of this piece.