You wonder how that athlete can hold up so great a weight so long? What sustains it and makes it less heavy is Pride: an unseen angel coming to the rescue of the man of flesh and blood.
— Paul Valéry, The Collected Works of Paul Valéry, Vol. 14
The weather is scorching. The unconditioned warehouse is humid. Work is at its seasonal peak. Employees call out for one reason or another. The days start earlier and end later. I will likely be working through the weekend to make up lost ground. The body lodges protests: knees, hips, elbows all make their passive-aggressive feelings known. What do we do? Do we take the ready excuse to go home and get some extra rest?
No. Come on, now. You know better than that. We go to training as always and we deadlift 515 for a new PR. It is precisely on these days that we look the god of lassitude in his half-lidded eye and say, “Not today.”