Pinapple

At 4.15 Manuel Roca was in bed and could hear the rain pounding on his bedroom window. He was not surprised since bad weather was forecast the day before and therefore he did not panic because he already had a plan B for the day (Plan A was another 6 hours on the saddle). He set his alarm clock for 6.15 and fell asleep like a toddler. When he got up, he put his bicycle on the turbo trainer and started spinning his legs. He programmed 3 sections of 30 minutes each, in which he gradually increased the intensity. The trainer has a magnet resistance unit which can vary the power output by means of a twist-lever adjustment unit mounted on the handlebar. There are 5 different levels of resistance which Manuel Roca shifted at a time he mindfully set. He did 10 minutes easy followed but other 10 minutes less easy than, he upgraded the effort for 5 minutes at mid-intensity. He concluded each interval by splitting the last 5 minutes in two sections; hard and very hard. The last 2 minutes and a half were tough as sweat poured out at every pore, legs burnt and the breathing struggled to obtain the needed oxygen. Manuel Roca had to focus hard on the effort; he looked at the sweat drops falling from his arms or forehead. He eyed them as they bounced on the bicycle frame and split in hundreds of little drops. He immersed in his effort only to emerge back to the earth surface after a pair of minutes of stark detachment from the planet occurrences. Done 1 hour and a half on the turbo trainer, Manuel Roca wore his trainers and off he went for an hour running along the River Maco. He simply wanted to live and suddenly he did feel a stinging nostalgia for his own life. He suddenly thought he had accumulated some delay on his own existence and by instinct he upped his running pace. Artists, philosophers or technology will never help Manuel Roca to catch up with his recent-discovered lateness; nobody but him can contribute to cancel it. As he overtook the turning point he began desiring to defy time, its mystery, the ticking hours, the flying days, the burden of the years. Faster and faster Manuel Roca run on his way back whereas his mind got to calculate that his delay was approximately of 6 years; circa 2190 days. He was not able to explain to himself how he worked it out but, he intuited that it was 6 years, minimum. As he nearly got back home, a grim thought peeped out; if he was late over his life, he was consequently early on his death. He shivered as he put his cycling gear on and off he went on his bike. Cars were queuing to park by the big shop centre in town. People he never took seriously. Manuel Roca thought he could gain some time back on his delay if he started getting up half an hour earlier each morning during autumn and winter and increased that to 1 hour in spring and summer. He figured out that he could roughly retrieve one month of his life each year. At the age of 109 Manuel Roca will have zeroed his delay on his own life. After 2 hours cycling he was back home. He devoured half pineapple, a yogurt with some cereals and off he went to bed to recover some energy. When he woke up his eyes would hardly stay open. The prime impulse was to go back to bed but Manuel Roca is an obstinate person and wanted to spend some time writing. He cannot be considered other but a doer, certainly not a couch potato that he profoundly disdains. Another page of his life approaching Pecol he wrote off, a little sin that he will read over and over again in the years to come. He was starting to feel hungry and thus opened the fridge and got the remaining half of the pineapple. It was ripe, sweet and juicy and same as above Manuel Roca devoured it. He loved squeezing a mouthful of it in his mouth and enjoyed the drop the juice did down his stomach. He followed it with his mind, he concentrated on its consistency, and he wandered about the real benefit of this vitamins-rich fruit. He stopped thinking only to jump again on his turbo trainer for another hour. He copied what he did in the morning to fulfil the plan B.