FISCHER: It ain’t over until it’s over

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

Never say never!

When last week’s column saw print, I was distraught. Since the start of the year I’ve been ramping up my time on my elliptical, trying to reach 131 hour long workouts in six months.

Last Monday I was at 126 hours. Just five runs to go and eight days to do them. My safety window was narrowing, but still perfectly doable. Right up until the metal arm sheered clean off of the rotating crank.

I thought it was over, but FedEx thought otherwise.

A quick call to the manufacturer and by Monday afternoon a new crank arm was on the way, slated for a Tuesday delivery.

Of course that quickly got adjusted to a Wednesday delivery, but hey. Still plenty of time.

The good news: the replacement part arrived as expected on Wednesday afternoon.

The bad news: my repair guy, because I’ve had enough issues with this machine that I have his number saved to my phone, was booked solid, leaving me no choice but to do the replacement myself.

So on to work I went.

A couple hours and a couple trips to the hardware store later, I was able to disassemble the left of the machine, remove the broken crank arm, and install the new one. Covered in sweat and grease, I reassembled everything, took a step back to admire my work, and realized that I’d put the crank arm on upside down.

Disassembling it once again, I discovered I was missing a piece needed to lock the crank arm in its correct position. My original crank arm had a little metal bit that looked like it was welded on to lock it into place. My replacement part had no such piece.

Without that piece, all of my efforts would be for naught and the elliptical would remain unusable. Once again, it looked like there was nothing I could do.

But, after a quick text message to my repair guy, I found out that things weren’t as hopeless as I thought. The little metal bit wasn’t welded in, it was just in there really tight. Once I was able to remove it with a few taps of a screwdriver and hammer I was back in the game.

It was a real pain in the butt, and thanks to catching a splinter on the wood floor as I worked I do mean that literally, but I once again got the crank arm secured and reassembled the left side of my machine. Finally ready to give it a try.

It jiggled.

I didn’t tighten the crank arm quite well enough.

So, for a third time, I disassembled the left side of the machine, tightened that crank arm in place so much I’m concerned I’ll never get it off again, and reassembled everything.

Finally, at about 9 p.m. on Wednesday night, I put on my workout clothes, filled my bottle with ice water rather than my usual highly caffeinated powdered flavor drink, and got in an hour long run.

Then I took a shower, went to bed, woke up, and did it again Thursday morning. And again on Friday.

On Saturday I took a much needed skip day, but was up and running again on Sunday. And since my exact goal was to surpass 130:02:25, I tacked an extra three minutes onto my hour long workout and got across the finish line with a whole day to spare.

Last week I said the lesson learned was that sometimes the universe is just out to get you. You can do everything right and it will still fall apart right at the end.

This is still true and there is value in learning how to accept that.

That said, it’s also true that it’s never over until it’s over and there’s equal value in learning how to recognize the difference between something impossible and something that’s just difficult.

— Travis Fischer is a news writer for the Charles City Press and is gonna have to figure out a new six-month goal now.