The Body Knows the Schedule Before the Spreadsheet Does

Lyrics

[Intro]

You, my little spiral-bound confessor,
with your pages smudged from July 15, 2016,
in that Rio training camp at 6:00 AM.
The body whispers before the numbers do.

[Verse 1]
Russell Foster knew it,
in his Oxford lab at 18 degrees Celsius,
actigraphs strapped to wrists like promises.
Your entries mark the peaks,
4:00 PM when muscles hum with hidden fire,
melatonin dipping low, cortisol rising sharp.
I trace your ink, faded from sweat,
the taper's gentle slope, volume cut by 60 percent,
three weeks out from the gun.

[Chorus]
The body knows, darling log,
before Ludo's spreadsheets align the stars.
Circadian peaks at dawn's eucalyptus breath,
periodization like Tudor Bompa's blueprint,
from 1960s Romania to this damp grass underfoot.
You hold the anticipation,
the mitochondria dense and waiting.

[Verse 2]
Dr. Pope would say it's biology's quiet plot,
the schedule etched in cells before the app beeps,
that chronobiology screen glowing at midnight,
glycogen loading with oatmeal at exactly three hours pre-race.
I flip your pages to March 3, 2008,
Toronto conference hum of light therapy boxes,
warmth on the face, tricking the clock.
The unnamed technicians watched REM flickers,
families woke at odd hours, unrecorded.

[Bridge]

And the small strange fact, night owls in baseball,
batting averages drop .050 in morning games,
jet lag of the roster, unaligned.
But you, my log, you anticipate it all,
before the quant crunches the data.

[Verse 3]
In the recovery room's antiseptic tang,
mixed with tape's musk, the taper unfolds.
VO2 max climbing, the body tuning itself,
like Bo's mechanical gait, precise and unforgiving.
Foster's words: one-hour mismatch costs a medal.
Bompa's cycles: stress, recover, peak.

[Outro]

You know, my worn companion,
the final alignment, body over spreadsheet.
Rest now, the race is tomorrow at circadian high.