The zero manifesto: logging miles for the leaderboard

By guest author, Greg S. If you’d like to be a guest author, email your idea or post to the editor.


A common grievance heard here on dailymile, most typically on Monday, bemoans the weekly reemergence of the nefarious zero in the weekly mileage indicator. While a majority of dedicated dailymilers undertake to quickly “zap the zero” (especially those who engage in the art of the predawn workout), there are circumstances, such as injury, other priorities, or a lack of broadband access, that delay the obliteration of this hated digit. It is for these situations that I have created The Zero Manifesto to provide succor in coping with the occasional malingering presence of the goose egg.

You sit there, smug in your nothingness, yet deep down I know you sense it, almost ethereally. You exist solely by my good graces. Was I to simply stride out the door, or cycle the pedals, or rotate the flywheel, you would dissolve back from whence you came, wiped from your non-existence.

Oh, I may let you linger for a bit. By doing so, I evidence the control I have over you. Yet despite this control, you mean nothing to me. Zip, zilch, nada, naught, nil. You are not even a mere plaything. You may be the same in all languages, but you are futile in your omnipresence. By allowing your continued reign, my dominion over you grows.

I am the Waterloo to your Napoleon, the Yorktown to your Cornwallis, the Alexander to your Darius. I am the prana to your apana. I am the maker you will always meet. I am the certainty to your doubt. I am the hope to your despair.

So dwell there, uncomfortable in your voidness, your vacancy. And feel as empty as you are, while persisting in look over your shoulder. For I too, shall hover nearby, confident in my authority to dispel the non-digit at will. My strength builds as your emptiness persists and, when you relax your gaze, I will exercise my whim and push you over the edge into the obliteration of your very non-being.