Volunteer

A couple months ago, my group of training buddies and I had just finished IM Coeur d'Alene and had entered the 'recovery' phase of the training cycle. That means we were either drinking wine or eating ice cream while watching preseason football with our feet up on the couch. At least, that was my interpretation of 'recovery'. I mixed it up one time and poured red wine over vanilla ice cream. It's pretty good. I let the ice cream melt a little then stirred it up and drank it like a milkshake. Don't knock it until you try it.

So one day, we were trying to figure out how long we could extend the recovery thing before we clogged up some of the important arteries when somebody decided that we should sign up for Ironman Arizona 2013. At the time, it sounded like it might be sort of fun and it was so far in the future, it didn't really seem like a big deal, so I said sure, let's do it. In retrospect, it's like Archduke Ferdinand deciding to take a couple days off in Sarajevo. He probably asked himself, “What's the worst that could happen?”

So a few weeks ago, we are making plans to sign up for the event. All I want to do is pay 700 bucks for the T-shirt. It really is that simple. I could save myself a lot of pain and trouble if they just asked people if they wanted to pay the 700 and compete, or pay the 700 and get the shirt. I bet a lot of folks would go the easy route. I could save a lot of people a lot of pain and injury if they would just listen to my good ideas.

The problem with IM AZ is that it sells out within a few minutes. If you don't get in, you don't get in. There isn't a waiting list. So what you have to do is volunteer for the event the year before you want to compete. You fly down to Tempe, get a place to stay, show up the day of the event and hand out water or whatever it is they need help with. Volunteers get first shot at signing up. Duane and Jim and I did that. John followed a more circuitous route, but he is getting to the same end.

So we are getting on the airplane to go to Phoenix and there in the seat next to me is my buddy Tim and his wife Carin. Tim works for WSU. Tim and Carin and I went to school together. I think Tim is a president of this or that for WSU, I can't really figure out what he does. I think universities are like corporations, they hand out titles like Halloween candy. Whoever comes to the door gets a title.

Brrrinnnnggg! Brrrinnnngggg! “Trick or Treat!”

“Here you go, Mr vice-president in charge of watercooler consumption monitoring. Here you go Ms vice-president in charge of self validation and attitude optimization.” I think that is how it works, but I am not the vice-president of anything so what do I know?

I asked Tim and he told me what his title is but I immediately forgot because it was like seven words long. So I asked him what he actually does, but it doesn't make sense. He said he has to go to all the Cougar games and talk to people. That is his job. I call bullshit. Nobody has a job going to football games. Maybe if he held the yard marker sticks on the side of the field, I would buy it, but he said no, he goes to the games and talks to people. He doesn't announce the players as they run on the field, he doesn't hand out the football or flip the coin or hand out a face towel. He goes to the game and talks to people. And they pay him for this. Like I said, I call bullshit.

I don't know if it's me or what, but I think the Hindu's nailed it with the whole karma thing. It seems like for everything under the sun, there is balance. Remember that point, we will get back to it.

So while we are on the plane, I am talking to Tim and Carin and they ask if I am flying down Phoenix to go to the game. I had no idea it was an option. Apparently, the WSU athletic department heard I was going to volunteer for IM AZ, so they scheduled a football game in Phoenix so I could go to the game and volunteer too. Isn't that nice? Going to the game all the sudden seemed like a great idea. It was like I was walking through a parking lot and found a nickel and two pennies on the ground. All I had to do was pick up the money. It's free. That made my day. This trip was perfect and nothing bad could happen. I should have known better.

All is well. We were living off the fat of the land. With no effort or forethought, we fell into the perfect 78 degree, sunshine blessed perfect day. We left the rainy deluge that is Seattle and found ourselves in that dry, sun of the southland, you can be outside if you want to kind of day. We were all smiling and didn't know why. We laughed just because we were happy to be alive. So then, we pay 35 bucks to sit in the stands at ASU and watch the Cougs put the hurt on the Sun Devils. Some young ladies, beautiful in body and spirit, sit in front of us and giggle. All is well. Then, without warning, the sky opened up and doom descended and cast it's foul hand upon me. The game started and the smell of death passed my nostrils. I had to watch a bunch of thugs kick the living crap out of my Cougs. It was a disaster. On the first play, they sack our quarterback. On the second play, they sack our coach. On the third play, our coach's dog is pregnant. It wasn't good. So that was karma event #1.

We left at halftime crying like school girls. Speaking of school girls, there is a bar somewhere in Phoenix called “The Tilted Kilt” When I heard we were going there, I asked why it was called that. Somebody, I don't remember who, it might have been Duane, said he heard it was a pub with a tartan plaid interior decoration scheme. I think he said that there were bibles on all the tables and the servers were elderly snobirders looking to augment their fixed income. If we were lucky, we might get one of the servers to sing a Scottish folk song. Some of those octogenarians can really belt out a melody. Sounds perfect, I felt like I could drink a beer there and find solace in those peaceful surroundings. I was misled. They don't have a plaid color scheme at all. The walls are plain and if truth be told, not very clean. Well over half of the servers are not octogenarians at all. Anyway, we get there and whatever happened there is a mystery. I have no memory at all except it was about 4pm when we got there and we walked out five hours later and I couldn't see very well. It was dark and cold and I threw up a little bit in my mouth. I smelled like ladies perfume and chicken wings. So that is karma event #2.

We get up the next morning at o'dark thirty and drive to our assigned station to volunteer. We put in 5 hours of volunteer time. That gives us the right to sign up for IM AZ. So we thought. It actually isn't that clear cut. What it really does is it gives you the right to get in line to sign up. The logic goes like this; there are only so many spots available in any race. I don't think they publish that number, but I am guessing that it is around 2500 – 2800 racers in any race. The racers from the current race get first shot at the next race. That sort of makes sense. If a guy races 10 years in a row, and the race gets more popular, he should get first shot at the next race. It isn't his fault the race got more popular. So lets say there are 2600 slots and the race is full. Half of this years racers are going to sign up for next year. So there are 1300 slots open for next year. Now, there are 4000 volunteers and almost all of them I met were volunteering so that they could sign up for next year. Somehow, the math isn't working out. Anyway, we get in line and we estimate there are 1200 -1500 people ahead of us. It's hard to know for sure. It was a big line. We did eventually get to sign up and that's good, but I tell you all of that because while we are standing in line, we were talking to the people around us and mostly to three gals who were also volunteering so they could sign up. They were nice and seemed friendly. That is sort of the thing about Ironman. Nice people.

Anyway, as a wrap up, I am shooting for IM AZ 1 year from now.  I gotta start training.  Maybe tomorrow. After all, what't the worst that could happen?

Poor Penmanship

I assume I come from a short line of authors. There may be some greatly acclaimed literary works by some of my forefathers, but I doubt it. Most of my family reads nothing but the Sunday comics and writes only under duress. My Sister is the exception. She was published as a featured writer in a small community newsletter in Eastern Washington some years ago and while she didn't receive an award or compensation, so far as I am aware, her grammar was quite good. The newsletter is now out of print, if you were thinking of looking up some of her articles. I tried to google it, but I don't think her published short stories made it into the electronic age.

My father was a business letter guy. He didn't waste time or effort with verse. For him, writing was a tool. He wasn't skilled, but he was well practiced. My father's letters were without preamble or opening salutation. His letters are lost now, since they were mostly wadded up and thrown in the trash by the recipient, but if any had survived, they might have gone something like this:

To Mr. James Oldham,

Please be notified that on three separate occasions, your cow has entered my farm without invitation and eaten a large portion of my wife's flower and vegetable garden. On each of those three occasions, I have notified you and so far, you haven't fixed the fence to keep your cow on your side. If your cow comes through the fence again, I will shoot her dead and you can retrieve her at that time.

Looking forward to seeing you and Sally in church Sunday next.

Sincerely,

Mert

Now, I don't know if my Dad ever sent that letter, but it would be something he might have sent. Short and to the point.

I have made some three or four attempts to create a novel, each attempt ending poorly. Once I did get forty or fifty pages into an adventure/spy novel set in post WWII China, but I ran out of characters. In order to create a sense of suspense, I killed off the protagonist and his entire family right at the beginning in a fire that was of a suspicious origin, in an “isolated monastery situated at the top of a cliff, on the coast of a ever-tempestuous sea”, but it put me in a bind with the plot. It didn't seem fair to kill off the handsome hero with the angular chin and washboard stomach and not kill the antagonist and his family and all the greedy monks, so I had everybody die in the fire except the villain. The fire was a good idea since the villain needed a diversion to get away with the loot, but I forgot that the only way out of the monastery was a steep, slippery path that proved to be too much for the villain, since he had the requisite limp and fell down a lot. Of course it was a rainy night with lots of lightning and a semi-magical dog that appeared and disappeared without a purpose other than to add suspense, so the villain promptly slips and falls off the edge, but has just enough time to reach up and grab the ghost-grey dog by the throat, so now the villain and the dog both fall off the path onto the sharp rocks that looked like dragons teeth with some weird lichen on them that made them look like they were dragon's teeth, but with with some pretty serious gingivitis.

Anyway, the villain and the dog fell. No way would they survive that, because it was like a thousand feet down to the lichen infested rocks, so now the only remaining character was a fat, mute bartender who lost his vocal chords in the war but hadn't yet learned sign-language.  He was one of those bartender characters that doesn't have a purpose other than to be interesting and serve cold beer to weary travelers.  Being mute and fat made him unique and interesting, but I didn't think ahead when I had the villain start the monastery fire and kill off everybody else, so now I am really stuck since you can't fill five hundred pages with one chubby mute character who can't speak. I tried, it can't be done.

I was thinking about bringing the dog back by claiming he could travel like in the transporter in Star Trek. Nobody liked the fat mute bartender, since he had a sour disposition, as all bartenders in novels must and he needed a friend.  I thought if the dog could be a good friend to the bartender, maybe the dog could now be the central character with the bartender being his sidekick and they could travel around and save babies and orphans from all manner of disaster, but that seemed just a shade past plausible, so the dog had to die permanently on the rocks while the monastery burned.

That ended my first novel.

Next Up?

Since I finished IM CDA, I have been sitting on the couch, eating cheesecake and watching the Tour de France, the Olympics and a "How It's Made" marathon on five separate channels via 1080p high def, wide-flat screen controlled by a newly acquired multi-function clicker that is ergonomically perfect for my right hand.  Life is good, and if my ever expanding waist line is any indication, my life plan is successful on all levels.

I am watching the movie Iron Man 2 while I type this.  It's inspirational in that there are regular guys that put on suits that make them superhuman.  That and Iron Man ends up with like twelve super hot girls with 4 inch heels and tight dresses filled out ever so nicely.  Like I said, it is pretty inspirational.  I might start exercising again.

I ran today.  It was pretty sad.  My knee hurt.  Tomorrow I might ride, which has to be better.  In 454 days I am doing Ironman Arizona.  See the progression?

IM AZ is a lot better suited for my racing style than CDA.  In Arizona, you swim in a canal.  How far off course can you swim in a canal?   They have cement bumpers on the course.  You get too far off course in IM AZ, you sort of get tossed back into the middle.  In the swim in Coeur 'd Alene, I got lost, I saw a fishing boat and asked for directions. They spoke Russian.  I was a little off course.

The Olympics

Apropos of nothing, I just noticed that I have birds on my blog.  If you look just to the right, there are some  birds flapping around.  If you stare long enough, they move.

I have been watching the Olympics.  I saw the archery, which was interesting enough that I tried to figure out what one of those cool bows cost.  It took longer than my 2 minute concentration limit so I gave up and don't know what they cost, but it looks easy and I think I could do it with maybe a couple hours of practice.

I like the soccer recap.  I don't want to watch a two hour match where nothing happens, but the recap is pretty good.  I don't think I could do that.  They run a lot and it looks hard.

I must say, I am glad they put the synchronized diving in and took out baseball.  Baseball is popular in Asia (Japan, Taiwan, S Korea) North America (Canada, US, Mexico) The Caribbean (Dominican, Puerto Rico,) South America (all thirteen of them) and who knows where else.  Australia maybe. Synchronized diving is popular in maybe two villages in China that don't get TV.  That's it.  Nobody else likes synchronized diving.  So good thing the Olympics have that and no baseball.

I am tired of beach volleyball.  Sure, they are good looking and sweaty.  I get that, but do I need to watch some sweaty dudes for 2 hours a day hit a volleyball into a net?

I have the Lake Meridian tri coming up.  I am dreading that.  If I dropped a few pounds, it might not be so bad.  My wife told me to wipe the cookie crumbs off my stomach and go exercise the dog.  I sent him out with instructions to go run three miles and report back.

I just remembered, the dog and I have a new trick.  We run down the dock together and synchro dive in the lake.  Of the two of us, I am the steady diver, I can snap off a pretty solid head first dive.  The dog is the more talented, but he is erratic.  Sometimes he screws up and goes in early without a good toe point.  Yesterday, the dog got excited and barked once on entry, so the East German judge gave us a 4.5.

Omega Plus One

I lied. I said the last post would be my omega post, but that was not strictly accurate. As of today, this blog is undergoing a value stream reorganization. I guess that means that I need to identify some goals and get to work on them. I cite as reference the following facts.

1. I finished Ironman. I should be able to do anything.
2. Prior to Ironman, I was consuming 3000-4000 calories a day. I was exercising 2-3 hours per day. That combination gave me a net 0 calorie consumption.
3. Ever since Ironman, I have increased my daily caloric intake to a minimum of 4000 calories. I stopped exercising.
4. My scale reports a 7 pound weight gain in 30 days.
5. Conclusion - Saboteurs have caused my scale to report falsely.

 I ran in the Seafair olympic distance triathlon two days ago. Seafair olympic is a 1 mile swim, a 20 mile bike and a 10k run. The winner of Seafair was a genetically altered individual who completed the event in 1 hour 47 minutes. I completed the same event in 2 hours 49 minutes. The winner, if rumors be true, cheats at cards, hates dogs and abuses small forest animals with kitchen shears. It's just what I heard, you be the judge.

 Anywho, I think I could have finished a little faster if I wasn't hung over. I had a birthday party to go to the night before, I had one drink, then one thing led to another, the next thing I knew, I was swimming in the triathlon, got dizzy and sort of threw up in Lake Washington. It wasn't so much a full throw up as a little extra stomach bile and vodka ended up in my nose.

 So my diet started yesterday. I did OK, I probably consumed 3500 calories. I ran for 40 minutes so I only had a positive caloric intake of maybe 300-500 calories. Today was a really stressful day at work, I ate six cookies after lunch and had 3 grande margaritas before dinner. I can't do the calorie math on that one.

As a bonus section to this blog, here is the margarita recipe. It is truly the best margarita in the world. Just trust me and try it.
1 cup tequila
1/2 can limeaid
1/4 cup triple sec
1 fresh lemon squeezed
blend with enough ice to get a smoothie texture.
Salt the rim of some cheap glasses and pour.

Some notes - these are important so pay attention.
1. Use cheap tequila. The expensive tequila is aged or filtered or something. It doesn't have the bite you need to cut through the limeaid. Use the cheapest tequila you can find, it does taste better. I always spill in an extra dab of tequila to lubricate the blender.  I heard once that somebody burned out a blender when they tried to make bread with it.  I like my blender and am afraid of burning it out so I put in extra tequila to smooth it out.
2. Use limeaid that has pulp. The filtered no pulp stuff doesn't work. Again, cheaper is better.
3. If the lemon is a little dry, use 2. Use 1 if it is juicy.
4. This is a recent thing - Tonight, I didn't have enough triplesec, so I put in all I had, about 1 tablespoon, and I squeezed in a fresh orange. I think I like that better.

The Deal - A Race Report

Well, it's over. I hope you have enjoyed my blog. If you have enjoyed it, then I feel sorry for you since you had nothing better to do than read this blog.  If you didn't enjoy it, then I applaud your good taste.  As with all things, this blog must end.  This post will be the omega. Unless I decided to add more.

Here goes- The Ironman Coeur d'Alene 2012 event was great. If you want to stop reading here, you can.  You wont miss much. The following is just some detail, but offers no change in the outcome. It was great. 

The event starts at 7am sharp, so using some 4th grade 'math magic', we decided to leave the house at 4:15, in this case, the 'we' being my three training partners, John, Jim, Duane, and our house guest for this adventure, Brian.  As usual, the day was full of drama.  I drove since I have the most room in my car.  I can't find my own house if I am sitting in the driveway, so why these guys let me drive is a question I will never know the answer to, but there you go.

Duane's girlfriend Joanie drove another car, and Duane rode with her, so it was John, Jim and myself in the car.  We are in the car at 4:14.  Brian is nowhere to be found.  I go knock on Brian's door, softly, because if you wake his bride up, she might start to spin like the tasmanian devil from the bugs bunny cartoon.  Brian decided to sit on the toilet for an extra 15 minutes and make the rest of us wait.  So we wait. And wait.

Anyway, we get started down the road, we are 10 minutes from the house and Brian yells from the back seat 'Heck, oh heckohheck'.   That's all the further he is willing to go down the profanity trail, which should have been sort of funny but I don't have a sense of humor before sunrise.  Brian is flipping out because he forgot his wetsuit.  I didn't turn the car around, I just sped up.  I am sick and tired of his behavior on this trip.  Yap yap yap.  Heck heck heck.  His wife too, while I am on the subject.  She yaps too.  For some reason unknown to me, Brians wife can't be bothered to get up and get in the car and bring him his wetsuit.  Somehow, John's wife Pam, who by the way is a sweet lady, brings him his wetsuit.  I don't know why it is ok for her to drive 45 minutes to bring his wetsuit but Brian's wife cant do it. Makes no sense to me. Pam saves the day and all is well in Brianland.

swim -

I cried twice before the swim so I have to admit, I was a little emotional.  People were staring.  I pretended like I had sand in my eyes.  I hugged my training buddies.  I hugged the lady next to me.  I tried to hug the volunteer who was working the swim event, but he must have seen the rabid look in my eyes because he backed away from me like I had yellow fever.  I grabbed for him again, but he made a cross with his right hand like they do on TV.  You know what I mean, its the spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch thing so I stopped short and hugged myself.  I needed the comfort.

This is what a race start looks like. Watch the first 30 seconds, then just know that if you are in the water in the middle of that mess, it's a way worse.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-KY3wNI81c

So, my race plan was to hang back and hit the water three minutes after the race start. I wanted to skip the mass hysteria and not get a broken limb. It happens. That plan didn't work out.  My buddies John and Jim and Duane decided, literally 30 seconds before the start that we four were going to hit the water right up front.  No waiting for the rush to be over.  I had already told John that I was going to follow him, so I was committed.  John pushes past everybody and jumps in the water with a war yell when the gun went off.  That is John, everything he does, he does 100%.  I followed him.  I don't do anything 100%, but I feel safer when John is around.  Sort of a security blanket thing.  I waded in slowly, stopped and started to turn back to the car when two fat middle aged housewives are pushing me from behind.  I trip on another dude who had a change of heart and was trying to go back to the car.  

The wind picked up during the swim.  It was a 20 knot blow out of the south, the wind sock was sticking straight out, so you swam right into the wind on the way out, and it chased you on the way back.  I saw a wave four feet tall wash over a buoy.  I was choking and swallowing water.  It was hard to get a breath every stroke.  I was lucky to breath every other stroke.  Water was washing over the top of me.  At least twice, the waves picked me up and everything above my belly button was out of the water.  I smacked down and kept swimming.  So far so good.

Then some hideous man-hater be-atch with bad teeth and a bunch of toe jam whacks me in the face with her iron tipped club foot.  She knocks my nose clip off and I start to breath in water through my nose.  So that sucks.

To tell this part of the story, I need to take you down a side road, back to a more innocent time, a more rational time, a time when Nixon was freshly pardoned and Welcome Back, Kotter was the rage.  Those were the days, huh?  Anyway, I need to tell you about Jim and Lisa.  Jim and Lisa and I attended the same high school and while I spent those years without companion or soulmate, they did the opposite.  Those two followed the time tested mating ritual of staring at each other for six months followed by a proposal of marriage.  And, as Jim would tell it, through trial and error they found themselves with four chairs at the dinner table.  One of the new occupants of said chair they named Bo, and this part of the story is about Bo.

Bo was about twenty two or so when I did Ironman and he signed up to be a lifeguard for the Ironman swim. I didn't really know what Bo looked like since I hadn't seen him since he was four or five years old, but I was swimming along minding my own business when I crashed into a surfboard.  I looked up at the guy on the surfboard from maybe five feet away and I just knew it was Bo.  He looked 10% like Jim and 90% like Lisa.  There are 200 lifeguards on the event and I crashed into the kid of my high school friends. Coincidence?  Well, ya it was.

The swim course is two laps.  You start on shore, swim out, turn, come back almost to the shore to finish lap one, swim back out, turn, then come back to shore.  We hit the first turn and the water was rough but I was doing OK.  I sort of got lost on the way back in and went a little off course.  I can't swim straight to save my life but I kept at it and so lap one down, one to go.

I started to feel good on the way out for the second lap.  Then we hit the turn.  The wind picked up between the first and second laps.  I don't know how high the waves were because I was always underwater.  I try to breath, that doesn't work.  I think if I can stop breathing for the ten minutes it takes to swim around the furthest buoy I would be OK.  I couldn't see where I was swimming so I went way off course.  If I swam ten yards further to the right, they would have  handed me a bike for the bike course.  As it was, I was instructed by the kayak riding course marshal to get back with the rest of the slow swimmers.  Three times he told me that.

I am 3/4 of the way through the swim, just starting to tell myself I can do this, when my stomach flips around like Linda Blair's head.  I don't know if I can get to shore before I mess myself.  Mentally, this is the point where I start to lose it.  I consider stopping and tearing a hole in my swim gear.  I can always claim the rough surf tore my clothes.  I keep going. Do you remember the show Gilligan's Island?  The Skipper, Gilligan, MaryAnne and the Moviestar?  If you think of the intro where the Minnow was tossed, you get some idea of the swim in lake Coeur d'Alene last Sunday.

I came out of the water at 1 hour 38 minutes.  That is really slow, but I feel really good about it.  The water was so rough it was really a tough swim.

I took 17 minutes to transition from the swim to the bike.  If you don't know, transition is where you change clothes from one event to the next.  A good time is 4 minutes, average is 8.  17 is world record slow.  I  should feel bad about that but I don't.  I was too happy about being done with the swim.  While I was changing into my bike gear, I spent a few minutes talking to the guy next to me.  It turned out I had met him in the parking lot the day before.  He is 74 and he ran a 14 hour Ironman.  What a stud.  He got done changing and left.  I looked around for somebody else to talk to.  I was making friends instead of getting on my bike.  I ran out of guys to talk to, so I had to go get my bike.  I walked to get my bike.  Everybody runs, I walk.  I am clenching, if you know what I mean.  I need a sani-can.

bike -

First loop.  I had ridden this course before so I knew it was tough.  It was.  I stop at the first water station and stand in line for 10 minutes to use the sani-can.  Saying that I have stomach issues is polite but not accurate.  My bowels are rejecting the rest of my body.  I think they want to defect like a Russian scientist during the cold war.

In case you are wondering, the sani-cans at the first rest stop are blue plastic and smell like fresh roses.  No, wait, that is a lie.  They are green plastic.  The door to my personal sani-can doesn't lock.  When I am exiting, I tell the attendant to keep the seat warm, I will be back shortly.  He thinks I am hilarious.

So I am biking up this long hill, a five foot tall, 30ish beautiful woman cycles up next to me and she says 'nice bike'.  I immediately think she wants me.  I ride a trek, I look at her bike and she has a trek just like mine, but hers has a name painted on the seat stem.  I say 'cool trek'.  I stare at her seat stem for quite a while, trying to read the name painted on it.  I keep staring.  I forget to look where I am going and almost run her off the road.  We chat for a few minutes about our twin bikes.  I consider throwing the 'I'm married' thing out there while my will power is still strong.  Another few minutes and I might not be able to stop her physical advances towards my person.  It's a long event.  I push a little and drop her in my wake.  I need to find another sani-can but I don't want to tell 'cool trek bike girl'.  I don't think we are that far along in our relationship yet to discuss bodily function.

Second loop -  I am moving fine, I see my new best friend ahead of me, so I pull up next to her and say 'hey, it's cool trek bike girl'.  She forgot to give me her name and number when she was checking me out earlier.  I guess she likes my pet name for her because she laughs seductively.  She must have passed me while I was camped out in the san-can.  I was in there a long time.  Bell bottoms could have gone out of fashion while I was in there.  The Doobie Brothers broke up while I was in there.  The dinosaurs became extinct while I was in the sani-can.

The next rest stop is maybe an hour ahead.  I wonder if the interior designer used the same color palette in those sani-cans as the first set.  I think I will check it out.

A couple hours go by, I bike and visit sani-cans and bike some more.  After pit stop number 3, I see cool trek bike girl again.  She doesn't seem glad to see me.  I try to strike up a casual conversation, giving her opportunity to hit on me.  She says 'gotta go' and takes off.  Maybe somebody told her I am married.

So, in retrospect, I actually had a really good bike section of the race.  I was moving fast and felt comfortable, but the 50 minutes in the sani-can still gets added into my total time.  That's life.

run -

mile 1 -  I can't make my legs follow my feet.  My upper body is running, my legs are walking.  Where is the first water stop?  I am starving.  I had a great nutrition plan on the bike. and it worked perfectly for the first 100 miles.  The last 12 miles left me starving and thirsty.

mile 2  -  I found the water stop, I ate an orange slice, a handful of potato chips, two cups of water, a cup of coke and put some ice under my hat.  I jogged a little and started looking for the next water stop.

mile 3 - I just passed mile 3 marker and I thought, this isn't so bad.  If I can do another 3, I will have walked a 10k.

mile 4 - I want to go home.

mile 5 - I see cool trek bike girl, she looks at me and sprints away.  Playing hard to get.  I let her run in front of me.  Minx.

mile 7 - Several beautiful women are running in front of me.  I think I will follow them for a while.

mile 8 - They run too fast, so now I am running with a guy who is 70ish and leaning over sideways.  I think I can hang with him.

mile 9 - The leaner dropped me.  Just another arrogant AARP supporter.  When will they learn their place?

mile 10 -  I want to go home.

mile 11 - I start to wonder how my dog is.  Is he safe?  Does he miss me?  If he somehow managed to catch a cat, what would he do with it?

mile 12 - I am running and walking.  I run as long as I can, then I walk until I feel better.  Back and forth.

mile 13 - I talked to God for the next 5 miles.  If you can't find God here, you aren't trying.

mile 18 - I am dragging up this hill, hurting a lot, a beautiful, tall athletic girl is coming the other way, she is staring at me and smiling.  She looks great.  A huge smile, a great body, beautiful face.  I smile back.  She says 'there is the smile I want to see.'  I smile bigger and say 'hi, how's it going' or something equally mundane.  Going through my mind is the whole scenario of trying to explain to my wife how this 23 year old tramp is hot for me and wants me to marry her and give her children.  That is not a conversation I am looking forward to.  My wife will be pissed.

mile 19  - It's dark.  The girl with the big smile is long gone.  I start thinking of the finish, the crowd will be cheering, cameras going off, utter chaos.  She is going to look great when she finishes.

mile 20-23 - I don't remember.

mile 24 - It's almost over.  I start to cry.  I can't breath and cry at the same time, so I cry and get light headed from lack of air.  That passes and I start to run.  That run lasts about 50 yards.

last mile - Some super hot volunteer tells me I have 10 blocks to go.  I think about stopping and chatting for a while, but decided to keep going.  I have 10 blocks to go.  I have 3 blocks worth of running in me, so I walk 7 and start to run.  I see Patty and Rachel and some friends on the sideline.  I give them hugs and cry some more.  I run through the finish line.

At the close, I was granted more than I deserved, received more support than I gave, found strength of character in others that was shared unselfishly, while I shared nothing in return.  Some people are blessed with money or beauty or great mental acuity.  I have none of these, but I was given something far greater.  I was given a brotherhood with a common goal.  I thought the goal was to run Ironman, but I find now, it was something far more valuable.  It's like I took a trip without a map, and I ended up where I needed to be.  It's like going home.

Aristotle said  The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life".

Ironman CDA 2012 is in the books.

Pre-Race Stress

I am just 4 days from Ironman and it is crunch time.  I can't concentrate, my stomach is squeezing into a big ball.  I am off my game and not in a good place.  My hands shake, but not all the time, just when I need to pick something up.  The guys I train with are all relaxed, happy, feeling good.  Assholes.  I am ready to strangle cats.

Yesterday we drove from Seattle to Hayden Lake.  I started the day with a stress level of 65 on a scale from 1-100.  That is pretty normal when I am cranked up about something.  My stress level usually idles at about 45 but since we are close to ironman, the stress monster has an iron grip on my frank and beans.  I woke up with a 65.

Yesterday morning, my wayward band of brothers experienced an 'opportunity for improvement' in the interpersonal relationship department.  Everybody was having stress issues.  I pick up on that like a bloodhound tracking down an escaped convict.  Stress level 74.

We are renting a lake house with five of us splitting the bill.  Since we are on the lake, I towed the boat behind my truck, which is fine, because I have driven trucks with trailers since I was fourteen.  No big deal.  I drove 18 wheel trucks as a summer job while I was in college.  No bid deal.  I once got a ticket pulling a belly-dump wheat truck, the state patrol guy just kept shaking his head and writing more stuff on the ticket.  That ticket was 2 pages long, seriously.  I can deal with stress driving a truck. The problem is, Patty likes this boat and if I wreck it, she will ruin me.  I think she and my Dad got together once and decided to scare me because they both told me that if I ever did that again they would 'end me'.  What does that mean?  "...and if you ever do that again, I will END you".  I don't know what that means, but I am thinking about it more and more as I screw up stuff at home.  I have slept with one eye open for the last fifteen years.  Stress level 81.

So Jim and I are caravaning along, I am driving my truck, he has his ford explorer right behind me, I look in the mirror, he is there one second, the next second he hits the brakes and swings hard to the right.  That's weird.  I keep going.  I am towing the boat trailer, I am not going to stop.  He has my cell phone number, he can call if he has a problem.  Ten minutes go by, he still isn't back on the road.  If he crashed or hit something, I might have to turn my truck and trailer around and go back and get him.  The thought of it cranks my stress up to 83.  I call his cell, he doesn't answer.  I call again, no answer.  85.  Finally, he calls.  The news is bad.  Jim has my bike on top of his car in a bike rack, the front wheel fell off the rack, bounced down the road and rolled down I-90 at 70mph.  That is flying.  Apparently, it rolled down the highway, passed a couple cars in the slow lane, veered onto the meridian, down one side and back up the other and started to roll into oncoming traffic.  Stress 94. So now, I don't know what happens when I hit 100.   I think it's bad.   I might stroke out like my uncle Ed.  He was in a wheel chair for the last six years of his life, drooling.  Everybody says I look just like him, which is nice.  I started looking for a drive through liquor store on I-90.

 I went to athlete check in today, I am surrounded by a bunch of lean guys and gals that are packing 5-8% body fat.  I am pushing something just shy of 20%.  It doesn't look fair.  Most of these guys are in their mid 30's to mid 40's.  Somebody tie an anchor on those guys.  Out of 3000 athletes, there was one fat guy, he had to be 300 pounds.  I think I might try to keep up with that dude.  I am going to stalk him like Ted Bundy looking for a date.  (if you don't know who Ted is, he is a famous UW grad.  A real leader in his field.)   I had to sign away any rights to bring suit if I have a heart attack or stroke.  I signed anyway.  At the pace I am going, I don't know I will get to the starting line anyway.  The stress monster might just decide to kick me to the curb.

Final Preparations

My countdown timer says Ironman Coeur d'Alene is 5 days 15 hours 6 minutes away.  I wouldn't say I am nervous, but the fear vomit has started to rise up and push on at least one sphincter.  I am thinking about running away and joining the circus, becoming a Walmart greeter or a porn star for the AARP crowd.  I hear there is good money in at least one of those occupations.

I leave Wednesday morning and I have a five hour drive from here to CDA.  At least it will give me something to do besides worry.

At this point, I don't want to do too much.  I am working out 30-45 minutes per day, at an easy pace.  Yesterday, I swam.  I spent 50 minutes in the pool. I spent 30 minutes swimming and another 20 staring off into space.  When I was actually swimming, I was trying to find out how far I could swim underwater, or how hard I could bump into Duane before he pushed me underwater.  We are just some old guys playing grab-ass.  Wearing a speedo.  I feel weird talking about it.

So one of the things you want to do now in prep for Ironman is sleep.  I read that somewhere.  I have some real talent sleeping, so you would think I would be a lock for this part of the training.  Ya, right.  Yesterday, we were fixing dinner, sort of.  Patty was cooking, I was doing some online shopping, looking for some hand carved chinese lawn ornaments.  So far so good.  Then after dinner, Patty was working at the sink, wasting time washing dishes.   I had moved on from lawn ornament shopping to looking up the weight of a water bottle, without the water.  I just wanted to know what the bottle weighed.  That took twenty minutes to find out how many grams a plastic bottle weighs.

Anyway, Patty asks me where all the water pressure went in the sink.  I looked and the water was just trickling out of the faucet.  I helpfully suggested she learn to use the faucet.  About thirty seconds later, she asked why her shoes were all wet.  I ignored her.  I mean, I didn't completely ignore her, I just wasn't dashing over to help.  I ignored the leaking faucet.

So later that night, at 11:45 in fact, I was on my back, lying in a cold puddle of sink water, with my mouth holding a flashlight and my arms up under the sink, trying to fix what Patty broke using a screwdriver and a fork.  It was touch and go for a while, but the sink eventually won out.  If you don't know, there is no way to work on a kitchen sink without throwing a lumbar disk out of whack.  I gave up a little after 1:00am.

Today, I got home from work with a big pair of pliers from Home Depot and a new plan.  I think the pliers are big enough to fix a firetruck.  I tried to snake them up onto the leaky faucet from under the sink, but they were too big to get a good grip.  Crap.  So I stood over the sink, chomped down on the faucet, put a leg up on the counter and pulled like I was trying to yank a calf out of the cow back on the farm.   Everybody should pull a calf once in their life.  You hook these chains onto the furry paws of the calf, then you sit your ass down in a cowpie and brace your feet on the hips of the cow, who should be laying down.  Grab the ends of the chain, lean back and pull hard enough to pull your shoulder out of joint.  If the calf comes out, fine, if not, call the vet and claim ignorance.  He might ask who the hell was trying to use some chains the wrong way on a perfectly healthy calf.  Deny it.  I told him that I was at school and he should ask my Mom.  She was the only one home and looks guilty as hell.

Back to my faucet.  I clamped my new huge pliers on the top part of the faucet and twisted like I was trying to pull my shoulder out of joint.  No joy.  The faucet is still sitting there, defying me, judging me, conspiring with my mother-in-law to count my failures.

I tried to get ahold of Ric Holm.  He has a home remodel business.  He doesn't know it yet, but he is going to fix my faucet and remodel my house.  If he asks who the hell was reefing on a perfectly healthy faucet with a new pair of pliers, I am going to claim I was at work and Patty was home.  He should talk to her.  She looks guilty.

Temper Your Taper

When I was nine, my Mom sat me down, gently held my hand, looked at me lovingly with those sky blue eyes, paused just a moment, then she asked me if I wanted some ice cream.  I said 'Is this a trick question?'

Of course I wanted ice cream, who the hell did she think she was talking to?  Then she must have lost her mind, because she said I could have all the ice cream I wanted, any flavor, all day long.  That is like turning a pit bull loose in a room full of three legged cats.  Carnage.  Absolute carnage.  Ice cream cartons would be strewn about like like cat carcasses.

It was a beautiful moment, shared between a mother and son.  I got emotional, just thinking of the unlimited ice cream.   A small tear ran down my cheek.  I couldn't speak.  So then she told me that all I had to do was get my tonsils out.  Just a quick trip to the hospital, take a nap, then eat all the ice cream I wanted.  I stuck my hand out and said  'It's a deal!'  I felt sorry for her.  She had no idea of the damage I could do to unlimited ice cream.  No idea.

It wasn't her fault, but she was just a little naive about me.  When I turned twelve, she never knew where the quarterly Sears catalog went.  I grabbed those out of the mailbox quick as lightening.  I don't think she even knew that we were on the mailing list.  I had a stack of those bad boys in the garage.  If Mom ever found my stash, I planned to blame Dad, since it was technically his garage.  I had it all going on.

The ladies underwear section was crazy good.  I memorized those pages.  I had a surprising wealth of information about ladies underwear for a twelve year old.  "Full figure", "underwire", "tummy control".  I knew all the lingo.  The lived the underwear section.  That and the lawn tractor section.  I thought I could have all a kid would ever want if I could hang out with the underwear models and get a riding mower.  I am not alone here, right?

Back to the ice cream.  Mom had no idea that she just cut a deal with the devil when she promised an 'all you can eat' thing. I planned on setting a world record at the hospital.  The paper was going to put my picture on the front page.  "Yakima youth sets record!"  I was on my game.

I never got the ice cream.  It was all a lie.  I went to the hospital, took a nap, woke up and I got zip!  It was a big fat lie.  I got a spoonful, put it up to my lips, swallowed, just once, and almost passed out.  I never tried again.  It was a lie.

History repeats itself.  I roll the clock forward a few years, and my dickbird buddies tell me 'hey, lets work out so hard for six months that our legs feel like spooge to get ready for Ironman, then we get to 'Taper'.   They made the taper sound like it would make all the pain worth while.  All my aches would go away and I would walk around like superman under a yellow sun.  It isn't true.  I started my taper earlier this week, and while I feel ok, I don't feel like superman.  I can't stop eating and sleeping and I still run like crap.  I ran earlier today, came home, turned on comcast and watched qvc selling a combo deal of stemware and flatware for only three easy payments of 39.99.

My bike seat isn't working right.  When I hit a bump, it slips down a quarter inch.  I must have hit eight bumps because I was riding today and my knees were hitting my ears.  If I hit just one more bump, I would have needed a tube of vagasil smeared all over my head.  I took it down to Northwest Tri and they did something, I was talking to Brad so I didn't see what they did.  I will try it out tomorrow.  I think they used some duct tape and bailing wire.  You can fix anything with duct tape and bailing wire.

Ramblings

This is going to take a while

As days go, today was a great day.  Some days come and go and don't leave evidence of their passing, other than the calendar is moved ahead one spot.  If you are a fatalist, the earth is one day closer to inevitable destruction on those unremarked days and we humans (paraphrasing a more talented author) little care or note the passing of the day.  Sadly true. Today was not like that.  Today I will remember for a long while.  Stuff happened today.

First, I swam 2.2 miles in Lake Meridian with my training buddy Jim.  That is a PR for me.  As we are training for Ironman, then I guess we could or should compare our ability against other Ironman participants.  Jim is a great swimmer, on par with the better swimmers in Ironman.  I am below average.  Whatever.  I swam 2.2 miles today and that is great for me.  On the downside, with every stroke I took, my wetsuit rubbed on my neck for an hour and now I have neck herpes.  It hurts.  I have a boo boo.

After the swim, my wife and I jumped in the car with Jim and went down to Ft Lewis to cheer on Ryan in the special olympics.  He was competing in the 5k bike race.  Some observations
  1.  Ryan rocks on a bike.
  2.  Ryan's friend Zach charrmed all the girls and rocks in karaoke.
  3.  I have stop feeling sorry for myself.  You get one life and you make the best of what you have.  If you don't, you suck.  These guys in the 5k were happy to be there, happy to participate and they didn't bitch about anything.  Think about that.  Nobody complained.  I haven't been on a bike ride or a run or a swim where I didn't bitch about something.  My neck hurts, my goggles leak, the water is too cold, my bike isn't fast enough, my shoes pinch, I am cramping, I am thirsty/hungry/tired yadda yadda....  I bitch a lot.

While there, I got my pic taken with John, one of my training partners.  He's a great guy.

Then, John and Jim and I went to run 18 miles around Lake Youngs.  The trail around Lake Youngs is 9 miles, so we did 2 loops.  The thing about that trail is that you are either running up or down, no flat spots at all.  It took me a little over 3.5 hours to run 18 miles.  Not fast, but I almost got lost, so it all evens out in the end.  Jim and John finished in front of me and had time to dash over to McDonalds and grab some jumbo cokes and get back before I finished.  I was really happy to get that coke at the end of the run.
I was a little dehydrated during the run.  I stopped to pee like 3 times and I think my pee was thicker than normal.  Is it suppose to do that?  Probably not an optimal outcome to my run.

Jumping subjects slightly here.  I have always believed that there is very little to distinguish the human race from other animals here on Earth.  We eat, we crap, we attempt to procreate as often as possible.  Humans and non-humans, all the same.  One thing that has a potential to differentiate humans from animals is that humans can view themselves from a non-egocentric point of view.  That is, we humans have the ability to view ourselves from a point of view that isn't strictly self-absorbed.  Think about it; a dog sees the world through his own eyes, and he will therefore behave only to optimize his situation, he responds as the world impacts him.  It's all cause and effect with animals.  If the neighbor's dog knows that my wife hands out treats at 4pm, that dog will show up on the porch at 3:59 and produce a puddle of slobber.  Sort of a Pavlovian thing, only in my example, my neighbor's dog is way smarter than Pavlov's since my neighbors dog can tell time.
Anywho, the difference between my neighbor's smart dog and myself is that he views the world from a singular perspective of self, and is therefore a victim, waiting for the world to impact him, be it good or bad.  Humans  have the option to view the world as a dog, or as a human.  If we choose the former, we are victims, like the dog, hoping for a treat, but really just waiting to get hit by a bus.  But, if we choose to view ourselves from the other, unself-absorbed viewpoint, we can stop being victims and impact the world.  We can dodge the bus and steal the treat.

If I look at myself from this non-egocentric point, I have the ability to be self-critical.  I can view myself and critique what I see.  The trick is to be honest.
When I was 15, I looked at myself in the mirror and I thought 'hey, there's a good looking fella.  Any girl would be lucky to go do something naughty with that guy.'  If some gal turned down my advances, I thought she must be a lesbian or had plans to join a convent.  Now, at the advanced age of post 45, I think maybe I was a little naive.  Maybe some of them were married and had a moral constraint against infidelity.

Riding 6 hours tomorrow.  21 days to Ironman.  I lost a toenail.  I mean, a toenail fell off my foot.  I still have the toenail on my nightstand unless the cat ate it.

So Little Time

I have 25 days left until Ironman.  That isn't much.  I figure 10 of those days are low-volume training days as I taper down to race day, so really I have 2 weeks left to train.  That is crazy.  Scary.  Scared.  Petrified.  Mortified.

Last Thursday we drove to Coeur d'Alene to ride and run the course.  The bike course is hard.  There is no flat spot on the course.  You are either going up or down.  No flat.  If you were just riding the course without the following run you might think it was a good long bike ride.  Hard, but you can knock it out.  You would be tired at the end.  Add in the run, its a beast.

As luck would have  it, my daughter was in Coeur d'Alene when I was.  It was just good luck that it worked out, so I went to lunch with my riding buddies, my daughter and her boyfriend Chase.  Is that term PC?  Anyway, it was fun, although I think the conversation may have been tough for some to assimilate.

5 weeks

I have been imagining how things might go in IM CDA for the past 5 months.  I try to visualize success.  I try to visualize not failing.  I try to visualize barfing and not getting any on me.  I try to identify my weaknesses and how I might overcome them.  I have 5 weeks to go and I am feeling good about it.  I don't care how I place, I just care that I finish.  I guess I will know in 5 weeks and 1 day.  If I get sick, if I crash on the bike, if I get a blister and sit and cry, it might be a bad result.  Time will tell.

I ran 16 miles Saturday.  It was a great run.  I am still sore but it was ok.  The last 3 miles, I walked some.  Thats life at 52, you walk some.

34 days 12 hours to go.  

Leg Herpes

Yesterday, I rode 88 miles through the most beautiful part of America, from Black Diamond to Enumclaw, to Wilkerson, to the Carbon River Ranger Station.  No place on earth was more beautiful than where I was yesterday.  The blue cloudless sky was so bright it just popped.  The trees hung over the road, letting sunshine lay slices of light down between the shadows.  It was cold early, but then a perfect 80 degrees for most of the day, with perfect sunshine made for a perfect day.

The route we rode follows the the Carbon River for quite a while.  Every spring, the Carbon runs at full tilt, and, as rivers go, when the Carbon runs high, it's a humdinger.  The Carbon isn't one of those slow, pussy rivers that just wander around a couple stumps and get confused on which way down is, trying to change their identity from river to lake.  Those slow rivers suck.  Those slow rivers just try to sneak off in shame to dump some dirty water somewhere else and shirk their duty.  The Carbon isn't like that at all.  The Carbon is a freight train running downhill without brakes. The Carbon moves boulders and shakes the earth.  I think it is my new favorite river.  You need to see it to understand.  When God made the Carbon, he was showing off.

So anyway, the road we were on follows the Carbon River.  It's pretty, but if you want to ride the Carbon, it's like they say, it's uphill both ways.  You should get a t-shirt for just riding to the Carbon River Ranger Station.

I fell apart at mile 75.  I was gassed.  It was a magnificent display of 75 miles of average riding, followed up by 20 miles of shame.  My legs betrayed me.  I am better than that.  I think somebody sabotaged my bike.  The sun was in my eyes.

Today, I ran from the Car Wash to Landsburg and back.  If you don't know where the Car Wash is, don't go looking for it because it isn't there.  About a week ago, it passed from the physical to the meta-physical, now it existing only in the ether.  They just ripped it down.  The Car Wash is gone, I guess because nobody was getting their car washed at the Car Wash.  I think the great legacy of the Car Wash isn't that some guy is making a million bucks a day there, it is that everybody knows where the Car Wash is and if you want to meet up for a ride or a run, you can start at the Car Wash.

So, according to my gps runners watch, which I hate because I can't make it do anything other than beep when I go too slow, it was a 16 mile run.  I don't have anything fun or pithy to say about that.  It was a 16 mile run, of which the first 14 miles were painful but manageable.  The last 2 miles were a horror movie.  It was like the movie where the hot girl has been attacked, but somehow managed, against all odds to hit the knife wielding mass murderer on the head with a seven iron that was surprisingly handy when she needed it.  Since he is temporarily passed out, she sits down to cry, with her back to the guy, while everybody can see him sit up and get ready to stab her in the neck with the kitchen knife that is still gripped tightly in his murdering hand.  She just needs to turn around and whack him with the seven iron in the head a couple more times, but she won't do it, she just sits there sobbing.  It isn't scary, its frustrating.  She is literally too stupid to get out of the way.
So that crying hot girl is me running.  Well, I am not hot, but I do feel like a crying girl when I run and if I would just stop running I could stop the pain.  Everybody except me can see the shadowy vision of a real runner coming up behind me, judging me, mocking me.  I just need to stop running, turn around and start whacking some guys with a seven iron.

It isn't the distance that got me over the past 2 days, its that I think I have leg herpes.  No matter what I do, my legs feel like they have somehow, without notifying the owner gone out and contracted leg herpes.  If I walk to the bathroom, they cramp, if I lay down, they cramp, if I lay perfectly still, they cramp.  I think I have leg herpes.  Doesn't that suck?

41 days, 16 hours until IM CDA.

Some Dead Guys

Years ago, I was driving to work at about 5am, I was doing what I usually do when I drive to work, that is I was sleeping with one eye open to watch the road, listening to Robin and Maynerd on the radio, and trying to list all the things I wasn't going to get done at work.  It was winter in Seattle, so it was dark and raining.  Its always dark and raining in the winter in Seattle.  Then I saw a dead guy.

I didn't know he was dead when I saw him, I had to hear it on the news that night when I got home.  I mean,  he seemed dead, and he looked dead, but I didn't jump out of the car to give him a shake and wake him up, so I didn't really know for sure.  When I saw him, he was laying on the ground, under one of those green half covered shelters that are suppose to be used by the bus riders waiting for the bus.  There were two cop cars there,with their red and blue lights flashing, blinding all the drivers that were trying to grab a peek at the dead guy.  An ambulance or a fire department medivac truck was there, and the guy was covered up with some blanket or sheet, except for his feet.  The thing I remember most was his feet.  He had huge feet and the sheet wasn't big enough to cover the whole guy, so his feet stuck out of the sheet, toes pointing to heaven.  Maybe he was going there.

I think about that guy once in a while.  I don't know anything about him except for he died at a bus stop and he had big feet.  I told my wife he had clown feet, but it seems disrespectful now.  I feel bad about saying that he had clown feet pointed at heaven.

Last Saturday, my wife and I went to my daughter's graduation ceremony in Pullman and we thought we might as well make a big weekend of it so we spent an extra night in Spokane and ran in Bloomsday on Sunday.  If you don't know, Bloomsday is a 12k run, 49 thousand runners and walkers, 25 or 30 bands lined the streets to entertain the runners.  It was a great time.  I run slow like a turtle but I was flying by those walkers and maybe one or two of the runners.

So I hadn't thought about that dead guy with the clown feet until I was running along with other Bloomsday runners and we see this guy laying part in the road, part on the curb and some volunteers are holding up a sheet, I guess trying to keep the runners from seeing the guy.  His shirt was up, exposing a fairly large belly, and he wasn't moving.  It was hard to see all of him, but I didn't stop to gawk. I wanted to, but I was too self absorbed in keeping my incredible running pace up to stop.  The guy's legs were sticking into the road below  the knees.  The paramedics must have hit the shocker button because his feet sort of jumped up while I was running by.  I don't know what happened to that guy, but I fear the worst.  I ran on, trying to put it out of my mind.  I felt guilty about it, but not guilty enough to stop.  I didn't see a newspaper story about him, but I bet he died.  He wasn't moving.

A mile later, there is ANOTHER guy on the side of the road.  This time, the volunteers didn't have a sheet, so you could see the paramedics giving this guy chest compressions.  I wanted to scream 'What is with all the dead guys!'  If I was a good person, I would have stopped, kneeled and said a prayer.  I didn't.  I was trying to get a good time in a 12k.  I am such a heel.

So, if you are a triathlete, or not, just be happy you don't have any of the problems these guys had.

It Was a Bad Weekend

People are different.  A friend of mine says that everybody possesses some heaven-sent talent or gift, the trick is finding it.  Maybe he is right, I don't know.  It sounds like a crock to me, but I have been known to be wrong before so maybe I should just let that one go.  I do know that my talent this past weekend, if you can call it talent, was causing a series of disasters.  I tried everything possible to kill myself.  The scary part for me is that the weekend isn't over yet.

Much like Dicken's 'A Christmas Carol', the following vignettes are related in that they happen in series, one after the other, and I am suppose to learn a lesson as they are shown to me.

Number One - I went for a bike ride with Duane and Jim.  My bike was making a weird noise so I had my head down, looking between my legs to the rear of the bike while I rode, trying to find the source of the noise.  I wasn't looking where I was going, but I was only going maybe six or eight miles an hour, I heard a noise like a 'Uhhaaahhhg', I looked up just in time to see Duane trying to get out of the way.  I hit him square in the chest with my shoulder.  I wobbled over to the side of the road.  I didn't fall off my bike, which was a miracle in itself.  I should have fallen off and broken a wrist or shoulder.  Duane was fine.

Number Two - Later that night, Duane and my wife Patty and I were in the boat, drinking wine and wandering around the lake.  I was driving, not really looking where I was going.  I do it all the time.  I go slow and I am sure it is perfectly safe.  Anyway, I hit a log.  I should have broken the boat, but I think it is fine.  What I want to know is who put that log there?  And while I am thinking about it, back to Number One, why was Duane standing where I was riding anyway?

Number Three - Today, my wife and I took the dog and went for a bike ride on our mountain bikes.  I was going down a short hill, not too steep, but as it turned out, it was steep enough.  I wasn't paying attention, I had all my weight over the front wheel, I was looking back to see where Patty was, I was using the front brake and 'wham' I flipped over the front, landing on my wrist and rolling onto my back.  I should have broken my wrist.  It hurts but I think it's OK.
Crap, I can't stop thinking about Number One.  Did I hit Duane or did he hit me?

Number Four - I just got done swimming. Jim and I swam a mile in the lake.  I usually spot every seven strokes.  That means I don't look up for six strokes, then on the seventh, I pick my head up and grab a peek to see where I am going.  I guess I forgot to count to seven.  I got stuck on three for about twenty strokes so....  I knew I was off course when the dock hit my forehead so hard it made me dizzy.  Notice I didn't say that I hit the dock, I said the dock hit me because I still don't know how that dock moved from way over there to right in front of my head.  Was Duane on that dock?  I didn't look but now that I think about it, I am sure somebody did move that dock while I was swimming.

Anyway, like I said, the day isn't over.  I am going to sit here on the couch and not move for the rest of the day.  It's a self preservation thing at this point.

Running Sucks

I ran today with Jim and John. We ran 13 miles. That sucks. It took me 2hrs 10 minutes. Not a great time, but I couldn't go any faster without hitching a ride, so that sucks too.

 Question: How much do I dislike running?
 Answer: Hold your hands as wide as they can reach, and say out loud 'This much'.

Before the run, we stashed water in three places along the route. That helped. It didn't make me enjoy the run, but it helped me get through it. It helped a little.  The first two miles, Jim and I carried a bottle and tried to drink while we were running.  I should say, Jim carried the bottle, and offered me some water when I turned pale.  He wanted to keep running while we drank water.  Seriously?  I can barely drink out of a cup at the dinner table without choking, and he wants to run and drink?  Let's sit down on a stump and talk about it.  Let's go back to the car and listen to some tunes before we get too far away.  We can drink water there.  Or we can go to Starbucks and get a mocha.  My treat.

I ran three shorter runs earlier this week. Those shorter runs aren't that bad. Forty minutes, an hour, whatever, I can do that. Don't misunderstand, I would rather go to the dentist than run, but the shorter runs are at least manageable. This 13 mile crap needs to stop.

We have cars so we don't need to run.  You get in the car, you drive where you need to go.  Why mess up a good system?   If I stop driving and start running, who knows where it will end, how many others will follow my lead?  Who am I to spit in the face of 100 years of automotive history?  Who am I to destroy an entire American industry?  For if I destroy an American institution, like Ford or Delorean, aren't I destroying America itself?  I for one will not stand by while this grave injustice is done to America!  Stop running and drive!

We are biking four hours tomorrow. Easy-peasy, sounds like heaven.

Word of the day:  Spoonerism
Use it in a sentence: I was so excited to be home from my run, I spoke a bunch of spoonerisms.
Definition:  Look it up.

My countdown clock has me at 63 days until the Ironman.  It isn't enough.

Scales

Weight is a big deal in anything you do.  Walking up stairs isn't hard if you are in good shape and don't carry extra weight.  Try carrying a 40 pound bag of dog food and you get an idea of what being overweight can do to you.  Then try running with that bag of dogfood for 6 hours.  Weight is a monster.

I have been dieting for 3 months with no success.  I gained a pound.  Maybe that diet isn't working.  So I started a new diet ten days ago.  It is working, but I am hungry all the time.  I call it the 'hungry all the time' diet. I think I will write a book and make a million.

One way to gauge your diet success is the muffin-pants method.  Put on a pair of pants and reach around and grab some muffin top.  Don't be shy, grab it all, you own it.  If you grab more muffin top that you did a week ago in the same pair of pants, the diet isn't working.   If you aren't sure, ask somebody who owes you money 'Does my muffin top look smaller?'.  I think that is a pretty good way to go.

 I like the muffin-pants method, but I have a bad memory so I convince myself that all is well and I can go ahead and eat that last Ho-Ho.  No matter how much muffin top I grab, I am sure it is smaller than last week's grab.

The other, less fun way to measure diet success is to get on a scale.  Today I swam an hour, then got on the scale at the gym.  They have one of those expensive scales like they have at the doctors office.  I looked it up, those things start at 200 bucks.  That expensive piece of crap had me at 198 pounds, which I know is wrong.  All those doctor office scales are about 3 pounds heavy.  They look expensive but they are all inaccurate.

I got home and weighed in on the bathroom scale.  Actually, I have two bathroom scales.  One cost about eighty bucks, has an electronic display and is always two pounds heavy, and it had me at 195.3.  The other, completely accurate scale from Walmart on sale at under twenty bucks about fifteen years ago had me at 193.  So I weigh 193.  I know that is right.  Cool. When I was in college, I weighed 195 -200 my senior year so I feel pretty good about that.

Seahawk 12k

I ran in the Seahawk 12k today.  I came in 43 out of 52 in my age division.  My wife asked me why I came in 43rd.  I answered that I came in 43rd because the I passed the super fat guy about fifty yards from the finish, else it would have been 44th.  So I feel good about that.

There was a post on facebook about this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KTEgLKhjIw

There was discussion about how many of these snippets I actually say.  My wife says I am close to 100%.  I thought I would go through the list and see how accurate this is.  I started to list them all, along with a note if I have used that phrase.  It got boring so I stopped, but in total, I say about 95% of those.  Not 100%.  

Attitude

I have been feeling down for about a week. I feel tired, both mentally and physically. I have been working out for 76 of the last 80 days and that just takes a toll. The physical part is sort of hard, but not that bad really. It is the mental game I am having problems with. The biggest part of the workout thing is mental. Just knowing that you have to workout today is hard but really it isn't too bad. I can always jump off the couch and go for a run or a bike or whatever. But knowing that you have an obligation to workout tomorrow is much harder. It sounds weird, but it's true. 

I have told anybody who would listen that I am hurting and as of now, I am going to stop. First, nobody cares. If you tell somebody they are important or good looking or smart, they are happy to listen. If you tell the same person that you are having physical problems, they look at their watch and remember an appointment. Second, I need a new attitude and it starts now.

There are two kinds of people, those who believe and those who don't.  I am a believer.  I am.  I believe if you think you can do something, you can.  If you think you can't, you can't.  I believe.  So there it is.  I am telling myself and anybody who will listen that I feel good.  I expect good results.

The Bike Course

One of the dumbest things you can do in training for an Ironman is to predict something. Predict your time to finish, predict if you are going to finish faster than a friend, predict whatever, it is wrong to try to predict something you have no control over. You might show up and have tummy ache. Or a blown ACL. I can't predict my workout tomorrow, other than it is going to hurt right up until I get to Starbucks for a mocha with extra whip cream and chocolate and caramel drooled over the top. I can put two of those bad boys down. Easy. So, lesson number one, you can predict Starbucks drink consumption with near certainty, but predicting IM finish times is just something you can't do.

Unfortunately, due to a predisposition to idiocy on my part, which I blame on my bad fraternal genetics, I spend most of my waking hours thinking of the upcoming IM event. When I am at work, gazing at the wall, looking like I am thinking of something brilliant, I am actually calculating how long it will take me to finish the swim, based on my hundred yard swim time. I calculate my bike time based on my average pace. I calculate my run time based on hopeful fantasy. I add those together, throw in some impossibly fast transition time, ending up with a really fast IM. If only life were so simple.

So my training partner Duane drives over to Coeur d'Alene and rides one loop of the bike course. The bike is a two loop thing, mostly out and back on highway 95. Duane rode it once. He said it is freakishly hard. It is all hills. That sucks. It blows my prediction out of the water. I need to spend another full day at work calculating a new finish time.

I swam this morning. John and Jim and I did sprints for 30 minutes in the pool, next to some gal who is sixty pounds overweight, but still a better swimmer than I am. I hate her. She was such an arrogant swimmer. Swimming and swimming, faster than me, back and forth, up and down the pool. Fast. I bet her whole family hates her. I know I do. If I see her swimming again, I am going to pee in the pool and get out.

After the swim we biked for a couple hours out to Enumclaw and back. We stopped at Starbucks and had a grande mocha with extra whip cream and chocolate and caramel drool on the top. And a banana. And a hot ham and egg sandwich.

My coundown counter says 91 days, 12 hours, 42 minutes. I have that long to train. It isn't enough. I need another year. Another year to drop 15 pounds.

Oh ya, one more thing. A follower of this blog noted that I sound whiney. Whiney. Get that. Me. Whiney. I might, I admit, from time to time, rarely, maybe digress to some lower form of author that would engender reader mirth through lamentation, choosing that easy, more heavily trodden road over the higher, less traveled sanguine road, the self-actualization thing like Tony Freakin Robbins. I don't like him. I looked up some Tony Freakin Robbins quotes. Seriously, he actually said this shit.

A real decision is measured by the fact that you've taken a new action. If there's no action, you haven't truly decided.
Tony Robbins

Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.
Tony Robbins

For changes to be of any true value, they've got to be lasting and consistent.
Tony Robbins

How am I going to live today in order to create the tomorrow I'm committed to?
Tony Robbins

So crap. I can't be whiney. Fine. I will not do that. I will try to be upbeat and positive always. You have my promise. Just like Tony Freakin Robbins. Except for now, my knee hurts and I am hungry and I need to lose 15 pounds before my IM and I am tired and I want meat and ice cream which I can't have I can eat carrots and peas. And it seriously pisses me off that Tony Freakin Robbins is smarter than me, a better author than me, better at everything. I hate him and the gal in the pool.

Hot Yoga

I did hot yoga today after work. As the name would suggest, it is hot, and I do believe something akin to yoga was occurring with the other contestants. They were, to various degrees, stretching, arching, flexing and standing on fewer than two legs without falling. I was not. I think some of them must have read the instructions before showing up. I never do that. If I get a tool or a new appliance, I plug it in and make it go. If I can't figure out the knobs, I take it back.

Anyway, I was doing something not at all similar to yoga. What I was doing was grotesque, and was bothersome to the ladies that attended. Mostly ladies, that is. There were two guys with questionable intent were there as well. They decided to go shirtless. Perverts. I know it's hot. I get it. You sweat a lot in hot yoga. I know, I was there. But a great truth of life needs to be stated clearly and often, and that unassailable truth is thus; men over the age of forty don't look good with a shirtless wardrobe. We should all respect the law of physics. Age causes men to flab up and grow non-functional hair in odd places. It just is.

The hot yoga place should require men wear enough cloth to not be disgusting. Something that covers the entire hairy back would be a good start. This is not true of women. If they are in shape, have a belly button that isn't hidden by the Pillsbury dough boy tummy and didn't get a series of large tattoos during a drunken binge on their birthday, like a green frog the size of a dinner plate hopping around their middle section or life sized assault rifle their hip, then by all means, wear the mid-section revealing ensemble.

Is it acceptable to fart in yoga? I think yes. Please vote in the comments field if you feel strongly either way.

Knee Hurts

My knee hurts. I ran four days in a row, I think I want to rest it for a month or two. Apparently that isn't on the calendar.

St Paddys

This post isn't really about anything to do with St Patrick or wearing green or drinking green beer. I just wrote it on St. Patrick's day, hence the title.

I hate oncall. I hate everything about it. My oncall goes for a week, Monday to Monday, so 39.5 hours to go then it is somebody else's problem.

I haven't worked out as much as I wanted to this week because of oncall. I drive to the gym, I get called and have to go to work. I start to run, I get called and have to go to work. It sucks. Today I received a 4 hour reprieve since a good hearted co-worker was willing to fill in for me. I was so excited about getting a chance to workout, I tried to make up for lost work out hours. Big mistake. I got excited and pushed a little too hard. I swam for an hour, jumped out of the pool, then biked on a spin bike for an hour, then jumped on a treadmill for 40 minutes. It was a good workout, but I am tired now. I am thinking that if I can do a 3 hour event like today and feel OK, my plan in Ironman is to slow down maybe 10% and go longer. It't not a great plan, but its pretty much all I have come up with so far.

So that brings up a good question; Do you train at the speed you want to race at so that you can run at a familiar pace? Or do you train at a higher effort level and build a bigger base? I am doing the latter, not sure it is the right approach.

Back to today's workout, we did a long steady swim, I was swimming 58 second 50's. If I hold that pace, that equates to about an 84 minute swim time in Ironman. Not great. I just checked the finish times for IM Florida, most of the guys in my group with an 84 swim time barely finished under the 17 hour cut off. Super. On the other hand, I think I look good in my wetsuit, muffin top and all. Chicks dig a muffin top and I dig chicks that dig a muffin top. Everybody wins.

The Imaginary Workout

I have been working out every day for 2 weeks without a day off, which is a good thing. I feel good, I like it that I am making progress and it gets me out of the house. Everybody wins.

My job doesn't run quite so smoothly. I am on-call this week, which means my life isn't my own for 7 days. For the next 168 hours, I am just hating life. Everything pisses me off. The dog sleeping in the corner sends me into a rage. Useless mutt.

Today, I was going to work out at the gym, I drive the 20 minutes in the dark and rain to get there, I just pull into the parking lot and the flippin' phone rings. Some losers from work on the other end of the call have decided that their problems are now my problems, they can't live unless I skip my workout, drive back home in the dark and rain, which is quickly turning to rain and snow mix, and fix their stupid problems. I drive home, in the snow, no workout for me. I get home, after two hours of working on the problem, it turns out that they unplugged their router. They plugged it back in, everything works. Isn't that odd how that works?

So that brings up another couple questions that I would like answers to.
1. Doesn't anybody think to check to see if the freakin' router is plugged in before calling me? Is it really that difficult? Really?
2. How far into hell am I going to be sent for the thoughts I am having right now? Is it just the edge of hell or do I get the direct flight to my final destination?
3. How far is my run going to fall off by missing a lift day?

Inside or Outside

There is a reason I live in the Northwest, and at one time in my life, it was a really compelling reason, but I can't remember what that reason is. Either I am getting too old and my memory is fading or it wasn't a very good reason to start with.

Anyway, it rains here all the time. For those of us that like to be outside for more than 30 seconds a day, the Northwest isn't a great choice, but there it is. We are outside and wet or inside and pissed off. There isn't a third option. It's depressing.

I just re-read what I typed and I like it a lot. For me, it's profound. 'Outside and wet or inside and pissed off.' That is as deep as I get, which is sort of depressing too.

So anyway, since it was raining yesterday, Jim and Duane and I did an indoor triathlon. We swam 45 minutes, then biked on a spin bike for about 50 minutes, then ran 45 on the treadmill. It was a good workout I guess. I was ready to be done at the end, so to me, that means it was a good workout.

I am reading a book called 'Going Long' by Joe Friel and Gordon Byrn. It's an Ironman training book. It has a lot of hints on how to optimize your training, how to be the best Ironman possible, what to eat before the event, things like that. If I was a better athlete I would try to do some of the stuff in the book, but as it is, if I just get through the workout without throwing up, it's a victory. Put that in your book, Joe. Chapter 5, Don't Barf. If you publish a new edition to your book and you use the 'Don't Barf' thing, I want the credit. And a share of the royalties.

Monday

Swam for 45 minutes this morning, 500 yards, then 10 fifty yard sprints, then 20 25 yard sprints, then a 500. I wanted to puke. Next time we do sprints, I am going to do 20 yards, then back float the last 5.

I tried to do flip turns, it didn't work out so well. I am not coordinated enough to do anything like that. Flip turns suck.

The Calendar Is A Burden

The daily schedule dictated by the calendar is a grind. We swim, bike, run, lift or what have you, based on the calendar. Question; how do you do an Ironman? Answer; get a calendar and stick to it. So I am told.

The calendar is a large thing, my friend, and it is picking up. The hours we are working out are getting big. Get this. We ran over an hour and a half this morning, then asked each other what time we could work out this afternoon. How is that for a frigged up system? The weekly calendar starts on Sunday, we ran a big run early this morning, and we are already behind and need two-a-days so we aren't further behind. Shit.

The cardio part of the workout is hard, but not bad. I think everybody on my team has the cardio to pull a full Ironman right now. Its hard, but not a huge limiting factor. The hardest part is the muscles get fatigued, the joints hurt, the tendons scream for relief. Knees, ankles, muscles, knees, hips, knees, shoulders, neck, knees, back, lower back, knees, upper back, left back, lower right back, they all hurt. It's way harder than I thought it would be. Shit.

So here is a free lesson; When you run, you need to carry your shoes, your clothes, maybe an ipod, plus your own body weight. The first 45 minutes are fine, any ass can run for 45 minutes. After 45, it gets harder. As you add distance, your body weight is pulling you down. The weight is the hard part of running. When you have to pick your foot up, you have to pick up your own weight. Each step is hard. Shit.

But the workout isn't the only hard part. The calendar itself is a burden. It weighs heavy on the mind and the soul. It weighs you down and is a drain on your ability to get up in the morning, your ability to be optimistic for the workout, your ability to start the run and mostly, to finish. The calendar, and it's schedule are heavy things. It's like an extra workout every day.

111 days to go. Shit.

PS - Jim and I rode our bikes this afternoon. We ride well together, I think. Jim has always been a strong bike rider. I try to be. Last year, we were evenly matched, we could ride the same speed on the same road and take turns pulling at the front. Today I was pulling up a hill, Jim goes by me like I am standing still. He spun me like a top. Jim is down twenty pounds since last year, I am up 3, maybe that explains it. Shit.

Cars and Bikes

A guy I know got hit by a car while riding his bike. He is in the hospital in critical condition. Say a prayer or keep him in your thoughts or whatever it is you do. He was just riding to work and didn't deserve this.

Wait, Weight, ...What?

I ran 1 hr 45 min on Sunday and I took Monday off. I planned on working out Monday, but my knees made a decision for the rest of me. I need more ice.

I swam Tuesday morning, went to spin Tuesday night and I ran 65 minutes today. So. So. So. Why am I up 4 pounds this month? I am working out 10-14 times per week, I am doing a ton. I eat veg and meat. I don't get it.

That's a lie. I know why, I am eating more calories than I am burning, but still, it sucks big time. I need to cut out the milk. I am down to bare minimum carbs as it is, maybe if I stop drinking the non-fat milk I can drop the fat. Or the 80 calorie costco healthy choice fudge bar. Or the wine.

My cardio guy (I had one 85 pounds ago) said that a glass of red wine is good for the pump. That is each and every day, I get a glass of wine. One glass. One.

It's a big glass.

Training On The Road

The training calendar is all powerful. If it says run 30 minutes, I run 30 minutes. Always. Except when I am travelling. I was in North Carolina last week, my training went to hell. I tried to run on the treadmill at the hotel, I was able run for 40 minutes, then I almost died of boredom. I tried to lift weights, that worked ok, but my training plan is limited in lifting. And, I just did't want to lift so I drank a lot and complained about the lack of proper training facilities.

I got back from my trip on Friday afternoon, I swam Friday afternoon, went to spin Saturday and ran Sunday.

Tomorrow is a day off, so I am going to lift lightly and stretch. Fun stuff.

Tenderize Your Shoulders

I read Joe Freil's book, Going Long. He talks about how to prepare for an Ironman. Apparently, I was suppose to be doing weight training and core workouts. Honestly, I am getting beat up by doing a regular workout running spinning swimming, so how in world does he expect me to do weights too. I was tired when I got in the car to drive to the gym.

Last night, Duane and I did 30 minutes of light arm weights and some core work, then we walked next door and had a glass of wine at The Grape Adventure. I thought no big deal, it was an easy workout, I will be fine.

This morning, Jim and Duane and I swam at 6. I wanted to throw up. I was not in a good place. We did 75 yard sprints. We did 20ish 75s, then a 500. I was thinking that lifting weights was stupid and nobody should do it. But maybe I need to rethink that. Maybe I should give up swimming.

Swimming With the Old Ladies

After yesterday's run, we were looking for some low impact work, so Jim and I go to 24 hour fitness to swim at lunch today, it seemed like a good idea. It was, in that we got to swim for a bit, but it wasn't in that we had to leave early.

There is some sort of demographically bizarre black hole going on at the lunch hour at 24 hour. I think it can make you disappear forever. It is like there is an in-door, but no out-door, a human sucking bottomless pit, a one-way tunnel through space ending at the edge of the universe. You get the idea.

Lunchtime at 24 hour is the place where the eventual effects of Darwin's Beagle are realized, only in reverse. The laws of Natural Selection at 24 hour operate as though reflected in a mirror, left is right, right is left, the middle will not hold.

All of the healthy, under seventy folks have been naturally selected away, leaving the over seventy ladies with saggy arm skin to fill up both the gene pool and the swimming pool with their presence. Honestly, there is nobody there that isn't on six prescription meds to keep their ticker ticking. It's scary. Does everybody turn orange at seventy?

How slowly can you swim? It's like they are doing that slow motion karate thing that some people do in parks on Sunday mornings, only in the pool. One lady got half way to the other end of the pool, but had to come back because her rent is due on Tuesday.

So we swam for thirty minutes and got the hell out of there.

Grease Your Feet

Duane told me to grease my feet with Bag Balm on long runs. I do, and I don't have blisters, so maybe its a good idea. Maybe, maybe not, I don't have a double blind scientific study going here. It just seems sort of logical.

I ran a PR today, 10.04 miles, 1 hour, 44 minutes. I know that is slow, compared to everyone that owns running shoes, but I don't care, its a PR for me so there you go.

I got home, powered down 12 ounces of water, then 12 ounces of choco milk, two handfuls of cashews, took a shower then ate a full plate of chicken meatloaf and about three cups of broccoli with some cheesesauce. I asked Patty if the cheese sauce was fatty or diety. She said it is sort of in the middle. I don't care that much, since I think I burned maybe 20 thousand calories on my run. I think I need a quart of ice cream to balance the day out.

By the by, I went to a benefit dinner last friday, bought some wine in the blind purchase thing. You throw twenty in, they give you a bottle of wine with a bag over it so you can't tell if it is cheap wine or expensive. Rumor has it that all the wine was 20 bucks or more, so you can't lose. I bought 3 bottles, one of them turned out to retail at 165. So, the plan is to take that bottle to IM Coeur d'Alene, open it and give everybody a glass. There will be 15 folks there so it will be small glasses. Or maybe I will drink it tonight if I don't start feeling better. My knees are barking.

Spin Class Blows

I am told that you need to be in pretty good bike shape to complete an Ironman. You need to put in the hours. OK, so I live in the Seattle metro area and in case you didn't know, it rains a lot here in the almost great Pacific Northwest. When it rains, the roads get slippery and bikers fall like leaves. I don't like to hit the pavement on a bike. I have done it, it hurts, it's dangerous and honestly, I just don't like it. I do not like it, Sam I am.

So to get the hours in, I ride a lot in spin class. Spin class is basically a hot room with smelly people riding stationary bikes, sweating on the floor. I sweat and sometimes I drool a little. I always give a little more than the other guys. I give extra drool. Usually, in a long sticky drool string hanging out my mouth.

One problem in spin class is attention span. It wanders. When you ride a real bike, on a warm sunny day with friends, it can be a fun thing. The scenery changes, you have to pay attention to other riders and dogs and cars, you can stop on the ride and eat donuts or get a coffee. There is a lot going on.

When you are in spin class, its just hot and smelly. You just suffer and your attention span shrinks to the size of a pea. The fun is left at the door. I can't wait for it to warm up so I can go outside and ride.

I iced both knees in anticipation of my run tomorrow. Looking forward to that. I drool when I run too.