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.