Cheesecake

I racked up 350 miles over the past two days driving to visit the extended family and share the Christmas experience with the people I love. I packed my wife and progeny and a few presents in the family truckster then hit the road, participating in the Christmas eve travel experience with drivers of both persuasions, gruntled and disgruntled. Why does everybody honk at me on Christmas eve? Its a mystery.

We got to my Sister's house, went to her Christmas eve party then spent the night in the barn. At least, its sort of a barn. Its really an apartment with a bedroom, kitchen and bath that is attached to her barn, so when you stay there, everybody says 'Did you stay in the barn?' Yes I did. Now, I don't know the technical difference between a barn and a manger, but I slept in one of them, and it being Christmas eve and all, I feel really pious.

On Christmas morning, we stopped at Starbucks on the way home to get some legal stimulants, but they were closed for the holiday. Apparently, during the holiday season, Starbucks employees spend the day with family. I chauffeur.

I start my training cycle for Kona on January second. Until then, I am eating as much cheesecake as I can jamb down my trap. I don't know why. I think I read somewhere that cheesecake is workout power food. This time around, I am planning on doing more weight lifting, more yoga and more running than my past training cycles. I have a small hope that this gets me ready to show up in Kona and not embarrass myself. Its a pipe dream, but it's my pipe dream and it's all I have.

Do you ever watch those shows on the Discovery Channel showing how the icecap is melting and a mommy polar bear stands on a tiny chunk of ice and cant feed her baby polar bears and they play sad music and ask you to send money? I watched about four seconds of one of those and changed the channel. I don't need more depression. I ran today and that is enough depression for a whole herd of polar bears. When I ran, it was cold and it was raining and I ran slow. And my knee hurt. My knee hasn't hurt in a year and it sucked to run today.

 I think I am in purgatory. If I lost some weight I would be OK or if I ate more cheesecake power food, my knee would feel better, but I am stuck in this middle ground and that isn't good for anybody.  Lose weight or eat more cheescake power food?  What to do? What to do?

For Christmas, I ordered some new 2XU compression shorts.  For me. Then , I ordered new, guaranteed to make you faster Brooks size 13EE. Again, for me. And my cycling bibs were worn down, so I ordered up some of those too. Beat that.

I am doing the Kona half and I am 90% sure I am going to sign up for the Lake Stevens half. Its gonna be a big year.

Breath

Sometimes we need to look in the rear view mirror to see something real about ourselves. It's the story of my life, and I think maybe a few others suffer from a similar optically flawed self reflection. We see ourselves as we wish we were, not as we are. We see others clearly, but the one person we should know the best, we know the least. Crap. I hate that.

Impatience:  When I was fifteen, I couldn't wait to turn sixteen so that I could drive. I just blew through that year without taking the time to enjoy it. I spent all my effort trying to get away from my stupid parents, my idiot teachers, my lame friends. I didn't have a plan other than just get as far away as possible and I thought if I could get a license, it would all work out. If only I could get a license, all of those lesser humans that were holding me back from my limitless potential would then realize their error and let me go be king of..something. It seemed reasonable at the time. I breezed through that year and it was really a waste. When I turned sixteen, I got my license, I got to drive and nothing changed other than I had to work every spare second to fund my new automotive addiction. I didn't get the freedom I wanted, but I did waste what could have been a great year.

Fear:  On the day I was married, I was just trying to get through the day without killing the new family. I might have enjoyed the day if I hadn't been so eager to just get it over with. In retrospect, I now realize I was afraid of just about everything. Marriage to someone I didn't really know. Commitment and all that that implied. Sharing a toothbrush and a toilet seat. No way was I letting somebody use my toothbrush or my personal toilet seat.  I was, and I remain committed to a life built on below average intellect, but I was smart enough to know that while I didn't know what responsibility was, it was a really bad thing and, much like gonorrhea, and should be avoided at all costs.
All these things are bad things.  Commitment, sharing, responsibility.  All bad.  On my wedding day, I was locked up with fear and I missed what could have been a really good day.

I could do it better:  When the kids were five, I used to hate Saturdays. I had to miss college football, and I am still bitter about that. You only get so many football Saturdays, right? I had to drive the kids to a soccer game that they completely screwed up. I mean, if they have just listened to me they would have scored like six goals each. "Kick the ball into the net.  Kick the ball into the freakin' net!"
No, wait, I have a better idea. Why couldn't I play instead?  I could have kicked ass. I got game, right? Why do the kids get to play every freaking Saturday while I suffer on the sidelines watching them miss another goal. And another. Let me play. I pay the bills. I should at least get to sub in.  I could run circles around those five year-olds.

A month ago, I did Ironman AZ. When you do yours, here is what not to do.

Impatience:  Don't just rush through it, hoping for a better situation when it is over. It doesn't get any better. What do you hope to improve on? The day is one and done. It doesn't get any better, so take a minute to enjoy it.  You aren't going to be blowing a sponsorship opportunity. I am not saying you should pack a lawn chair and take a nap.  I am saying you can compete and enjoy it along the way.  The family is there, friends are there, people you have never met before are cheering for you until they lose their voice. What could be better? Enjoy every minute. Every second. Are you in pain? Embrace it. Are you feeling frisky?  Throttle back there big guy and don't event think about picking it up past your race plan pace.  You have a race plan, right?

Fear:  Don't be afraid of what you don't know. Nothing bad can happen. Suck in some water on the swim? Maybe. So what? Crash your bike? Maybe. You will just pick yourself up and carry on. And you will have a great scar to show your friends. Run until you barf? Probably. So what?  Nothing bad will happen that you can't fix.  Just know that even though it is new, it's nothing to be afraid of.

When I was training, I spent a lot of mornings at the pool. 5 AM, swimming laps at the stupid pool. It sucks and I hated it.  How many times do I have to do that?  I spent a lot of days running ten, twelve, fifteen miles. I hated that.  Before I did it, I was afraid that Ironman would just be one long, bad training day. It isn't. I don't know why but it isn't that at all.

I could do it better:  Really? You can win? You can beat everybody else? Then do it. Don't talk about it, do it. In the meantime, while you travel back from fantasy land, realize there are some really good athletes that are getting beat by better athletes. If you hang your hat on having a better race than your buddy, you are going to be disappointed.  You can do what you can do, and a little bit more.  Do that.

In the meantime, enjoy your day. Smile. Ironman is your day. It's put together with one idea; to let you achieve something bigger and better than you have known before. Fill your lungs with it. Breath it in.   

The Year Behind, Kona Ahead

Six months ago, my employer sent me to Phoenix for a week. I was told to pack a bag, catch the Sunday red-eye and not return for five days. I learned later that the fiscal quarter was approaching and the company thought I would do less damage to the stock price if I wasn't in the office distracting my co-workers. I think that was a win-win. Everybody wins. I got to go hang out in the sunshine and the Dow-Jones didn't fall off the cliff.

One of the great things about the upcoming new year is the opportunity it affords us to participate in a short period of self-evaluation; we can conduct a calm, rational review of our successes and failures. Perhaps we might identify areas where we fall short and set in motion a plan to improve our lot in life. Its a good thing. For instance, you might look at the past year, realize you could give a bit more to a charity, or you could stop beating your wife or maybe refrain from flipping off old people who made you two minutes late for work because they were crossing the street with a walker. Whatever is appropriate for you.

While I was thinking about that, I had another thought; What are the defining moments in our lives and what do we do to control how those moments impact us? For instance, and this is just a what-if, what if you see a car crash and a person lying in the road not breathing? Do you conduct CPR? Or just drive away? And if you do choose to put on your good Samaritan hat, and you are performing CPR and look up to see that the hearse was in a fender bender dumped this three days dead body on the street? Do you keep going with CPR?

For myself, some of my life defining moments are, in no particular order,

1. Finishing my first Ironman

2. Finishing my second Ironman

3. Watching this when I was a kid, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf3mgmEdfwg
I am not sure how that defined my life, but it's darned funny.

Last week, I went to a 7am spin class with buddies. The very reliable car thermometer registered a frosty 9 degrees Fahrenheit on the way to class. No problem, we are going to be in a spin room and it will be a human-tolerable 68 degrees. For some reason, we had the front door open during class and I suffered frost bite. Or, maybe it just felt like frost bite. Whatever, it was cold. I guess I am OK now.

I ran twice this week. My right ankle is swollen and refuses to participate in any athletic actions for the next three days. And I have a blister on my left heel. Sigh.

168 days until the Kona half.

Holiday Beginnings

I was at a pre-Thanksgiving-pre-Christmas party last night. There were about thirty people there and for the most part, they were really nice folks. There were some pretty good Scooby Snacks, chips and dips and cheeses, candy and other stuff that I didn't need. They even had a stack of deep fried egg rolls. Those egg rolls got scarfed down pretty fast and I only got one. I was rooting around for a second one, but I got shoved aside by somebody hungrier than me.

It was a BYOB party. As soon as we got there, we found a wine opener and popped the cork on our B, and when that was gone we started in on somebody else's B. Now that I think about it, I think we went through three or four B's.

Everybody was chatting away about something or another, I sort of lost track of the topic and quit listening. At that point somebody, and I am not sure who, but somebody mentioned something about Ironman. It might have been me. Anyway, I found myself the center of attention, pontificating to those around me on the wonders of all things Ironman. It's like the joke

Q: How do you know if somebody is an Ironman?

A: Just wait a minute, he will tell you all about it.

One of the people at the party asked me what my finishing time was, I told her and she said that she heard the winner finished in eight hours and change and then she asked why I finished so far behind him. I didn't have a very good answer so I said I would have been faster but I got tired. At that point, I stopped talking about Ironman and started watching the football game.

About a month ago, I decided I wanted a pastrami sandwich. Since I was pretending to be in training for Ironman, I didn't get one, but I did promise myself that I would get one after Ironman. So yesterday, I went to Cash and Carry and bought an eighteen pound brisket. I am going to corn it for a week or two then smoke it to make pastrami. An eighteen pound brisket is actually about twelve pounds of meat and six pounds of fat, so I expect it to net out at somewhere around thirty bucks a pound. I promise, I wont post a picture.

If I didn't mention it before, I am already signed up for the Kona half in May. I don't know what to expect, other than I probably wont win. I guess as far as places to start my training, that is as good as any.

Reflections - A Race Report

Just to change things up, I will start this story at the end and work backwards towards the beginning. Lets call this journey the Omega to Alpha. It will be like re-writing the Bible, but the big climax will be Eve trying yet again to subvert the original paterfamilias with an apple. I am not taking sides here, I am just explaining the reverse time line thing.

I like that opening paragraph a lot so I left it in, but its a stupid idea and impossible to pull off in a blog, so we are back to a chronological description of the event. Sorry if I got your hopes up. And don't think I am throwing Eve under the bus here, either. I like Eve. She is my second favorite character in Genesis.

Intro - I wrote these words over a period of days.  I started off reclined on a chaise lounge, under the warm afternoon sun of the Southland situated on the lanai of a beautiful rented house in Mesa, Arizona. I have water bottle at the ready position, and am listening to the low murmur of a waterfall in the swimming pool. There is really little in this life better than quiet contemplation in comfortable surroundings after facing some challenge or difficulty. Reflection eliminates all pain, eases all anguish, soothes all suffering. I am not trying to forget the bad things from yesterday's Ironman, but they start to fade into the fog of the past much quicker than the good things. Most of the good things stay with me for years to come. At least, that is my hope. Onward.

Preparation - My rapidly aging group of training partners, Jim, Duane and John have suffered the usual bumps and bruises that come with training for this event. It just happens. We were all feeling some sort of pain and are in varying degrees of readiness. John and Jim are having leg issues that make walking across the room a challenge.

There are several ways to get into this race. Volunteer, online registration, pay for a 'Foundation' entry slot (read: pay through the nose) or raise money for the Smile Foundation (read:pay more). Commit any of those errors and you find yourself in possession of a ticket to ride the express train to Ironman. Everything seemed like a good idea a year ago. I think you could have talked me into donating a kidney to get into this event a year ago.

When you sign up for Ironman, you might think that just because you have seven hundred bucks burning a hole in your pocket, it is a decision that you can make in your own little bubble and come what may, it only impacts you. You might think that, but it isn't true. You need to know this: if you decide to participate, you are stealing. The time that you take from others is bigger than I can describe. When you sign up for Ironman, you are essentially stealing time from your spouse, your family, your employer and who knows who else to help you along the way. Your wife isn't going to see you in the morning for at least six months. You will be swimming at the pool at 5AM, then going straight to work. Your kids aren't going to see you at soccer practice. You are going to be running or riding or in a yoga class or taking your bike in to the bike shop. Your employer still expects a full day's work, and you might think that it will just work out. But remember, you need to leave work early every Thursday because that is your second ride day of the week and you need to be done riding before dark. So just know you will be explaining to co-workers that the report due on Friday will be written Thursday night after the wife and kids are in bed.

Just because your training calendar calls for twelve hours one week, it doesn't mean you only need to dedicate twelve hours to it. You are fixing your bike, driving to the swim store to get a new pair of goggles, packing your workout bag with clean workout gear. Hey, speaking of clean workout clothes, a question just occurred to me. I am not sure who washes my stinky bike shorts and spin shirts. That's weird. I am pretty sure I don't. Maybe I sleepwalk the laundry.

Emotional display – The ideal attitude is one of quiet confidence. You don't need to scream or yell or brag about your three marathons you ran in three days or whatever it is you did elsewhere. Just try to focus on yourself and those things you can control. Everybody knows you are an Ironman because you wear the Ironman logo on every piece of clothing you own, you don't need to verbally assault them with your most recent PR or who you can beat in a 5k.  That is what a blog is for.

What you don't want to do is blow up. Don't launch yourself into oncoming traffic, don't throw a tantrum when you get the wrong flavored gel at the water stop, don't break down into an emotional puddle of self pity.  Calm.  No drama.  Focus.  That's what you shoot for.

In my first Ironman, I cried three times before the starting gun. I was a walking dictionary of all the known emotions, and I think, with good reason. Its a long, hard road. Fear, unfocused emotion, adrenaline, jock itch. Fear. Did I mention I was scared to death? I was a mess.

This time around, I only cried twice before the starting gun and once the day after, so I think that is good. It's progress. I still cried three times for each Ironman, but in the second one, I spread the load out over a longer period. Ya, that's way better. I should be on the poster for Ironman. It could show a picture of me crying at the starting gun. The caption would be “He doesn’t belong!!”

The Swim – A couple days before the event, we met a guy and his girlfriend who live in the Phoenix area. They seemed knowledgeable and suggested we skip the practice swim. He said that you can get some pretty bad germs in Tempe Town lake. The locals know that the lake is off limits to swimmers 363 days of the year for a reason. If you swim there, you will pick up something nasty, your stomach will hate you and put together an organized labor work stoppage. We thought that he sounded like he knew what he was talking about, so we ignored the advice and swam a practice loop in Tempe Town lake on Saturday. Perfect. I only swallowed a half cup of germy water. That's not so bad, I was fine. There is nothing wrong with that water. Swim in it? Sure. Feed it to schoolkids? You bet. I looked up Tempe Town Lake on wikipedia. It seriously won 11 awards at the state, federal and international level.  Don't ask me how a lake wins an award, but it's true.  It must be safe, right? Right?

The event started with a cannon shot. Boom. The male pro triathletes are off, which means I have twenty minutes before I start. I am in my wetsuit, ready to wander down to the water. I am fairly relaxed, crying very little, just a sniffle or two, with the odd sob and body convulsion thrown in for good measure.

Boom, the female pro triathletes are off, which means I have ten minutes to go. I jump in the water, inhale a quart of that wonderful liquid, cry some more and slowly swim the two hundred yards to the staring line, coughing out water the whole way, which might sound weird if you don't do a lot of open water swimming, but it's kind of a normal thing to cough out water while your face is underwater. I coughed out 90% of the water that was stuck in my left lung. The other 10% I relocated to my right lung.

I line up ten yards back from the front line of swimmers and I am thinking this is perfect, I have lots of room around me, nobody is pushing me underwater, I have my emotions under control, the clock counts down and Boom, we are off. Within two seconds, I have three swimmers swim over the top of me. I think they were professional weight lifters. Their stroke count is as high as humanly possible. I think they will burn out in five or six minutes at that rate. Another group of twenty swimmers in a school formation hit me on the head and shoulders from both sides as they fly by. One of them must be a boxer because he is trying use me as a punching bag. I took a left hook to the chin. For five hundred yards, the battle continues. It's all part of the fun. Ten minutes later, I am feeling confident and settle in to my long distance stroke. Bam, somebody's heel hits me in the right eye hard. My goggle is compressed down on my eye and seems to have suctioned down hard enough that I cant blink. I fix that and swim. Other than that, it was an uneventful swim until five yards from the end. The stairs that you climb out of the lake are stacked with people trying to get out. Somebody panicked and pushed me under. I think he pushed me two or three feet underwater. It happens. I waited him out, then got out of the water. Good swim. I swallowed about a pint of germy water. I am sure that will work out for me.

The Bike – I hit the road with a plan. Its a three loop thing, so my first loop goal was 70% heart rate, second loop 75%, third loop ...well, I didn't have a plan for the third loop. Ten minutes into the bike, I get water at the water stop and am trying to jamb it into my bottle carrier, I hear a nasty scraping noise, oh, that's me, my nice new wheels are riding on the curb and I am about to fall. I don't fall but should have. Note to self: Look where you are going.

I see two spots where people threw up. It happens. I am sure that is the last I will see that.

I go another ten miles, I have seen twenty spots where people pulled their bike to the side, threw up and continued on. I am sure it wont happen to me because I don't get sick...hmm, now that I think of it, I feel like I have a bag of kittens in my stomach sloshing around chasing a mouse.

I get five miles in and pull over to a portapotty. I gotta do something, I feel terrible. I spit up a chunk of something. I think it was part of breakfast. I am not sure who's breakfast because I don't remember eating anything that tasted that bad or was shaped like a AA battery. I spit it out, the wind catches it and the guy on the bike behind me can now share my pain.  How much crap was in that lake?

The amount of barf on the side of this bike course is staggering. The Pepto-Bismol people should get a concession here, they would clean up. Tempe Town lake is now officially renamed Lake Barf-o-rama.

I feel OK, but ten miles into the second loop, my vision is blurry. I don't know why. I cant see clearly beyond fifty yards. Not to worry, I can get through this bike course blindfolded: I am pretty sure I can do that. I spit up something else that tastes bad and try to yack it to the side of the road but it catches the wind and sticks to my shoe. I need food so I eat a big wadded ball of stuff that just yesterday was a PBandJ.  It got squished in my bike shirt and its just a ball now.  It tastes pretty good so I don't have a problem keeping it down.

The third loop I feel normalish. I start to push harder and I am passing most of the people who passed me earlier. I still can't see very well, my vision is clear out to about thirty yards.

This course is mostly flat, but there is this little two mile long section that looks like a small mountain if you live in Kansas. In Washington, we call it a hill. I am pushing hard up this hill and flying by most riders. It's nothing to brag about, the stronger riders are ahead of me, so I am passing really weak riders. I shouldn't even be here, I think I should be ten miles ahead, so I push harder. I put my head down for a second, ride a bit, then look up. There is a guy who is going really slow, and he is right where I am going to be in about a thousandth of a second. I veer hard left to get around him. He is an unsteady rider and wanders left. We hit and we both go down.

There is a rule in bicycling. When there is a crash, it is always the fault of the guy in the back. It is the rule and it is always true. Until now. Who is this jackwagon to think he can put his bike where I need to be? And why did he crash us right in front of the cop? I think he was a cop, but I couldn't really see very well. I was laying in the street, looking up when I see a guy with a gun on his hip walk over to me and ask me if I was OK. I think it was a cop, but this is Arizona and I don't really know what the local customs are. Does everybody in Arizona have a gun on their hip?

I started to think of the horse that fell in the Kentucky Derby. This horse is running along, minding his own business and down he goes, broken leg. Everybody who saw the horse fall and had a gun raced onto the track to help the horse out. The trainer or the vet or maybe the lawncare guy got there first and did the humane thing. It was a great day in horse racing. It was the humanitarian thing to do. As far as we know, the horse was going to recover with a splint, but the lawnmower kid with the Beretta decided he needed to be put down on national television. He had a nine round magazine and emptied it from the prone position into a basically healthy horse.

This horse thing runs through my mind as I am laying in the freeway, bike on top of me, wheel slowly spinning, like a clock, counting down to zero. Am I the horse here? The cop or the lawncare guy or whatever he was has his hand on the butt of his gun, then I swear he says in his best Buford T. Justice voice “Boy, is your leg broke?”

I am back on the bike. I guess I received a stay of execution from the governor. Problem is, everything was fuzzy. I can see twenty five yards clearly, everything outside of that looks like second grade art class. I know that the swim was making everybody barf, but does it make you go blind too?

More barf on the road. Here is the bonus question, what actor in what movie said “I know it was you Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart!” The slightly reconstructed version goes something like “I know it was you, Tempe Town Lake. You made me barf. You made me barf!”

The Run – The run is what you make of it. If you have the energy, you can start fast and go faster the entire run, or you can start slow and slow down as you go. It's up to you. Just be done by midnight. The nice thing about the run is you make so many friends. I must have met twenty new friends yesterday on the run. In the swim, you chat with the guy next to you before it starts for at best ten seconds. I high-fived a couple guys before the swim. Other than that, the swim is a solitary thing. On the bike, you might chat with four or five different folks for a few seconds, but other than that, its pretty lonely on the bike. The run is different. If you find somebody who runs at your pace, you can chat for an hour. I know, some of you are saying that you are working too hard or are concentrating too much on your athletic performance to chat, but seriously, you can run and chat at the same time. Or just run next to somebody. Anybody. At the end of the event, nobody gives a rip about time. You beat me by an hour? Good for you. I met a guy from Nebraska that was in his first Ironman and isn't going to do another one. I met a girl from San Diego that was in her first Ironman and planned on another one asap.  We all promised to write each every week for the rest of our lives.   Beat that! The run sucks and everybody knows it so I do what I can to forget about my feet.

And that's all I have to say about the run.

The Medical Tent - I finish, I don't see my training crew, which is odd. The medical guy grabs me, asks me what my name is, I can't answer, so he tells me to sit in a chair and drink some water. I mumble about getting an IV and point at my left elbow, he says “you don't need it, you are fine.” OK, you are the medical guy but I can't stand on my own and I cant tell you my name. You are the professional. OK, fine, I don't need an IV but an ambulance would be nice.

I hear my daughter screaming from the sidelines and I turn towards the noise. It's a primal reaction. If you kid screams, ten thousand years of evolution insists that you need to see what is going to eat them, so I turn and look and fall into the medical guy. He puts me back in a chair and says I will be fine. My daughter tells me how great I did. Really? I think I need to throw up.

 Since I only crashed my bike, they wont let me in the medical tent, but I do get sit outside for a for a quick scrubbing. See, when you fall off a bike onto the highway, you drive gravel into your skin and it wont come out unless somebody digs it out. They don't put that in the literature when they take your seven hundred bucks, do they? No, they do not.

After the sadistic nurse-wannabe tears my skin off my body with an iron brush designed for postmortem dissection, and since I can't talk, she gets bored and leaves for a more coherent victim to subjugate. I think maybe I can get an IV if I can just get into the medical tent, so I tell the nurse at the door of the medical tent that my training partner, John, is actually my brother and I need to be with him. Before he dies.

John is on a cot, covered in two blankets and is getting an IV and has a full time doctor holding his hand. He looks gray but seems coherent. I have blood running down from my knee into my shoe, my elbow has tendons poking through the skin and I can't say my own name and they gave me a chocolate milk. What kind of bullshit is that? Then somebody comes and changes out John's IV bag. I guess the first one didn't take. Thirty minutes later, they give him a third IV bag. I almost got blown away by Deputy Dog with the magnum and I get nothing. I got hosed.

Connections – In the end, I found a truth that I believe escapes most. That truth is that Ironman, and life itself, isn't about the event. Its not about a list of achievements that you list on a resume or a bank balance that has the right number of zeros and its not about your finishing time in Ironman. Ironman, and life, is about the journey. Its about the process. The process is the training, the preparation, the people you meet and the connections you make. The friends we make in life are the truest reflection of ourselves.

That is me in the middle there.

And just a few hours later, I seemed to have some sweat issues to work out.

Pre Race Jitters

I am in Phoenix, getting ready for next Sunday's Ironman. I flew down a couple days ago with a group of folks to have a chance to relax before the event. The idea is that if you get here at the last minute, you will be stressed out and your athletic performance will suffer. I don't know if that is true, but at this point, I will believe anything.

Yesterday was a good day, all things considered. To start with, I swam at the Cactus pool in Scottsdale, which is a great pool. You just feel like an Ironman by being around that pool. I have been told that if you swim there, you are then anointed by the Ironman official witchdoctor mojo. The Cactus pool has 28 lanes so everybody gets their own lane. The Cactus pool is outdoors, so you get to swim in the sunshine. The water doesn't stink, which is nice, and honestly, its a great change from home. Our pool at home is a cesspool. The home pool is a three lane fiasco that is suppose to be open to all, but really is a place for the big sumo lady water walkers to ruin everybody else's day. The big sumo lady water walkers are slathered in perfume, wear a pink frilly shower cap and push a big bow wave when they walk 2 laps in the pool in a thirty minute window. They walk a few steps down the lane, then stop and slosh water on their arms for ten minutes while their cheap perfume spreads over the top of the water like the Exxon Valdez. It smells like a rusty old can of lavender scented Glade sprung a leak. Meanwhile, they keep ten swimmers on the beach because nobody is brave enough to swim past them. The big sumo lady water walkers mosey down the lane, taking up the middle 80%.  I have personally seen lap swimmers try to swim past these gals and they never come back. They just disappear.  

Last night, we went to dinner in Scottsdale. Dinner was nice, with decent food and everybody seemed to have a good time. We were about half way through dinner and we were chatting with the waitress about how good the cocktails were and she casually asked if we were going to R&D after dinner. We didn't know what R&D was, but after she described it, we agreed to give it a shot. R&D is a small cocktail joint right above the restaurant that has unique drinks. Its suppose to be sort of a speak-easy atmosphere and it was pretty cool. You have to call from a phone at the bottom of some rickety stairs to be let in. The stairs are right next to a dumpster so you know the place is either going to have a great atmosphere or its going to suck. It didn't suck. I am not a big cocktail guy but this place was exceptional. A couple people in our group ordered a gin and tonic. They bring out this big glass apparatus that looked like something out of a Scooby-Doo chemistry set. They put some juniper berries and orange peels and other stuff in a glass pot and steeped the vodka in it to make gin.  Sounds weird, works great.  I don't remember what they put in my drink, other than it was a bunch of high octane something or another and some whipped cream. And it was on fire at one point. Yum.

Today we checked our bikes out of TriBikeTransport for a quick trip down the boardwalk just to see if everything was working. You just never know. For the past six months, I have had problems with my bike. Its just one little thing after another.  Wheels, rear derailleur, front deraileur, squeeky headset, brakes drag, brakes dont work, yadda yadda yadda.  It never ends.  But, I am happy to report that all is well.  I rode a few miles and its good to go.

Tomorrow we are going for a practice swim. We were going to do the practice swim in Tempe Town lake but a guy we met said that it might be a good idea to just skip that. He said some folks have been known to contract all manner of nastiness there, diphtheria, hepatitis, distemper; they have it all. Maybe we will skip the pre-swim.

After the practice swim, or maybe after the skipped practice swim, we shop. I think I am in for a couple hundred bucks for thirty bucks worth of tshirts. Its a rip off but what are you going to do?

We are going to pause our normally scheduled broadcasting to pass on an important public health message. Please pay attention, it could be important to you, or someone close to you.

I was at Ironman village wandering around, looking at the sights, taking in the experience.  I didn't want to be distracted by outside events.  I am trying to settle down, remain calm, prepare my mind, body and soul for Sunday's big event.  It occurred to me that my bladder was full and I had to go, so I wandered over to a line of eight sani-cans.  I wasn't really paying attention to who was in which sani-can since it isn't my job to police the things.  I opened the first one, it was disgusting, there was a mess everywhere, so I shut the door.  I tried to open the next one, it was locked with a fairly hefty zip tie.  Apparently, that particular sani-can is reserved for somebody with a pair of side cutters.  I headed for can #3.  I should note at this point that the sani-cans are the kind that have the red/green window on the front.  If somebody is in the thing, they are suppose to flip the lock, which will also make the little plastic window go from green to red. Everybody knows how it works.  If the first thing you learn in life is to count to three, one, two, three, the second thing you learn is the little window on the sani-can.  Anywho, I carefully inspect the window in can #3, its green, green means go, so I open the door, there was a really attractive lady in there who seemed to be accommodating two opposing, yet irresistible urges.  One, she had to urinate right now and two, she was not going to plant her pristine cheeks on the seat.  She may also have been a contortionist because I don't think you can squat that way, with your private parts hovering mere fractions of an inch from the seat, unless you are an Olympic gymnast or a contortionist.  So I stood there, looking at the lady, and I didn't know what to do.  I swear, she smiled at me and sort of giggled.  So I just sort of stared for a few seconds more, trying to be polite.  I smiled back. I mean, its a matter of manners.  Do you think its OK to slam a door in a lady's face?  I don't.  I quietly closed the door, then I said "sorry".  She didn't answer.  I asked if she was OK  She didn't say anything.  I told her that if she would feel better about it, she could open the door on me while I was going. She didn't answer.
I used sani-can #4.  I never heard from her again.  Such is life.

Sunday is the big day. Whoop whoop whoop.

The Rooster

I am tapering. For me that means I just sort of do what feels good. If I feel like running, I run, if I feel like swimming, I swim, if I feel like biking, I watch a youtube video of last years ironman world championship since my bike is in a truck with about 500 other bikes, migrating south like a herd of geese. I am hopeful the bike ends up in the Phoenix area.

Today I ran 4 miles with my trusty dog Tugger. We run on a great trail, but to get there, we have to run down this road with a bunch of houses for about a half mile. So, my dog and I were running, minding our own business when he saw a cat and took off like a shot, to do what dogs do when they see cats; he ran up to the cat to say hello and snap his doggy jaws around the fat, lazy cat. It just happened that the cat was on a porch and that would have been OK, but the lady that was sitting in the chair on the porch holding the cat got pissed for no reason, because my dog was just saying hello, biting on the cat in her lap. I am not even sure he was biting hard. Now that I think of it, I am pretty sure he was mostly gumming the cat, because there was very little blood. I don't think its my fault or my dogs fault that the cat scratched the crap out of the lady's legs and face trying to get away from the dog. How is that my fault? She should control her cat. Now that I think of it, who the hell is she to hit my dog with her coffee cup? That's just rude.

In the book “Outliers', the author claims that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve greatness. I think that probably is true, and it explains my lack of success in Ironman. I train for 6 months in preparation for an Ironman and the average time I spent per week is about 13 hours of swimming and running and biking. Early in the training phase, I hit 8 hours a week, later in the training cycle, I hit 20 hours so I think that is an average of about 13 hours. Doing some quick math, that gives me 338 hours of training in a six month period in preparation for Ironman. I am 9662 hours short of greatness.

I am watching MMA while I type this and one of the guys fighting has a tattoo of a chain link fence on his back. I don't know what that means. Why would you get a life-size chain link fence on your back? Most tattoos you can figure out. If the guy has a picture of a motorcycle across his neck, he probably likes motorcycles, if he has a name on his arm like Amelia, he probably got the tattoo about a week before somebody named Amelia dumped him for a guitar player in a band. But a fence? I don't get it. I am thinking that if I do really well in the upcoming IM, I am going to get a tattoo. If I struggle, I am not going to get one. Do well - tattoo. Do poorly - no tattoo. Hmmm. My money is safe for another year.

In my last IM, I dreamed of putting the 140.6 sticker in the back window of my truck. I thought about it in CDA while I was swimming and was scared, I thought about it when I was running and wanted to quit. When I got tired, I thought about it and it helped me keep going. That motivation is gone. I don't have a replacement motivator. Any ideas out there? I got nothin'.

Last point: How do you judge success? Some small group that didn't breastfeed as infants seem to think they are successful if they come in first in their age group. Morons. Another group have a time goal. If they hit 12 hours, they feel like they succeeded. Again, morons. The other 80% of us have other goals that define success. Personally, finishing seems like a pretty big mountain right now. Just getting through the swim is a big deal. If you don't believe me, try it. Go out and swim 2.4 with some psychopath beating you in the head and shoulders for an hour plus. Then, ride 6 freakin hours with no purpose other than just to wear you down. Then run like Forrest Forrest Gump. For me, its a 6 hour run. Perfect.  I am ready.

If I can finish and not do permanent damage I am going to be crowing like a rooster.

Counting Calories

There was a discussion I participated in some years ago between a couple of high school buddies along with one of their idiot wives and myself where we were pondering the possibility of past lives. One of my buddies said the idea of past lives and reincarnation was a farce and not worth discussion. My other buddy said that he had no thought on the subject. I don't think he understood the question. The idiot wife said she was a princess in a former life until she was unjustly dethroned by an evil stepmother. I said she was confusing the plot from Cinderella with her former life and she said I wasn't listening and I was stupid. She was technically correct on both points, but I think she too wasn't listening and missed my point. If everybody has had a past life, then you don't get to choose to be a princess, or in my case if I did have a past life, which I might have if I was asserting a newly found affiliation with Hinduism, then I don't get to be a secret spy or a knight or Abraham Lincoln. If I did have a past life, I was a peasant. Everybody was a peasant. Ninety nine point nine nine nine percent of the human population for the three thousand years has been a peasant. So if you decide to switch to Hinduism and therefore validate your past life dream with divine authorization, you better know you are a peasant, through and through. Peasant you were and peasant you will ever be.

What does that have to do with triathlons? Just this. The odds are against you. If you think you are going to win, you aren't. If you think you can run a sub 10 hour Ironman, you can't. Pro triathletes do it, you can't. Well, you probably can't. It's pretty hard to do and very few can do it. The odds are against you.

Today, we rode like six hours then had a late breakfast at the Original Pancake House. So lets see, I burned max calories for about six hours.  Lets say that rounded out to 800 calories per hour, so its 4800 calories. During that workout, I ate four gels and a energy bar and a coke and a hot chocolate, lets say a thousand calories. The OPH stop was good for a thousand calories of bacon and eggs and pancakes. Then I get home, eat five cookies at fifty calories each followed by dinner.  I had seconds, so lets call that another thou. I am short about fifteen hundred calories, which is awesome because I will drop a pound. Now, I happen to know that there is a bucket of vanilla ice cream in the freezer. It calls to me. I hear it now; ice cream, you are a siren and you call to me. I must answer.  That pound I was gonna lose?  Not today.

14 days left.

The Coat-Condom

There has been some discussion between my two readers regarding my lack of literary productivity over the past month. To them I offer the following sincere response, “phffffthhht”. I said it and I mean it. If there is any more dissension in the reader base, I will name names. Watergate was just a shadow of the havoc I will vouchsafe upon the blogging community if I hear any more complaints.

Two weeks ago, my small band of training partners grew by 25%. We added a woman to our all male party which not only improved the average athletic ability of our group by about 200%, but she also offered the unforeseen benefit of limited body odor. Everybody else in our group stinks. You work out with these guys for 30 minutes, they stink like unholy hell. Not me of course, I am body odor neutral. It's a genetic thing. For some reason, our new training partner from the opposite gender doesn't smell like an untended armpit. Weird. Speaking of smell, its a little known fact that all the roads that our mixed gender group trains on were built parallel to salmon spawning streams. And, it's even less well known fact that when salmon spawn, they die and float belly up and smell really bad. Imagine the one smell that, when you smell it, you immediately want to barf. That's what salmon spawning streams smell like in October in the township of Enumclaw. I might write to the Enumclaw city council and ask for some sort of relief.

Today's plan was to do a half ironman in a training environment. We swam for 50 minutes, we rode 56 miles, then we ran. We were suppose to run 13.1 miles, but since we were tired from the bike ride, we cut it short with a firm commitment to make it up tomorrow. That counts, right?

I ordered my shoes for the race. Brooks Adrenalin 13 EE. I'm five foot nine if I stretch and I have 13 EE paws. Frodo Baggins had similar feet. I have to order online because they don't stock my size in retail stores.  Is it my fault that John Holmes and I have the same shoe size?

My left shoulder gets sore when I swim. I know its because I don't rotate sufficiently on my non-breathing side but I cant seem to fix it. I work out in the pool and I feel like I am rotating like an African crocodile with lunch in his chompers, but I still get a sore shoulder. I guess if it gets too bad, I can single arm the course in Phoenix.

Two weeks ago, I rode 60 miles and it was cold. I think it was like 40 degrees at the start, 50 at the end of the ride. I wore regular bike shorts, a couple shirts, a super light coat, fingerless gloves. I didn't fully appreciate the cold and I was pretty well shivering at the end of the ride. I'm an idiot. Last week, I rode 90 miles, it was 33 degrees at the start of the ride, rising to a balmy 40 degrees at the end, I wore long pants, shoe covers, long finger gloves and a light coat. I was cold. Now, you need to realize I have a warm, bright red bike coat in the closet. It doesn't breath but let me explain the effect of 33 degrees on a guy on a bike. The wind just sucks the heat out of your body. It's like a giant succubus. When it's that cold, you don't need your coat to breath. In fact, if its cold enough, you are better off with a super-sized rubberized condom-coat. The heat you make stays in and you stay warm. So today, it was kind of a middle temp of 44 when we left. I again left the red coat-condom in the closet. I want to wear my coat-condom once this fall so I am waiting for the ice ride. We always get one ice ride in a year, it's when the water puddles are frozen over and you go home after 30 minutes because your bike keeps flying out from under you. That's when you need the coat-condom.

Shoes

There are some great philosophical questions that have vexed mankind for generations. These questions have been pondered by the greatest minds ever known: Socrates, Plato, Casey Stengal, all have tried to answer those essential questions that can't be answered.

Why is there something rather than nothing? - Think about that. Isn't nothing more likely?

Do we have free will? - How do you know? Maybe your decision to make a decision on that issue was written before you made up your mind?

Is there life after death? - You need to go and come back to know for sure and that's almost as rare as pitching a perfect game. So far, no video evidence.

And even more vexing, The chicken or the egg? - Say no more.

I propose a new addition to these most difficult questions. It's this: Do I wear my Newtons or my Brooks in IM AZ?

I am going back and forth on which shoes I am going to wear. It's not as easy to answer as it sounds. The Brooks are honestly more comfy. They have a bigger toebox, they are softer, and I used them last time and didn't have any problems. Logically, that is the best choice. But, I think I am faster in the Newtons. I have no empirical evidence of this of course. They just seem to be a bit faster. And, I have trained in the Newtons for the past two months.

What would Casey Stengal do?

I was watching the Seattle Sounders on tv tonight, there is this guy with a design shaved into his head. First questions, how did he do that? It had to be super hard to do. I shaved my dog and it didn't look nearly that good. I can really appreciate a great head or fur shaving artist. Second, why did he do that? I mean, he's already on TV. What's the point?

I plan on getting a tattoo. I was thinking of getting the girl with the hula skirt that bumps her hips every time you flex your muscle. I just need to identify a muscle that has sufficient deflection when flexed to make the effect visible. Plan two is the standard IM logo. I had a great location picked out to have that baby installed, but my wife said I can't tattoo my private parts. Working on plan three, stay tuned.

Stegosaurus

The list of great things that happen to you when training for Ironman is long and diverse. You get to see interesting things and meet interesting people and hemorrhage money at a staggering rate. One of the really nice things about training for Ironman is you get to see changes in yourself that you didn't really plan on. If everything goes right, you get to relive that day when you were thirteen where you found hair growing in new and unexpected places that wasn't there the day before.  I am not saying you get to go through puberty again.  It's just that your body changes.

For instance, three months into your training plan, your fat pants don't fit any more, which is handy because just last year, you donated your last three pairs of skinny pants to the Goodwill, convinced that they would never fit again. Then, the extra skin around your neck that looks like a support collar for accident victims shrinks down to just a saggy turkey-skin-necklace. Those two things, the pants and the turkey-neck collar happen to about 99% of the 'stocky' triathletes. Not me of course, but I have seen it in others. It's inspirational.

I do get to enjoy the 'stand-up dizzies'. Everybody gets that. Here's how it works: you work out for four hours, come home and lay on the couch, sleep for 20 minutes, your wife yells at you to take the garbage out, you stand up and 'wham' you get dizzy and almost fall. FYI, to fix it, you put your head between your knees for five seconds, then take the garbage out. Thats how I do it anyway.

Two Sundays ago, I set a PR in my run. I did ten miles in 1 hour 59 minutes. Don't laugh, for me, thats as good as it gets. Today I ran just short of 8 miles in 1 hour 20 minutes. I am rapidly approaching that magical 10 minute mile pace. For me, it's like the theoretical exercise where you move half way to the wall an infinite number of times, never reaching the wall. I can't run a 10 minute mile at any distance over three miles. It just cant be done.

You remember that game you played when you were younger where you sat in a group and told each other what you would be if you could? Some people said they would be Abraham Lincoln or a butterfly or a star, or some stupid tree on a hill. Well, if I could play that game now, I would be a Stegosaurus. Think about it. They were almost impervious from attack. They had these thick plates that other meat eater dino's couldn't crack, so that's a plus. They lived in social groups, so they always had friends. Another plus. Granted, they did have the smallest brain to weight ratio of all known dinosaurs, but does that have to be a negative? I am not so sure. Maybe brainpower is overrated.

I did a four hour indoor brick yesterday. One hour swim, two hour bike, one hour run, then dash off to the 'Original Pancake House' for brunch. That's a good day in anybody's book. I wanted to just do a five hour ride, but it was raining so hard you couldn't see the road so I was in the gym with all the other dinosaurs.

49 days to IM AZ.  I'm not ready.

P3

My bike is a great bike. The advertising said so, so I know it's true. It's fast, very colorful and I took out a second mortgage on my house to buy it, so I know its a great bike. The problem is that it spends more time at the bike shop than I spend riding it. It needs new cables, it doesn't shift right, the chain is shot, the wheels are out of true, the list goes on and on. Its like the great American philosopher, Rosanna Rosanna Danna said, “It's always somethin.”


I was picking up my bike yesterday from the bike store and honestly, I don't know why. I just take it there once a week, they tell me to come back in a couple days and bring some money. I think this time they were replacing the chain and putting in a new left aortic valve. So I am waiting to pay my bill, and it took a while because they had a hard time adding up the bill. I guess their cash register can only add 20 items at once before smoke starts to come out the back and it needs to be reset. Anywho, I was standing in the middle of the bike store for maybe 10 minutes waiting for the bill, and I notice a gal trying out a bike. She had the bike on the trainer and was pedaling at something close to a 300 cadence, I thought it was a foot race to see who quit first, the girl or the trainer. Honestly, I didn't really notice the girl, I was looking at the bike. It was a P3 and it looked great. I thought, wow, that bike is super-sexy. Slim, well built, aftermarket bumps in all the right places, smooth tan skin and blue eyes. That bike was crazy hot. If my bike left me for a better rider, I'm going to get one of those P3's.


So today, my buddies and I are doing a brick. It's part of a highly detailed, well thought out training plan for Arizona. We planned on an hour swim, a three hour bike and a two hour run. That was the plan. As it turned out, we swam about an hour, then we went for a ride. Easy pace, 20-21 mph, no big hero efforts. The route we rode is our typical training route. We start at my house, go through Black Diamond, wander around a bit, limp through Cumberland, then go towards the dump. If you smell dead stuff, you are going the right direction. If you smell flowers, turn around. That's my navigational advice if you want to train for IM Arizona. If you smell dead stuff, you are going in the right direction.


The thing is, there is a bike race this weekend just outside of Cumberland and we need to ride on the same route as the race. It's a free country, right? I didn't sign a non-compete clause. Look out racers, I gotta get to Starbucks.


I was up front, riding easy because we planned on running after our bike ride. If we were going to just ride and be done for the day, I would have been riding faster, but nope, my riding buddies and I agreed, with a binding blood-oath promise given with the full faith and credit of these United States of America, that we were going to go easy on the way home. No testosterone-fest riding. So I was riding an easy pace, my riding buddies are behind me, and we wander into the middle of a bike race. Not my fault. 100 bike racers and my rag-tag group of 3 riders, all on the same road at the same time. Then in front of me, I see a new P3 and it looked really familiar. Slim, tan skin, blue eyes. Yup, its my new best friend with the aftermarket bumps. I get about 20 feet behind the P3 and I am happy right there. I am going to follow that P3 for the rest of my life. Remember when your Mom was trying to get you to think for yourself when you were 8? She said “If Johnny jumps off a cliff, are you going to jump too?” Yes. Yes I will. I will follow this P3 right off the cliff. Oh yes. Then my riding buddy, who can screw up a good deal without really trying decides we aren't going fast enough and jumps around me and passes me and P3. Why would you do that? I didn't understand it then and I don't now. So then we settle back down to a reasonable pace and P3 comes around and passes us. Sweet. Life is good again, lets follow P3. Then my buddy feels like screwing it up again and passes P3. He passes P3 about 50 other riders and we left the racers behind us. I will never see P3 again. Sad. So sad.

Do you remember the movie 'The Waterboy'? Bobby's Mama said “Foosball? A bunch of overgrown monsters manhandling each other. Remember when that man wanted you to play the foosball, Bobby?” That is the best football reference I can come up with right now. Today is football Saturday. Go Cougs.

Merciless Water Buffalo

When I was sixteen years old, I used to hunt almost every day. I was lucky enough to live out in the middle of nowhere so I could shoot something almost every day of the year. Pheasant, dove, fish, cat, it didn't matter much, I shot a lot of stuff. My ammunition bill was higher than my gas bill. I didn't discriminate; if it moved, I shot it. Wait. I mean, I shot at it. I can't hit the broadside of a barn.

So one Friday night, I was at a girls house that I had a pretty good shot of getting horizontal with and her step-father decided he wanted to show me home movies of his hunting trip to Africa. This was in 1976 or 1978 so the video quality was pretty poor. The movie showed him sitting in a chair on the front of an air boat like they had on the tv show Gentle Ben.  Remember Gentle Ben?  Late '60s tv show with Ron and Clint Howard and a bear named Gentle Ben?  They wandered around the Florida everglades saving lost children and putting criminals in jail.  Anyway, they had an airboat in that show and it looked like the one my new best friend was sitting in, holding a gin and tonic in one hand and a small cannon in the other. You could tell he was half lit because he was waving his drink around, spilling most of it on his pants. It looked like he pissed himself, because his safari pants had a big wet spot from belt to knees, but, to be fair, I think no more than half of it was gin and the other half was sweat.  I heard Africa can be hot and maybe this jackass sweated a lot in the crotch.  

The guy was wearing the same clothes that the guys in movies wear when they hunt in Africa. It's always the same gear, khaki colored pants, khaki colored shirt, khaki colored jacket with a khaki colored belt. And a khaki pith helmet. My new best friend with the movie projector and the hot step-daughter is costumed in clothes that are perfectly clean and pressed, except for the sweaty gin stain around the crotchal region. In the middle of the African bush. This jerk couldn't wear jeans and a t-shirt, he had to drop two thousand bucks on authentic safari gear to help him suck down a quart of gin.

Like I said, the guy was sitting in a lawn chair, in the forward end of an air boat.  There were some local guides in the water up to their armpits, holding the boat still so they could get the film shot.  Those guys were wearing t-shirts and I kind of felt sorry for them.  They were probably lucky to have jobs and I bet they were thankful for it but as far as I could tell from the home movie, they had no responsibility other than holding both the camera and the boat while they stood in the water so that the drunk, khaki wearing Americano could show off his elephant gun and slosh a gin and tonic around.

His wife snuck into the film at one point, she had the same crap on, except she added a pastel blue scarf around her neck. She even had an elephant gun that matched her husbands elephant gun and it outweighed her by twenty pounds, but I don't think the guide trusted her with real bullets because she was leaning on the gun like it was a crutch.  She tucked her armpit into the stock of the gun and leans on it with one arm.   A beautiful three thousand dollar hand made rifle and she gets drunk and sticks the muzzle into an aluminum bottomed boat and leans on it, flailing her gin and tonic around in time to her husbands gin and tonic gyration.

There wasn't any audio in the film, but you didn't need any because my host makes me sit in a chair while he stands behind me to watch his home horror movie, pouring the same gin and tonic down the back of my shirt, narrating the film. The longer the film ran, the more excited he got.

The film starts...

“We spent seventy five hundred bucks just to get there! This is the real bush! I had to pay twenty guys to carry our luggage and let me tell you, those guys will steal the shirt right off of your back! I had to get one of our guides straightened out.  I fired his ass, Steve, you bet I did!"  At this point, my host's eyes sort of rolled back in his head as he relived the act of firing a guy who carried boxes on his back without shoes for fifty cents a day.  My host was a real humanitarian.

"He would have stolen the diamond tennis bracelet right off of Lucille's wrist if I let him, let me tell you and we are in the... Oh wait, look at this Steve, this is where we are. Just look at it!  That's me right there, Steve! There I am, right there!"  My host points emphatically at the screen with an empty glass.
"Mike.  Not Steve, Mike."
"Do you need a refill, Steve?  Are you a gin man?  Of course you are."

I am sixteen years old, trying to take his stepdaughter out in my car and get her pants off and he is feeding me gin.  He has me sitting on one of those three legged stools that you might have used in gradeschool while he stands right behind me. His head is right behind my head and he keeps breathing on my neck, putting his thumb and fingers on top of my melon to turn it back to the screen so I can properly view the film. He hits me in the ear with his elbow and gestures at the screen with his recently refreshed gin and tonic, pouring some down my front. Now it looks like I pissed myself, but it's not all gin.  Some of it is sweat. Really.
I asked “How long were you there? I mean how much luggage did you have that you need twenty guys to carry it?”

He didn't hear me. Froth is starting to fly off his mouth to mix in with the gin in my lap. “We just stumbled on this sumbitch right there! That was something, we were there, and it was hot! Hot! You don't know because you weren't there Steve, but it was hot! We were in that boat all day then I spotted him. Would you believe that I spotted him without binoculars Steve?” He loudly sucks some more gin out of his 16 ounce big gulp gin dispenser cup. “He was all alone and I spotted him! Just look at that big sumbitch! And let me tell you...these water buffalo are dangerous! They kill more people than lions! More than lions, Steve! More than lions!”
“Just call me Ishmael.” I don't think he hear me.
"Bottoms up Steve, lets refill now, because this is where it gets good.  Just look at 'im!  Isn't he something?". My host's heart is going to give out any second.  I start to wonder if his video camera is handy.  Maybe I can film this guy having a heart attack.

At this point, the film shows my new best gin drinking buddy, sitting in the air boat, with his gun out ready to shoot something. If he drank more, I might get lucky and he could take a chunk out of the bottom of the boat.  In the film, his wife brings him a new pitcher of gin, using her weapon as a crutch. The air boat is moving through two or three feet of water, barely moving, bumping up against a water buffalo. The water buffalo has his ass against a barbed wire fence and he is breathing really hard. It's obvious that the buffalo has run for as long as a buffalo can run. Maybe it ran for ten minutes, maybe it was ten hours, the film didn't show that part, but that thing that sticks in my mind is they ran that buffalo down with the air boat until it couldn't run any more. The buffalo was dropping its head while his sides heaved for air. He was completely out of energy. It couldn't hold its head up and it kept dipping its nostrils into the water. When it did that, it tried to breath and it choked. Some reflex caused it to jerk its head up so it could catch one more breath, then its head started to droop again. It just didn't have the energy to hold its head out of the water to breath.
“OK, now watch! Here it is!” He holds his breath, right behind my ear and watches himself pull up his elephant gun and puts a three inch hole through the buffalo's head.

Today I ran fourteen miles and I felt like the buffalo, but without the benefit of the merciful end. My new indian name is 'Merciless Water Buffalo'. I ran the first ten miles. The last four miles, a guy pushing a baby carriage passed me. Twice.
Yesterday I rode 85, today I ran 14, tomorrow I swim for an hour and a half.  Merciless Water Buffalo.

Welcome to The Twilight Zone

Monday through Thursday, my week is spent balancing opposing goals. I get up at 4:45, then I do just enough training before work to maintain some modest fitness level, then I do just enough work to keep from getting fired. Some of the lower sorts might refer to my plan as minimalist. They might be right. After work, I train again for a bit. I am usually still tired from the mornings workout, so I don't try to set the world on fire.

That leaves about twenty minutes a day to build little piles of stuff I need to work out the following day. I build a little pile of bike stuff, like bike shoes, helmet, gloves and a couple gels. I build another pile of running stuff, like shoes, socks, compression socks and a couple of gels. Lastly, I build a smaller pile of swim stuff. Its just my goggles and swim shorts. No gels. Honestly, that takes twenty minutes a day. Then I have two or three minutes to listen to my wife, then I fall asleep.  Some days, I look at my bike to see if I can bag out on the ride due to a mechanical. If it has a scratch, I call my training partners and tell them I am out of action for 2 weeks.

It's an incredibly interesting life I have carved out for myself.

Weekends are where the real training is done. Weekdays, you just workout as you can.  Weekends, you put in the effort and you put in the time.  A couple weeks ago, one of my training partners and I were doing a great job trying to fit a three hour ride into a four hour window by getting lost in Sumner. If you don't know where Sumner is, just ride West a bit and stop when you get lost. I can't describe it any better than that.

Anyway, we were limping along looking for a road that seemed familiar and things were sort of getting Twilight Zoney. We were making all the right navigational choices, but the planet kept changing the direction to home. We stopped to think it out, then we pointed the direction we thought home was and each of us pointed in a different direction. It was sort of an Abbott and Costello moment.

We rode for a bit more, then, still lost, we pulled off to the side of the road. We looked around and realized that we were sitting in the parking lot of a coffee shop, so we went in to ask directions. Had we realized what type of coffee shop it was, we probably wouldn't have gone in. I know I would have just kept on going, riding lost forever. But, we didn't know what kind of a place it was until we went inside and then it was too late. We had stumbled into one of those bikini barista coffee shops that I read about. I didn't know what to do.

First, it was obvious that we needed sustenance, so we ordered a couple mochas from one of the two girls working there. It was like six bucks total, so I gave them fifty bucks and told them to keep the change.  Before we bought the coffee, they seemed a little standoffish, but they were really nice after a forty four dollar tip.

We started to make small talk. We asked if they like working at a coffee shop, they said it was OK. We asked if they ever spilled hot coffee on their bare skin, one of the girls showed us a burn mark from she spilled hot coffee on her thigh. I was pretty interested in that. We talked about their tattoos. Both girls were happy to show us all their tattoos. Again, I was interested. We talked about lingerie. I didn't know that it was uncomfortable. Did you know that?  It sounds interesting, but now, I think I didn't need to know that. I just assumed girls like to wear lingerie.  Now I am sort of bummed that I know that.

So maybe an hour later, we ran out of small talk, and we had to get going anyway, but we still were lost. The girls couldn't help. They didn't know where we lived. They didn't seem to know where they lived.

Me:        “Where are we?”
Girl #1   “What?”
Me:        “Which way do I go to get home?”
Girl #1:    “I'm, uh, not really sure.”
Me:          “OK, if I wanted to get to Kent or Renton, which way would I go?”
Girl #1 Doesn't say anything, she just squeezes her eyebrows together and tilts her head like my dog does when the ambulance goes by.
Girl #2 Ignores me.
Me:         “Which way is North?”
Girl #1:    “Which way is mocha? You already have one. You are tooo funny!”
Me:         “OK. Which way do you come from when you come to work? Do you cross the bridge or do you come down 5^th avenue? Do you live someplace not here?”
Girl #1:     “Oh, I don't drive anymore. My boyfriend borrowed my car when he was arrested but he didn't do it.”
Me:          “He didn't do what?”
Girl #1:     “He didn't sell crack. He was just carrying.  The cops said he was selling.  That's not fair.  They can't do that, can they?”
Me:          “I need to leave.”
Girl #2:    “He gets out in June.”
Me:         "What?"
Girl #2;   "Her boyfriend is getting out in June, then they are getting married."
Me:         “That's great. He didn't do it huh? And married too?  That's really great."
Girl#1 and Girl #2:  They both smile.
Me:         "So, one more question. Where are we now?”
Girl #1:    “Do you like my nails? I just got new nails.  See, my name is spelled out on my nails.”

I still can't work out how you misspell 'Jill'.

Sardines and Seals

It seems to me that there comes a point in a training cycle that I am doing OK, putting in twelve to fifteen hours a week, everything is fine, but then I get a hangnail or something and free-fall off of the plan. Something doesn't go right, I have a bad day, get a boo-boo, whatever, and I just cant muscle up to go run or cant get up at 4:40 to go swim before work. Whatever it is, I just want to surrender and eat ice cream. Maybe you are mentally impervious to any kind of interruption to your training, but I am not. My mental toughness disappeared with the Reagan administration.

You know that drinking game that you played when you were twenty and trying to get horizontal with the girl who was pretty hot but super liberal and kept talking about saving some stupid seals on the ice in Nova Scotia? The drinking game was where you said which historical figure you would want to meet if you you could or what forest animal you would be if you had to choose one? OK, I was running and I got to thinking about it and so, if I had to do that now, I would meet Thomas Jefferson and I would be a deer. I don't really know why I want to meet Jefferson, I just feel obligated to have an answer to that question, but I know I would be a deer because deer always take the easy path. They never go over the mountain, the go around. I know this because if you go into the woods, the deer trail never goes straight up and straight down. The trail takes the longer path around. That's me, I take the easy trail. That's why I would be a deer. That and deer are pretty low on the food chain, sort of on par with sardines.

When I am doing my best imitation of Ironman training and things go south, I freak out and fall into that trap of getting overrun with emotional responses to pain. I forget the logic behind it all and head straight to the nearest fetal position. A little bit of pain and I start to become the deer, looking for the easiest way out. It's a huge metaphor, but its true.

I have used these all in the past 12 months;
'My foot hurts so I can't run'
'My legs are tired so I can't ride'
'I am just not feeling it today'
'I have to get my hair cut'
'I have to drive my wife to get her hair cut'.

 It's all the same. I have used them all. I ended up in that hole last weekend and I found a bunch of excuses I didn't know I owned. When my wife asked me why I took so long to run 10 miles on Saturday, I said 'I ran out of gas, I forgot to bring a gel'. On Sunday, when my riding partners asked me why I was riding so slow, I said 'I am gassed from my run yesterday'. They just picked me up off the ground, put me back on my bike, and rode away. I caught up with them the next day. I used bad words and called them bad names. They deserved it.

I was thinking about the hot liberal gal with the bad case of diarrhea mouth talking about the seals while I was running last Saturday and I realized that when I run, I go through transitional phases. My opinions change in a short time frame, based on my mood.

The first mile I thought, 'ya, I could save some seals. If they were cute, I would save a couple of seals'.
Mile five, I was thinking, 'screw the seals, let them take care of themselves.' It's a tough world and the sooner the seals learn it, the better.  I am actually doing them a favor.
Mile nine, I was looking for a club with a pointy tip to bash in their little baby seal skulls. I feel bad now, but last Saturday, I was trying really hard to come up with a profit plan involving dead seal pelts.

When I got home Saturday, I was too tired to reach over and grab the clicker, so I had to watch 'I Love Lucy' in Spanish. It was the one where they had to work in the candy factory and the candy came too fast and it falls off the end of the assembly line, then Lucy eats the candy to keep it from falling. It's funny in English, but for some reason, it's hilarious in Spanish. Maybe it's because they don't talk in that part, I don’t know, but it's dang funny. Anywho, to bring this bad boy home, my training is like that factory belt. It just keeps coming and coming. But that is Ironman. It's a big nut to crack.  If you want to wear the shirt, you gotta pay the price.

Opinions and Critiques

I was in Phoenix last week for work. I was suppose to be following my week eleven training calendar, but my employer decided it would be an incredibly funny joke on me to send me to Phoenix instead. It was nice, the high temp was 108 or some such number, but since I was in an air conditioned office for the duration, sitting at a desk staring at a laptop screen, I didn't get time to enjoy it. I was stuck inside and my workouts suffered.

I went to spin a couple times and I swam a couple times before work. That would be ok if I had a sprint or an olympic on the horizon. My goals are slightly higher and I need to train. I was sort of thinking my training buddies would pause their workouts in sympathy for my situation, but they decided to put in seven hours over the past weekend swimming and running and biking and playing grab-ass. I worked all week, then I worked over the weekend, then I sat in airplane next to an overweight gal who needed the seat belt extender and about one third of my seat in addition to her seat. Super. She did find room to knock down a giant size snickers bar and a regular size almond joy.  I feel sick just thinking about it.

At this point, I usually pause in my blog to recount what happened to me over the past few days regarding the young ladies who accosted me without invitation. I am not going to do that in this post. However, since most of the readers have come to expect these true stories, I feel bad that I don't have anything interesting to share for my past trip. It's not that I wasn't propositioned. I was, but it really wasn't that interesting.  The gal who tried to get me to break my wedding vow was a well built, highly flexible college junior with an overactive libido and a questionable sense of morality.  I mean, I just don't think I could do those things she was talking about without an oxygen mask and maybe a safety belt. I rebuked her so there isn't much to tell.  I do, however, want to share this one snippet:

I was on my way home, I had a sore throat from no sleep, my eyes were red and kept trying to shut on their own, I had a dirty baseball cap on and I needed to hawk up some nasty throat phlegm but in the interest of personal hygiene and in order to not get arrested, I didn't want to spit on the airport floor, so I swallowed it and my stomach tried to kick it back. I think I looked about as good as I felt. I went to the AlaskaAir check in gal, gave her my bag and twenty bucks, she promised to give the bag back in Seattle. I had to show her my drivers license, which she just glanced at. If I would have given her a high school ASB card, she wouldn't have noticed. I left her to care for my bag and went to security.

Next, I was 'pre-screened' by a gal with no gun, but she did have a walkie-talkie. She wanted to see my drivers license. She looked at it and gave it back. As I walked away, she noticed a gum wrapper on the ground and she grabbed it and put it in the waste can. I don't know what function she served but she seemed to take her job seriously. I felt like if I showed any sign of being a terrorist, she would have grabbed her walkie-talkie and hit me with it. Terrorism or littering, she was protecting America from both.

The next line that I waited in was to get another dose of non-lethal x-ray venom from the big machine that is suppose to catch me if I have a gun or a knife. Apparently I didn't bring one because they let me through. Anyway, this guy flags me for another look at my license. This is the third time today. He stared at it for like thirty seconds. That's weird. Then he looks up at me, and goes back to inspecting my license. Then he looked at me again and said, and I am completely serious here, he said 'nice smile'. Just like that. 'Nice smile'.

Now, call me whatever you want, but I have never had another guy tell me I have a nice smile. It's kind of weird, isn't it? I felt a bit taken aback. I had no response. What do I say? He slowly gave me back my license and I left. Should I have thanked him? I don't know what the etiquette is in situations like this. I don't want to lead him on, but I don't want to insult him either. I am vexed.

I get advice from lots of sources on my swim, my bike, my run. Everybody has an opinion. 'keep your elbow up', 'don't point your toes', ' don't run on your heels', and of course my favorite, 'don' be a scaredy'. None of it really helps. I don't need more bad advice. If somebody said 'carry a roll of nickels in your left hand and you will run 8 minute miles', that would be good advice. That would help.

I just realized, people give me advice that doesn't help. So, if you want to give me advice, fine, but it better be good.

Nice Bike Shorts

 A couple weeks ago I was in spin class in Scottsdale with a bunch on casual spinners who were trying a new workout routine:  they achieve fitness by looking like they workout but without expending any energy. You know the type. They have matching shirts and bike shorts, some of them have matching socks, they have a water bottle that they sip from but don't need because they don't get hot or sweat. Sometimes they have a hand towel with their initials embroidered on it by their girlfriend. If you didn't see them actually on a bike, they would generally pass the 9 iron test. If you don't know what that is, the 9 iron test means they look good from 100 yards away, but get up close and you see all the flaws.

If you compare that with the average 53 year old guy trying to drop weight and fight off a hangover, its night and day. My bike shorts and shirt never match. I wear decent bike shorts, but my shirt might have a piece of dinner on it from last night. I usually run through a full water bottle in a normal spin class and can put two bottles down in a hard spin class. I sweat enough for a family of four.

So anyway, I was in this class with a bunch of people way prettier than me, which, if truth be told isn't the first time that has happened. Then, the really really old instructor started yacking away about some sort of nonsense that didn't have anything to do with cycling but might save your life if you were in a trench in France, circa 1917. He said he was a Marine Sergeant so, as his logic worked, he must know a lot about cycling.  Plus, he really liked the sound of his own voice. He never stopped talking. I think he was in the manic phase for his particular malady. I was wondering if he was some sort of a idiot escapee from the local sanitarium. He was doing up/downs, shouting instructions to the class (he called the class 'his platoon', I shit you not) and he told everybody to spin like he was.  He said "OK Platoon, watch me and do exactly what I do", which would have been OK, but his butt was bouncing on his saddle so hard and so fast he sort of lost his balance and almost hit the deck. It was ugly.

It was at that point that I decided to just ride on my own for this class and not pay attention to the instructor. So far, so good. So I dropped into my triathlon position on my bike and started to ride for an hour at an 80-85% heart rate. That was my plan. It was about then that I noticed the person in front of me had the same idea. It was a woman and she dropped into the tri position and cycled a steady pace. Bozo the cycling instructor clown was having the class do gymnastics on the spin bike and, here is the weird part, except for my new best friend and myself, THEY WERE DOING IT. Lemmings.

So, in order to correctly describe my new best cycling/spinning friend on the bike right in front of me, I have to explain that I only saw her from my position directly behind her. Isn't that the way it always goes? Isn't that like life? We only see things from our own perspective. I think so. In this case, my perspective was from a tri position on a spin bike about 18 inches behind my new friend. If you don't yet realize it, that means my nose was 18 inches behind her bottom. It's not my fault. Somebody else put her bike in front of me. Maintenance staff maybe.  Perverts.

My friend wore Newtons, not bike shoes.  I deduced from that bit of information that she was a triathlete and was from out of town.  How did I figure that out?  Well, she was too good of a cyclist to not own spin shoes.  And, since she didn't have them, I assumed she didn't have room in her suitcase.  Sounds right.  Plus, Newtons are running shoes so, you add cycling and running, you get triathlon.

She was thin, but in a good way. I don't mean she was too thin, she wasn't. Maybe trim is a better term. She was athletic, well muscled, carrying about 8% body fat, I would guess. I didn't whip out a pair of epidermal calipers to measure, I just took a wild guess. 8%, maybe 7.  She was wearing these granite-gray bike shorts that had a little bit of a frill at the top.  The lycra/spandex material had a small snag right at the point where her bike seat hit her bike seat, if you get my meaning.  She had maybe snagged the shorts on a gym bag or something.  I wondered about where that snag had happened and exactly how it had happened.  My mind wanders a bit in spin class.  I mean, there we were,  two triathloners in spin class, working together for a common goal and both of us wondering how her bike shorts got a snag in such a critical area.  Well, I was wondering that.  I thought about getting off the bike and asking her if she was aware that her bike short snag was distracting me. I started to really feel a kinship with this girl.  We probably had a lot in common.

Anywho, I rode that spin bike for another 20 minutes in the tri position, sweating and thinking, thinking and sweating, riding right behind my new best friend. I named her Desdemona like you might name a pet.  I always liked that name.  Desdemona. Desdemona.  Desdemona's granite-gray bike shorts looked really good.

For the rest of class, there were two groups, first, there were 28 sheep doing the best they could to follow a neurotic, escapee ex-Marine with terrible cycling form and then there was Desdemona and I, riding to our own tune. I was happy as a clam at high tide.  

At the end of the class, I was going to say something to Desdemona, like “nice job” or “you ride well”. But that would have been dishonest. I wasn't thinking that.  If I said anything, it would have been something honest.  Something from the heart.  Something like “nice ass.”

Is that wrong?

Calendar Blues in G flat.

I think most guys and gals training for Ironman use some sort of a training calendar. I have a free one that my training partner found or stole and was kind enough to share with me. Its pretty basic; Tuesday run an hour, Wednesday swim an hour, Thursday bike and so on. I guess I am pretty happy with it. I used it in my last Ironman and it worked out OK so it must be good. My only complaint is that there aren't many days off in this calendar and I end up inserting some when I get tired or I feel like it.

The problem with training calendars is that they don't issue directives on effort and anticipated result. Maybe its wrong but I feel like the calendar should give me a pointer or two on how much effort I should put out. For instance, I biked 4 hours today, its my long ride for the week and I rode in a group of four. We climbed 3500 feet in 60 miles, most of the ride was pretty chitty chatty, running at a slowish pace, then throw in five or six hills just to keep it interesting. It was a good ride, not a huge effort but not a cake walk either.

So my question is this: Was that the right thing to do? Should I have pushed harder? Everybody in the group could have gone a lot harder. Should we go 100% all the time? Or, should we just put in hours and slow down when our legs start to burn? Or, should we just ride a flat ride at an easy pace then go to dairy queen and order the whole ice-cream menu? The bigger question is, how do we maximize our return-on-investent in preparation for IM Arizona?

When I swim with the gang, we do send offs. Send offs suck. I don't know why we do them but one of the guys I train with seems to think they are a good idea so we do them. We didn't vote on that. If you don't know, send offs are timed distances in a pool. Sometimes we do 30 second 25's. That means we swim 25 yards as fast or as slow as we want to, but you have to start the next 25 yard swim in 30 seconds. So the fast guys (not me) finish in 20 seconds, then they get 10 seconds of rest. They never get tired. Losers. I go as fast as I can, I finish in 27 seconds, turn around and I hear one of the other guys say 'go'. Off we go.

Or we do 4 minute 200's, but its the same deal. The fast guys finish in 3 minutes, they rest and scratch their junk and wait for me to finish, I finish in 3 minutes and 55 seconds, turn around and go again. You get the idea. The thing is, that is all we do. We do send offs. So think about it, our swim workout is essentially sprints with short rests between. My heart rate wanders between 75-99%. Our bike rides are the opposite, they are long distance constant hart rate deals somewhere in the 80-85% range when we are working hard, or 50% the rest of the time. Somebody needs to rethink that. One way or the other is better. We should do that.

I almost forgot, I was riding this morning and I tried to take a corner too fast without stopping pedaling. My pedal clipped the ground, it lifted my rear tire off the ground an it skewed my path into the weeds. I was OK, but it just reminded me that my bike skills are only second to my skills as an astronaut.

Then, a couple hours into the ride I hit a super bumpy section of road. My water bottle came off and almost took out the guy behind me. I'm pretty amazing on a bike.

The only girl I saw on the ride was sitting in a ditch, her bike about 10 feet away. She and I ride alike,