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.