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.