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.
