Cupcakes

From the first battle ever waged on planet Earth, in which a man's wealth and family were stolen shortly after a shard of obsidian was lodged in his head by his brother, to modern smart bombs that simultaneously place a lot of small rocks in a lot of heads, the goal has been the same, the only thing that has changed is the date and the distance between combatants. Right and wrong are still the emotional baggage we incorrectly ascribe to battle contestants. We justify the deed. Battles have been fought and won, or fought and lost, then heros and villains created out of the residue. The rightness of the battle is opened up for debate as we claim the title of hero for ourselves.

The great legions of Rome fought for many reasons; They fought for the glory of the city/state, they fought to feed themselves and protect their families, they fought to preserve a way of life. The fact that entire societies lost their collective lives in the process isn't really the point. The Romans fought for their own reasons and as long as they maintained the preeminence of the empire, they didn’t need to justify their reasons. History tells us that they succeeded for thousands of years, only failing in the end as a result of internal strife. Failure came from an unexpected direction, but it did come.

The Aztecs, the Incas and other less well known societies of the Americas achieved similar status by virtue of committing battle upon their neighbors and they achieved a similar fate, failing in the end. In their time, they were masters of their domain, inflicting their will upon all. When failure came, it was as unexpected as it was complete.

Such is the plight of man; To rise up, to fight and in the end to fail. The narrative is the same, a lack of originality being the only valid criticism of the human drive to conduct battle and dominate our competitors and our surroundings. The glory of the struggle is no less grand because another's battle predated our own.

Is it fair to ascribe a similar view to the pursuit of Ironman? I must honestly admit to the possibility that it's a little overblown to do so, but now, as we wing towards Kona, I feel the same sense of anticipation that the perhaps the Greek Hoplite felt before he took up spear and shield to defend his home and behead his neighbor. I feel a sense of purpose that comes only to those who achieve, or try to. While there isn't a long history of Ironman events ending in doom for the participants, we find ourselves waging war of a kind. We fight our personal fight for our own reasons and we justify the reasons for it only to ourselves. Our weapons are now a fast bike and a good pair of running shoes, but make no mistake, they are the weapons we use in the war we chose.

History is full of stories of battles fought and won, while little was written of battles lost. As the saying goes, the vanquished do not write history. Never was this more true than today in the airport. A fellow Kona half participant told me her story of perseverance in the face of certain doom two years ago at Ironman Coeur d' Alene. She barely escaped with her life, or so went her story that she related to me. It was inspirational. And long. And I wanted her to stop. I know the swim was hard. I was there. You don't have to tell me how hard it was, I know how hard it was, I had a really nasty rash where my wetsuit rubbed against my neck for crying out loud.

For her, the battle was the swim. She said that since she is a 'skinny girl', she had no body fat to protect her core temperature, and she was therefore disadvantaged in the swim. Boo Hoo. Eat some cupcakes. I was prepared for the cold swim. I spent the better part of my life eating plenty of cupcakes so that I could maintain a decent core temperature. Of course, she rallied and was able to push her bulimic one hundred seven pound frame to a four hour run and kicked my Ironman Coeur d'Alene finish time to the curb. What a whiner.

This brings me to my free advice that I offer to all interested: Don’t believe all the IM stories you hear. If triathletes have one thing in common its that they are all liars. Big. Fat. Liars. Except me. I blog and if its in a blog, its true. It must be. They wouldn't allow me to put it on the internet if it wasn’t true. Every word I write is a true and honest recitation of events just as they happened. Trust me.

Like the Romans, the Incas and the Aztecs, we find Ironman victory, or in my case, Ironman participation, to be glorious. Glorious and fleeting. In the end, we all fail. In the end, failure follows victory like night follows day. Knowing the difference between the two is where real heros find their true worth.

Sanctuarium

The books say you should taper a week or two before your event, but this is ridiculous.  I am taking the taper thing to heart and essentially stopped training a week ago.  Today I swam my last lake swim before Kona.  I went a little over a mile.  The closest I have come to a bike in the past two weeks has been a spin bike.  I don't run anymore.  I am going to try to run in Kona, but if that doesn't work out, my professional triathlon career might be over.  So that you don't think I am a complete fraud, I have to admit that I did go to yoga last week.  Twice.

If you haven't done it before, here is some free advice: Swimming alone in a big lake is more of a mental challenge than a physical one. You have lots of time to think about work, or mowing the lawn or getting your oil changed.  Sometimes when I am close enough to shore to see the bottom, I look for treasure or dead bodies. Staying focused is tough to do.  Today I was trying to fix my rather poor technique while I swam.  I usually think about one or two things to fix, like keeping my head down, pull all the way through, yadda yadda yadda, I have so many holes in my technique, its hard to choose just one thing to work on.  I considered working on my dog paddle technique, but I am a little too close to Kona to downshift that far.

When I swim, I usually keep an eye on who else is out there so that I don't get run over a speedboat, but today the lake traffic was pretty slow.  There were a couple guys in an old leaky rowboat down in the corner of the lake doing a poor imitation of fishermen and that was about it.  The lake was calm and flat and I was in my own little world swimming along minding my own business when out of nowhere a lady in a bright yellow kayak almost hit me with her paddle.  There is the rowboat and me and the lady in the bright yellow kayak on a lake seven square miles big and she attacks me with her paddle. How is this my fault?  I was there first.

I wanted to say something witty and several snarky remarks presented themselves for consideration, but she must have realized how wrong she was because she looked at me and smiled a big, perfect Pepsodent smile and said 'Nice stroke'.  Hmmm, this is now a completely different situation that it first seemed.  Hot girl, bright yellow kayak, recognizes a superior swimmer when she sees one, friendly with bright white incisors.  Now I get it.  The situation is completely obvious.  I said 'Sorry, I'm married' and swam home.

I am a list maker by avocation. Some people make bread, others knit, some people make chairs and tables. I make lists. If I could be so bold, I don't know anybody as good as I am at list making. My lists are both functional and aesthetically pleasing. My lists are near perfect.

The Kona Half Iron is just days away, which means it is time to start going through my checklists and making sure I have all my stuff ready to go. The first checklist I use is the equipment list, which in my case is a color-coded list with headings and indentation, an index and footnotes, broken into five parts. The titles of the five sections are Swim, Bike, Run, Nutrition and Hydration, and Other. I would be willing to share my equipment list with interested parties, for a nominal fee. The second appendix alone is worth the price, it's that good.

Here is the Cliffs Notes version.

Swim – goggles, tri suit and my lucky ankle strap. I don't need my wetsuit and I get a swim cap in Kona.

Bike – bike, shoes, helmet, gloves, glasses, socks.

Run – race belt and shoes and fresh socks.

Nutrition – salt tabs and I like a pbj in my special needs bag and I am going to pick up some Boost in Kona.

Other – bag balm. I use lots of bag balm. I put that stuff everywhere.

I have another list, my 'Get Your Head Right' list that I read just before race time. Strictly speaking it isn't a list at all, but a two page dissertation meant to inspire me as well as serve as a reminder to use lots of bag balm. You can't forget the bag balm.

I was trying to augment my Get Your Head Right list with a little more detail so I was searching around for some inspirational quotes when I sort of stumbled onto this sanctuary thing. To start with, I read that the word sanctuary is derived from the Latin 'sanctuarium'. So that's good.

According to legend, sanctuary was a place of safety that was available centuries ago, sometimes in churches, to travelers and those in need. I don't know if that's myth or fact, but I was noodling that around and I think I have a new race plan for Ironman events. I am going to do the best I can and then if I hit the wall, or more accurately, when I hit the wall, I am going to head to a nearby church for some R and R. Instead of finishing the run, I am going to have my feet up somewhere watching SportsCenter. I might catch a few Z's. Anyway, that's my race plan from here on out.

Five days seventeen hours before the gun.  Kona here I come.

John Wayne

About twenty years ago a friend and I were having a beer and talking about sports or politics or whatever and somehow the conversation drifted into the different foods that we grew up with. My family was middle America white bread and mayo, which means I can still get the same crappy food I grew up with if I just dash down to the Safeway, but my buddy grew up on the south side of Chicago and I guess they do things a little differently there. One of the foods that he had tried when he was a kid was haggis, which he said was a real treat if you hate good food. To make haggis, he told me you take a sheep liver, sheep heart and a sheep tongue and chop them up, mix in some suet and some oats, then put it in a sheep stomach and boil the whole thing for six hours. Yummy.

I don't want to make too big a deal out of it, but that conversation and the idea of eating some freshly made haggis has stayed with me all these years and it comes down to this; I need to eat some haggis. I cant stop thinking about it. My buddy said its hard to find good haggis unless you have a friend who's Grandma makes it fresh, and since I don't know anybody who has haggis for Sunday dinner, I am in sort of a bind. So I looked around and called a couple of the local restaurants and was surprised to find that haggis is something that you can't get in my zip code, so I am working on a plan to travel to Scotland to get some fresh yummy haggis. While I am there, I might wander around and see if a triathon pops up.

That whole thought process is sort of how I ended up committing to do the Kona half. They don't have haggis there, but still, a buddy and I were having a glass of wine and talking about sports or politics or whatever and somehow the conversation wandered into the best vacation places in the world. After talking it over, we agreed that the best thing we could do would be to go lay on the beach in Hawaii and drink a bunch of icy cold fruity drinks with the little umbrellas in them that were delivered by a saucy cocktail waitress on the beach in Hawaii. While we are there, if a triathlon wandered across our path, we might join in.

That is how I make the major decisions in my life. I find some small, inconsequential thing I want, like haggis, or laying on the beach and drinking icy drinks brought by a saucy cocktail waitress, then I spend five thousand dollars to make it happen. It's my haggis method.

For the past ten days, I have been having an emotional strikeout. It went like this –

Strike One - This one is job related.  Every six weeks, my employer requires I be 'oncall', which means I cant go anywhere without my phone, and that means I can't swim for a week.  I don't have a waterproof phone.

Strike Two -  I had to ship my bike to Kona, so I can't ride. No bike, no ride.

Strike Three - This was when I tried to run, I didn't make it ten feet. I had knee issues. My knee hates me and I hate it. I hate it so very,very much. My knee hurt so bad I was considering my triathlon future, or lack thereof. I know other people have a tougher road to travel than I do, but still, I was depressed. I honestly stared at the wall for an entire day. I wasn't suicidal, but you could have tempted me to go there with a twinkie.

All of that is behind me. Today I ran and I made it two miles before I had to sit and rub my knee and sniffle. Yaaaaa for me! It might seem like a junior varsity effort to you, but to me it's the world.  The swelling should go down tonight. Tomorrow at the latest.

My wife took my dog to the vet and got some pills because he is limping.  I don't know what is wrong with him, other than he is a little overweight and he runs too much and his knee hurts.  Wait,do dogs have knees?  I don't know but he is limping for the past few weeks.  His knee hurts so bad he can barely rustle up the energy to tip the garbage can over on the kitchen floor to sort the coffee grounds out from the meat scraps.  My wife took pity on the poor creature and took him to the vet and now he gets some doggy knee pills.  I get to sweep up the coffee grounds. 

I used to think John Wayne and I traveled the same path and were metaphysically bound together for eternity.  He made movies, I like movies.  I wanted to be a cowboy, he was a cowboy.  He was rich, I like money too.  We were exactly the same person.  But now he is dead so I don't want to be metaphysically bound to him any more.  As I write this, it occurs to me that my dog and I are more closely suited to each other than John Wayne and I.  And that is Strike Four.

Mother's Day

I have twenty days before my half-Iron event in Kona. If I stay on my calendar, the next week should be my best week of training. If things go right, I would run my longest runs, ride my longest rides and swim my longest swims. And if the stars are aligned just so, I would feel strong while I did it. That is the plan anyway.

Yesterday, I started my run, made it about a hundred yards when my knee started screaming. I walked fifty yards to let it warm up, then started to run again. Two steps into my run, it started to hurt again. I walked another thirty yards then tried to run. Same result. I turned around and walked home. Total workout time, three minutes, thirty seconds, including the time it took to put my shoes on. I wanted to cry like a schoolgirl.

I knew a guy at work who's desk was about twenty feet from my desk so we chatted everyday and I got to know him well. He was about seventy or seventy five years old when I knew him and all things considered, he was in pretty good shape.  He started work at five and did a full days work, but when he climbed the stairs, he had to stop half way up to catch his breath. We had an elevator three giant steps from the stairs, but he never used it even though it was hard for him to climb the stairs. I liked him for that.

He told me once he was financially secure, and he didn't need to work for the money. I asked him why he didn't retire, then he told me he just liked coming to work. I said I understood what he was talking about, but I was lying.  I didn't understand at all. If it was me, I would have just quit coming to work. I didn't understand why he didn't golf or garden or whatever it was he liked to do.  I could think of a thousand things I would rather do instead of go to work.  I didn't understand then, but I do now. I get it. Work was what he did to live. He came to work because without it, he wouldn't know who or what he was. Work defined him.  We all have something that defines us. Without it, I think we are lost.

When I couldn't run yesterday, a great realization fell on me and I almost staggered under the weight of it. For the past four or five years of my life, Ironman has defined me. When I get up in the morning, I am planning my workouts, when I go to bed at night, I am tending to my aches and pains from my workouts.  In between, training is pretty much all I think about. I work to pay the bills, but that is not who I am. 

I am not sure what to do. Working towards some goal associated with Ironman is what I do.  My knee isn't getting any better.  I think it is getting worse every week.  With my knee keeping me from running, I feel lost.  If I can't run, I can't do Ironman.  These are hard days.

There is a thermometer hanging on my dock thirty feet from shore and it says the water temp is 63 degrees. 63 is reasonable to swim in with a wet suit so I told all my buddies that we were swimming a Mother's Day swim this morning. A few of them believed me and they showed up. We swam a little over a mile.

The thing is, while it may be 63 degrees at my dock, if you swim ten feet past that, its a tad colder. I put my face in the water to start swimming and almost blacked out, it was that cold. I might need to call upon medical services to disengage my frostbitten toes and fingers.