Casablanca

This post is about two real miracles that I have personally witnessed in the last two days.  Since these are the first real live miracles I have  ever seen, I thought it was worth a mention.

Miracle #1

Today I witnessed a miracle. It wasn't a major miracle, like raising the dead or turning wine into water, nor was it a minor miracle, like the '69 Mets. What I saw, what I participated in, what I caused to happen was a middle miracle. It was an unexplainable event. It was a once in a lifetime, never gonna happen again miracle. As I type this, I still can't believe it, but its true.

Here is what happened. Last night, I was working on my bike in the garage, cleaning this and fiddling with that, just passing time doing something that I like doing. I hadn't cleaned my bike since the half iron in Hawaii, so it was kind of a mess. There were race stickers on it, tri bike transport stickers on it, dried up spit and sweat and chocolate goo gel on it and some black chain grease. Typical bike mess after a race, so I cleaned and washed and adjusted and generally fiddled with it for two hours. I had the radio playing seventy's hair-band music and a half full glass of wine on the work bench.  I was in the zone.

I had thirty to forty tools at the ready, two of which saw action.  Some were in my pocket, a couple of screwdrivers were on the floor, I think the big hammer was on the workbench.   Speaking of the workbench, since it is usually cluttered with partially repaired projects from last year, I use the rear bumper of my truck as a tool bench. I set my tools on it when they are between use and sometimes I forget to gather them all up when I am done. That's what happened last night; I left my twenty five dollar super-neat hex wrench set sitting on the bumper when I finished with the bike. I forgot about it and went to bed.

Today, I got up, showered, shaved and shined, jumped in the truck and drove forty two highway miles, stop and go, over potholes and speed bumps, parked and went in the office. At lunch time, I drove to get a salad at a bad restaurant with a history of health code violations about three miles from my office, then I saw it; My super-neat hex wrench set was sitting on the bumper. That's it. That's the miracle.  That wrench set just stayed there, defying Newton's law of inertia.  How did that wrench set stay on the bumper and not fall off? I don't know but the phone is ringing and I think it is MGM calling about a movie deal. If I get to name the movie, I might call it “Miracle Hex Wrench Set”. Or “Casablanca” maybe.

Miracle #2

I have several friends that just finished Ironman Coeur d'Alene yesterday, which is a really big deal, but that isn't the miracle. My friends are all really good athletes, very fit, carrying at most ten percent body fat and a large portion of type A personality traits and they all have a good training program with oodles of time to get ready for the event. It isn't a surprise that they finished. I don't mean to demean their efforts. Ironman is hard. Its really hard. Finishing an Ironman requires incredible endurance, both mental and physical. It requires commitment. And money. When you are in an Ironman, if you have an hour of feeling good, I guarantee you will have an hour of feeling bad right after. All my friends were able to overcome their personal demons and emerge victorious. Congrats. It's a big deal, but a miracle? No.

The miracle I am talking about is that other group of participants. You know who I am talking about. They are a little heavy. A few are a lot heavy. They didn't prepare, or they didn't prepare enough. They didn't have a contingency plan, or if they did, it wasn't good enough to get them through unscathed. My bride and I were watching the live video feed direct from the swim finish in CDA.  The first 90% of the athletes that finished the swim came out of the water in good shape.  They had a good finish time, they looked fresh and ready to attack the rest of the day.  The other 10% didn't look good.  They came out of the water disoriented and physically beaten, and that was just the start of their day.  That's the miracle.  That last 10%.

Remember, its a process, not a destination. It's a process.  This whole Ironman thing is a process.

I have the Lake Stevens half iron in forty seven days. Last Saturday I was trying to home bake an Olympic as a training day.  The plan called for my daughter and I to swim a mile, ride thirty and run six.  Sounds good, right?  It seemed like a good workout, not too hard, but still challenging enough to count as a real bric.  The swim was fine, we had fun.  We got on our bikes in the sunshine and started heading west.  West towards the storm   Five minutes later, it was like we were in the Amazon in the rainy season.  I saw a pair of raccoons trying to get in a boat.   We cut the ride short and started our run.  

It's amazing how few miles you can go in a four hour workout when you set your mind to it.

Doctor Lisa at Kona - A Race Report

We are renting a house on a hill with a vast view of the ocean.  From our viewpoint, we can see the cruise ships and fishing boats come and go, we can see the parasailers take flight, and most importantly, we can see the slow, majestic sunsets of the Pacific.  It is almost as though the view was built just for my small group of traveling companions and is ours for the keeping. 

A palm tree sits center court, and the question of the tree's impact on the view, whether it blocks or enhances our view is a matter of opinion.  I tend to think the tree is a boon, offering some small piece of shade to those who are lucky enough to sit underneath it and framing and enhancing the view of those who look through it.  A busy bird flits from one palm flower to the next, gathering his nectar, working in the cool of the morning and the heat of the evening.  That bird works like a miner in a coal mine while my travelling companions and I eat and drink and talk of things both Ironman and non-Ironman.  The palm just waves at us, it's leaves riding the cool breeze that never stops.

Inspiration, a smattering of training and five thousand dollars brought us to this place where we find what we will. Some travelers find a life here and refuse to leave, others stay for a short time and leave only under duress, but we all find something.  What I find here hasn't been decided yet, but I feel it is only fair to relate that I am perusing the real estate ads.

Our image of ourselves isn't the same as how the world views us. Others may not see me this way, but I always thought I should try to be a poor man's version of Craig Alexander. I swim, Craig swims, I bike, so does Craig, I cramp when I run, Craig cramped on TV when he won the world championship in 2011. I finished the 2014 half in Hawaii in 8:03, Craig won 2011 world championship in Hawaii in ….drum roll....8:03. Look it up. We are two peas in a pod. Oh, one more little facet to our relationship. I beat Craig in the half yesterday (sort of). Again, look it up.

Swimming in Hawaii and swimming in Lake Sawyer have a lot in common. Both are wet. And both are..., well, that's about it. After the last few days, I think I am spoiled for swimming for the rest of my life. I just cant see pulling on my cruddy torn up wetsuit, jumping in the cruddy cold lake and swimming in Lake Sawyer any more. The swim fun-o-meter is now skewed beyond repair and all non-Kona swims will pale in comparison.

I would have had a better swim in yesterday's half except I slowed down to take a look at some pretty coral. I was clipping along, hitting a guy in the back of the head who seemed to like the place I was swimming more than he liked his own when I saw the coral. It was mostly brown and gray but had a lot of rainbow pink and yellow in it so I had to spend a few seconds gazing. I didn't stop, but I slowed to a crawl to view the view. There were 1600 swimmers beating the surface of the sea so we scared most of the fish away, but the coral was pretty. It only cost me thirty seconds and if you do the Hawaii half, I strongly suggest it. It was the high point of my day.

I had one cramp on the swim which I muscled through, came out of the water feeling great but I cramped a bit while trying to stand up in the surf, I ran to the hoses that hang down and rinsed off by sticking the hose over my head then down my pants, I rushed to put on almost all my bike gear in T1, and hit the Queen K. The Queen K is to tri bike riding what Wrigley field is to baseball. Wrigley and the Queen K are the cat's meow. Wrigley and the Queen K are the Alpha and the Omega. Yankee Stadium be dammed. Tour of France can stick it.

I can hear the complaints now. Half of you are yelling “Blasphemer” and the other half “Infidel”, but just calm down and be zen for a second. You need to ride the Queen K to get it. The wind gusts front, back and sideways simultaneously. You can't ride it on a road bike, or maybe more accurately, you need to ride it on a tri bike to really get properly afraid. Your bike jumps left and right under you like an African gazelle right before the lion eats it. I spent the first twenty minutes of the ride looking at my tires to see if they were flat.

The Queen K has wide shoulders and is super smooth, lots of room to safely pass or be passed, very little road garbage and nobody ever wins there. If you want to go watch your favorite baseball team blow up just three games short of the playoffs, go to Wrigley. If you want to watch a bunch of triathletes wither in the sun, go watch a bike race on the Queen K. They all start strong. They all put in a good effort in the first half. But then, just as world domination seems to be within reach, they fade. The Cubs and the triathletes - they fade in the home stretch at Wrigley and the Queen K.

One minute, I found myself going 28 mph uphill without peddling. Divine intervention and a stout tailwind helped. I was thinking course record. Thirty seconds later, I saw 8 mph and a 95% heart rate. My divine intervention abandoned me and was intervening on behalf of a more worthy recipient.

There is a small hill called Hawi or the climb to Hawi that needed to be assaulted and mastered. As hills go, it's a just hump in the road. We train on bigger hills on our Tuesday rides. So what was wrong with me that I was so freakin' tired? Maybe the gusting 90 degree side wind had a little bit to do with it. Maybe the 102 degrees was sucking the life right out of me.

I usually drink one water bottle per hour.  On the Queen K I was going through two to three per hour and two salt tabs per bottle.  It wasn't enough.  I was sloshing water around in my stomach like a washing machine and it wasn't near enough.  

We turned around somewhere short of Hawi and started downhill. I turned up the go-fast knob and saw 42mph while the lesser beings fell before me like wheat to the scythe. I was invincible. Then I got tired and had to pull over because I got a cramp. All of those lesser beings that I flew by passed me back. I think one guy flipped me off.  I limped into T2 tired but happy.

I really have no comment about the run because I am not a runner. I can run, I just choose not to. I don't do anything that I am the worst at. When I was in gradeschool, some kids would play football at recess, some would play basketball. I played football because I was the worst basketball player in school.

I do have comments about the walk. The walk was hot and really hard. I cramped every time a runner passed me. Some of the runners were limping and I would feel guilty as they passed me so I tried to run and it made me cramp so I walked again. I was cramping everywhere and didn't know how long I could fake my way through the event. I wanted to cry but no liquid was available for tears. I had only sand and some cartilage that wore off of my kneecaps.

I was still drinking a lot of water, but I wanted to throw up so I didn't get as much as I needed.  I knew what was happening to me but I couldn't do anything to stop it.  It was like watching the proverbial car wreck that you can't look away from.  My countdown clock was ticking.  I had three miles to go, so I made a deal with my stomach.  I promised to limit my drinking to three cups of water per water stop if my stomach promised to keep moving the water in one direction only.  No backwards plumbing allowed.  Then I had two miles to go, two cups of water per water stop.  One mile to go, one cup of water per stop.  I gagged at the thought of drinking more water.  I could barely get that last cup down.  I started to get chilled and sweaty at the same time.  

My favorite author of all time is Mitchener. If you haven't had the pleasure, you should know that when you read Mitchener, you get it all. You get a little bit of history, a good mix of fact and fiction, an interesting discussion of political and economic influences into how and why things are the way they are. Mostly, with Mitchener, you get a guy who perfected his craft. He described the world around him from a higher viewpoint that most of us have and we are all the richer for it. One of his literary devices was to insert seemingly innocuous characters into his story, slowly building the parts they played until they become interesting and in fact central to the theme. So, with that in mind, I have decided that the only recurring character in my blog, other than myself, would be the medical tent. For most triathletes, the medical tent is the thing you have to detour around to get to your car after the event. For me, it is my best friend.  As soon as I figure out how to put the medical tent on my Christmas card list, I am going to do it. 

I found myself in the medical tent being attended to by a young lady who was new to her profession. I saw that her handwritten name tag said 'Lisa' with a smiley face to dot the 'I', so to be polite and strike up a conversation, I asked her how long she had been a nurse, she smiled and nodded vigorously and said 'Not yet'. Then she told me her school project was to help old people as they transitioned to their final resting place while she was poking me in the arm with the wrong end of a needle. The first couple jabs were bunts that didn't bring the runner home so she just kept stabbing until she hit bone. Somewhere in there Lisa must have hit paydirt and got an IV in my arm fairly close to the vein. Good enough. Both Lisa and I opened our eyes at the same time.  Oh, and one more thing I learned, Lisa is going to Junior prom with Derek and has a new dress and Derek promised he will be released on good behavior a week before prom.

It was the strangest thing ever to see all the leg muscles I own contract and release as fast as they could. I think the right leg won, but honestly it was close. Both left and right legs put on a show. The various doctors, nurses and veterinary personnel in the medical tent were all were looking at me and pointing. They shook their collective heads and whispered under their breath. “Stupid bastard, he's not smart enough to stay home where he can't hurt himself. And think how his poor wife must feel, being married to ...that. Tsk tsk. I'll bet she has to hide the sharp knives.  It's so sad.”

About five minutes after young Eva Braun attached a second bag of brake fluid to my arm, a real nurse came by and asked how I was, I said all was well except the muscles in my neck were cramping now. She asked if I was having a heart attack. I said 'No, but Lisa is my doctor, you should ask her.' They did and Lisa pronounced me well enough to leave the medical tent.  All the nurses offered condolences to my wife and wished her well.

All kidding aside, if you find yourself in need of a quick tune up after the race, the volunteers do great work in the medical tent. Ask for Lisa as long as it isn't prom night.

The distance between the medical tent and the shuttle bus is accurately measured at six hundred thirty seven steps, each one less painful than the one before it.  The pain fades away with each step.  

Now, the day after the event, all that was wrong is now right.  I am sitting upright without assistance. Lisa is still writing "Derek loves Lisa" on admittance forms but now she dots the 'I' with a heart instead of a smiley face.  The busy bird still tends his flock of flowers in the palm tree that hinders my view.  

The many-fingered leaves of the palm wave just for me, riding the easy evening breeze, telling me all is well.   

The sun repeats its inevitable fall to the sea, yielding the sky to stars and moon and flying creatures of the night. It is my hope and belief that, no matter where we find ourselves, we should all experience the Kona breeze that cools bodies, soothes frayed nerves and makes me forget my blistered feet.