Shrinkage - A Race Report

 ---Preamble---

I read part of a text book in college once for an anthropology class, or maybe I just read the Cliffs Notes, I don't remember which. The class was about dead people from other cultures, or at least I think that was what it was about.  I'm not sure what it was about because I hated that class, and if possible, that class hated me in return.  In the end, it was a big waste of my time and since I had to buy the book, it was an even bigger waste of my money.  So anyway, I signed up for the class on a dare and one thing led to another and it turns out that I was too busy to attend the lectures.  Or take the quizzes.  I am like fifty percent sure I took the final, but its been a while and now that I think about it, I might have skipped that too.  

Usually, when a class, or the topic of the class was interesting, I would spend some effort and zero in on some part and I would actually learn something.  For instance, I thought econ was worthwhile.  Lots of interesting stuff there in econ.  But that anthropology class?  No.  That anthro class just blew chunks.  That class was completely useless, except for this one thing: There was this one chapter that just seemed spot on.  I found myself nodding in agreement as I read that chapter because it seemed to be written about me. Basically, it said that humans will or maybe just men will, in times of stress, revert to their inner caveman and show the most uncouth side of themselves to the world, and by extension, when we men do exhibit this self-degradation, we describe and define the human race in its most basic, unattractive terms. According to the book, this behavior manifests itself in three ways; First, we mark our territory like a dog, peeing on grass and bushes and just a wee bit on ourselves. Second, much like a male peacock will fluff up his tail feathers to impress a female peacock, we men strut around and flex our biceps (in my case, I flex my somewhat atrophied and floppy biceps) hoping to attract a female peacock. Last, during these expressions of cavemanism, we cook meat. We stomp around the campfire, or the gas grill, burning sirloin and fingers in the flames, drinking beer and shouting obscenities at the moon and the neighbors. I have been accused of such behavior and while I deny all, I have to admit to being burdened with a semi-functional memory, so who knows for sure? Maybe I did do it.

I have a laundry-list of attributes, some good, some bad, and while I might think most of these traits are nothing more than a footnote in the official 'How to be a Self-Actualized Person' manual, they can be much more than that, more definitive, more foundational to my auto-biographical description of what I am, and thus, what we all are. Humans can be both giving and greedy, insightful and dull, good and bad. These attributes are truly human attributes; We were born this way so maybe we shouldn't judge ourselves too harshly.

All the math majors out there might decide, in their misguided quest for a unified theory of the universe, to allocate an integer to each trait, either positive or negative according to the perceived relative value of each trait, then add up the numbers and decree that the resulting value is the ultimate definition of human worth. Sadly, at least for the math majors, many of these traits can't be quantified, they can't be understood rationally, they can't be listed in a spreadsheet for analysis by you or I. But maybe, just maybe, they can be generalized and it is in that generalization that we find our single, human-defining trait. More to the point, once that single trait is identified, it is in the resulting acceptance of that fact that we finally are able to empirically verbalize our most human attribute, which is that we are 'self-aware.' It is the very fact that we are self-aware that makes us human, and it is the fact that we are human that makes us self-aware. And therein lies the problem.  We humans are the ultimate recursion.

Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species' teaches that mutations are random and those mutations sort themselves out over time. The mutations that lead to more successful hunting, or a better way to run from danger or the ability to procreate faster and more successfully are passed on to the next generation. Those mutations that offer no advantage in the pursuit of these activities will, given enough time, be deleted from the gene pool.

Self-awareness is the only human trait that has been passed on from parent to child but offers little to the continuity of the species. It's an aberration, like T-Rex; Rex was a big deal at one time, walking the earth at the top of the food chain, eating dogs and cats and mastodons and such, but he couldn't adapt: Rex was ultimately doomed, destined for extinction because his hands were too small to hold a semi-automatic weapon. Poor T-Rex, the NRA shunned him and he couldn't live with the shame.

In the end, self-awareness serves no function, it lends no advantage in the Darwinian model, and therefore will eventually just cease to be. Maybe ten years from now, maybe ten centuries from now, or maybe ten thousand centuries from now, the human species will still walk the earth, perhaps still at the top of the food chain, perhaps at the bottom, but certainly it will be without self-awareness.

The self-awareness thing does help out in one area of Ironman. Ironman is a big day and most people miss the best part, which is of course the sunrise. Maybe the majority of tri-guys and gals aren't self aware, or maybe they are too wrapped up in their own little world to see it but the truth is you need to be self-aware to appreciate sunrise. Sunrise is the beginning of the event, the beginning of the day, the beginning of the rest of your life. It should be a big deal at Ironman but I think most people miss it. I know nobody talks about it. Ask anybody who did an Ironman, they will tell you some super-boring story about a flat tire or a blister the size of of a salad plate or whatever crap they have wandering through their cranium at that instant, but I say this: I saw sunrise in Ironman Phoenix two years ago and it was glorious. Glorious. The rising sun, bright and sharply reflected off of the clear, pristine waters of Tempe Town Lake was the best part of the day.  

Authors note:  I can't say that with a straight face.  "pristine waters of Tempe Town Lake" is a lie.  Tempe Town lake is filthy and should be a superfund site. 

I thought that the Whistler sunrise would sort of be the same as the Phoenix sunrise, but nay. Nay, I say. It rained. In Whistler, it rained during the swim, it poured during the bike and it sprinkled just enough on the run to keep me wet for the entire day. On that one Ironman Sunday, it rained for forty days and forty nights. The seas rose and swallowed entire villages. Humans lost their place at the apex of the food chain, replaced by brook trout.

---The Ghost of Running Christmas---

My dog likes to run.  He runs with joy in his heart, I can tell.  We run together when I train and he has never refused a call to run.  He just goes.  If I am doing a six mile run, he goes with me and does ten.  He goes far to the left of me then far to the right.  He does it because its in his nature.  

Some of  my friends like to run.  Not many, but some.  I just am not one of them and I wish I was.  I wish I enjoyed it but some part of me is repulsed but the act of running.  Part of it is that I don't like to do things that I am bad at.  Another part is that I can feel the damage that running does to me while I run.  When I run it just feels like everything is slightly less flexible that the day before.  

The ghost of Christmas past, present and future visited me one night and showed me that running was the same as not buying presents for others in need and if I didn't stop, I would die unloved and be forever interred in an unmarked grave.  So I now shun running.  Because of the ghost.

---Some Things Don't Follow the Plan---

I stopped my bike to pee on the side of the road at mile 65 or 70 . This usually takes just a minute or two since I long ago mastered the technique on the 'side of the road maneuver.' It goes like this. You hike up one leg of your trousers or spanx or whatever cycling garment you are wearing up as high as you can, face into the wind, lean forward a wee bit and just let loose. Very little gets on your shoe if you do it right and my bike shoes were already soaked with sweat and rain water, plus,I was too tired to care anyway. Then I noticed it stung something awful and I had to hop from one foot to the other while I said “owweeeowweethatstingsthatstingsthatstings”. That's a quote. I said it just like that. I don't know what was going on with my internal plumbing but I thought I could narrow it down to two possibilities; either I was dehydrated or I had a really nasty yeast infection. Not being a licensed gynecologist in the province of British Columbia, I couldn't make an official determination one way or the other on the yeast thing, but I was pretty sure the dehydration thing was spot on so I drank the last bit of whatever sport drink I had rattling around in my bike bottle and started to ride again. That green-yellow sport sauce tasted like old socks and lawn clippings that my dog peed on when he was expressing his inner caveman. I wanted to vomit but it was too cold and as I recently found out, you can't vomit a dry ball of dog pee lawn clippings. It sticks in your trachea and metastasizes there for an hour and hurts like holy hell.

---The Catharsis---

There isn't a rule or a policy published anywhere I can find regarding crying in Ironman. Some arrogant tri-snobs might consider crying in Ironman grossly uncouth, but I don't associate with those people and if given a choice, I wouldn't include them on my Christmas card list. For me, crying is standard issue battle gear in an Ironman event. My list goes like this: Wetsuit? Check. Bike? Check. Fully primed tear ducts and over reactive emotional state? Check. Yup, I got me a good checklist and that's how you knock back a good Ironman. With a good checklist.

This sobbing behavior usually starts at about T minus 30 minutes and runs through T plus 1 minute. Or put another way, I start to get overemotional about thirty minutes before the gun, hugging friends, training partners, volunteers, maybe a stray dog infested with ringworm. I hug 'em all. I cant help it, I was made this way. I hug the medical staff before the event, thanking them for the good work they had yet to perform.

Thankfully, I stop crying when I get fifty yards into the swim. Once you get to doing what you have practiced for a long time, you sort of fall into a pattern. Since I don't often cry during my 5:30AM swim workout, I don't cry in the real deal IM swim after the first fifty yards.  Practice how you race, that's my motto.

I know, I know, the emotional display is a big waste of effort, but like my good friend Ryan says, 'Whatever.'

That is how my morning Ironman ritual goes and I am fine for a while until my schoolgirl emotional outburst kicks in yet again at about hour ten or hour eleven. I get tired, I get depressed, I wonder how many of my toenails are going to pull a Benedict Arnold on the run. Its a low point and we all go through it. Good athletes ignore it, I hyper-focus on it. If it happens to you, try to ignore it, then, when it does go away, celebrate that moment. For me, its like somebody pulled the bag off of my head and all the problems and concerns and issues I carried around for the previous years melt away. Its a good feeling. I have lots of issues that I pack around with me and once I set them down, usually during the run, its a good thing.

---The Healer---

Once again, the bulk of my race report is revealed from the confines of the medical tent. At the end of my race, I was cold and shivering and couldn't say my own name without help, so they sent me to the med tent. I was hoping for an IV bag, but they must have run out because I couldn't get one. They said I didn't need it. They actually said that. I don't need an IV bag. Right. I just did a freakin' Ironman. Who they hell are they to tell me if I need an IV bag? I want at least two IV bags and I want them now. I wasn't speaking coherently at that point, so I pointed at my elbow and then held up two fingers. Thats pretty clear, right? Nurse Cratchet understood me, but she said no. Then I tried to mime that I needed a pizza, but I don't think that short bit of communication was received because I didn't get that either.

If you haven't seen a medical tent from the inside, let me describe it as I am able. The tent material looks to be constructed of well worn plastic sheeting, colored in a faded tan patina. It looks like somebody took some mud and rubbed it all over the plastic.  The tent was probably once a pearly white, but time and the accumulated abuse of many miles had revised that plan irreparably. I think all med tents must be made to keep the mosquitoes in conveniently close proximity to their primary food source. This one did. I fed a dozen mosquito families while I was there. I didn't realize until after my patient status was demoted from 'seriously near dead' to 'well enough to limp home alone', but the Whistler med tent is reminiscent of the surgery tent in the T.V. show M.A.S.H.  I was humming the theme song while I watched the hubbalalou from my army cot.

My new good friends Hansel and his once-lovely sister Grettle were there with me in the med tent, writhing in pain, unable to speak in any language that I recognized. Hansel was so dehydrated that he just made animal noises. Grettle stared at her bloody shoes and kept repeating the same line. She kept saying “Ég féll niður” over and over. I think we could have brought Grettle around with some IV bags and a couple of Oreos, but the local Shaman deemed both Grettle and her brother too far gone and unworthy of saving so he chucked them in a big pot sitting in the corner by the baking supplies. He's the expert, who am I to say he is wrong? It was sad and I was going to say something but I was still pretty pissed about the lack of IV bags for me so I didn't object to the fate of  my new friends.  I got my own problems.

Other than the naturopathic witchdoctor with the feathered headdress, I was attended to by three angels of mercy, each more lovely than the last, and I have to say they spent more time with me than was absolutely necessary. I think they were lonely.  One of them said, and I quote, “we need to get you out of those wet clothes.” She really said that.  I was well enough to look around to see if my roommate was within earshot and once I determined that the coast was clear, I said “OK”, but just about the time I had my wet tri-suit down around my ankles, the roommate showed up and it sort of ruined the moment.

---The Twitchers---

I have done extensive research over the years, analyzing medical journals, traveling the world, interviewing experts and reviewing first hand accounts given by witnesses. I have come to a conclusion that a basic truth in this life is that there are three kinds of people. There are the 'fast twitch' people which work effectively at a high rate of muscular output. Fast twitchers run fast.  People like Usain Bolt are fast twitchers. I don't have any fast twitch muscles and generally you shouldn't trust fast twitchers. They are a shifty group. They tell you things like they just finished their seventh marathon in the last seven months, and then they go on to describe all seven in technicolor detail. Just shoot me.

Then there are the 'slow twitch' muscle people. People like Craig Alexander are slow twitchers. They generally win in Kona. Freaks. All of them, freaks. Trustworthy, but still freaks.

Then there are the 'no twitch' muscle people. Those are pretty rare. In fact, the 'no-twitch' thing is found only in a diminishing corner of the Swedish gene pool and there are only ten or twelve of us left. There used to be more of us, but we don't run well enough to get out of the intersection before the light turns, and as a survival trait, that is pretty low on the scale. It tends to thin the herd. Darwin could explain it better if he was still around.

---People I Met---

I am always surprised by the people I meet in Ironman.  They just aren't what you expect. I met a guy that was doing his first full distance triathlon and the thing that was so surprising was that he was so much better at it than you would expect, given his outward veneer. He looked like a guy you would see sitting in the local Hooters, making out with a thirty two ounce beer and a bucket of chicken wings. At Ironman, he looked out of place. I think he had some mustard on his singlet. We talked and ran for a while, then we talked some more. I liked him a lot, he was really personable and he was one of the few people there that I thought I stood a good chance of beating to the finish line, so I tried to get him to stop going so fast. He was wearing me down. I said “Hey, look at that fish” at the spot where you run by the river. He didn't stop. We ran a bit more, talking about nothing much, then he said I was too slow and he took off. Unless the roving paramedics yanked him off of the run course, he beat me to the finish line. Rude.

Then I met a girl wearing a tri-kit with a big, colorful UCLA on the leg. I asked if she went there, she said ya, she graduated in 2007 and was on the gymnastics team and did some modeling for lulu lemon, whatever that is. She told me her name and the name of all her friends and her parents names and her astrological sign and her favorite pet when she was seven, but I forgot most of it. I think her name was Bambi, or maybe it was Beebe, but honestly I am not sure. I was pretty tired and my feet hurt something awful. BambiBeebe and I talked for a while, running together, then walking together then running some more. I stopped talking but she kept at it. She was sort of overly verbose, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I think it would be rude to write down all the questions she asked me because I don't want to embarrass her and they seemed sort of personal, but I think it would be OK to write down my answers. I mean, they are mine, right? Here are two:

1. Yes, you are pretty. Very pretty.
2. No, your tri-kit doesn't make you look fat.

Enough about BambiBeebe, except for this last thing. Quit driving by my house at 2am, my roommate is going to call the police.

---The Epiphany---

Technically, this didn't happen to me since there was no actual manifestation of a supernatural being, or, if there was, I didn't see it. Others may have had a different experience. Like the fine print says, past experience is no guarantee of future results. But, I did enter a state of euphoria for a while, right after the BambiBeebe debacle, so I think that counts. It was hour eleven and I was elated to not have BambiBeebe clinging to my thigh.  I started to feel like a real athlete at hour eleven, right before I threw up.

There is an undeniable freedom that follows the realization that things wont get any worse. My legs just wont go any faster. My breathing actually slows down a bit because I cant muster enough effort to stress my cardio. At that point, if I could run faster, I would. Its right then, at that moment when I start that long slow climb up the candyland ladder that I know I am having a low blood sugar hallucination. I know, it means I am on the edge of falling into a deep metaphysical pit that will take days to climb out of. I know, I need to see a medic in the next hour to fix my Ironman physical issues and a psychologist in the next week to fix my Ironman mental instability, but really, its a good place to be. How messed up can I be? I don't know the answer to the question either, but on that day, I have two thousand friends with the same issues. Once I accept that, its all good.

---The Race Report---

I swam. It was a good swim. As swims go, it was pretty wet.  I got kicked in the frank and beans once and elbowed in the back of the head once. That's not too bad.

I biked. It was not a good bike. My official Timex timer doesn't reflect the level of effort I put in. I went slower than I expected. Not happy.  Maybe I had a brake dragging or a flat tire.  That must be it.

I ran. It was a good run, given the skill level of the athlete in question. My legs burned, and it wasn't that good leg burn. You know when you are on a bike ride and you are laying down a good 250-300 watts on a long hill like the one on FishHatchery hill and you feel that good quad burn? I think my run should be like that. It wasn't. The harder I try, the more pain I feel. I don't go any faster, but it just burns more. I can walk faster than I run. My 2 year old niece can walk faster than I run. She's an arrogant little rugrat.  And sprinter fast.

---PostScript---

And then it was over. Other than hearing those brief words over the loudspeaker 'You' 'Are' 'An' 'Ironman', the end is inglorious. The race was run, and no prizes were awarded to the majority of us. The race was run, and no plunder was taken. The race was run, and we all suffered in some way. So why? Why do we do it? Everybody asks me that. My friends, my family, they all ask why and as yet, I have no answers. I would like to think there is deeper meaning to this process, to this day, perhaps that we go there to learn things that can't be learned anywhere else, things revealed only in that ultimate testing ground of pain and self abuse.  I would like to think that, but that idea is folly.  There is no reason why that I can glean from my day, there is no universal truth revealed that I can perceive.  I once was wiser and I knew the answers to all questions, but now, not so much. I am wise no more, just older.

Why do people always put the words 'wiser' and 'older' together? I can tell you from personal experience that these two words are completely unrelated. They are like Hatfields and McCoys, enemies of the most deadly kind.

'Wiser' is an elusive bed-mate, calling to me but never, fleeing from me always. Wisdom, she vexes me, just out of reach, just beyond my feeble grasp. Wisdom, she taunts me from across the universe, teasing me with her charms, laughing at my eternal, fruitless pursuit.  She mocks me most cruelly.  Wisdom, she claims me only in farce and still, after I courted her these many years, I know her not.

'Older' is my stable companion, whispering sooth in my ear, seducing me with her ruby lips, singing her sweet song, holding me closer, clutching me ever closer.  Older was once a  distant glamour, but now, she is a temptress I can not refuse.  Older, she loves me ever.