---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:
Yes, you are pretty. Very pretty.
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.