Here goes- The Ironman Coeur d'Alene 2012 event was great. If you want to stop reading here, you can. You wont miss much. The following is just some detail, but offers no change in the outcome. It was great.
The event starts at 7am sharp, so using some 4th grade 'math magic', we decided to leave the house at 4:15, in this case, the 'we' being my three training partners, John, Jim, Duane, and our house guest for this adventure, Brian. As usual, the day was full of drama. I drove since I have the most room in my car. I can't find my own house if I am sitting in the driveway, so why these guys let me drive is a question I will never know the answer to, but there you go.
Duane's girlfriend Joanie drove another car, and Duane rode with her, so it was John, Jim and myself in the car. We are in the car at 4:14. Brian is nowhere to be found. I go knock on Brian's door, softly, because if you wake his bride up, she might start to spin like the tasmanian devil from the bugs bunny cartoon. Brian decided to sit on the toilet for an extra 15 minutes and make the rest of us wait. So we wait. And wait.
Anyway, we get started down the road, we are 10 minutes from the house and Brian yells from the back seat 'Heck, oh heckohheck'. That's all the further he is willing to go down the profanity trail, which should have been sort of funny but I don't have a sense of humor before sunrise. Brian is flipping out because he forgot his wetsuit. I didn't turn the car around, I just sped up. I am sick and tired of his behavior on this trip. Yap yap yap. Heck heck heck. His wife too, while I am on the subject. She yaps too. For some reason unknown to me, Brians wife can't be bothered to get up and get in the car and bring him his wetsuit. Somehow, John's wife Pam, who by the way is a sweet lady, brings him his wetsuit. I don't know why it is ok for her to drive 45 minutes to bring his wetsuit but Brian's wife cant do it. Makes no sense to me. Pam saves the day and all is well in Brianland.
swim -
I cried twice before the swim so I have to admit, I was a little emotional. People were staring. I pretended like I had sand in my eyes. I hugged my training buddies. I hugged the lady next to me. I tried to hug the volunteer who was working the swim event, but he must have seen the rabid look in my eyes because he backed away from me like I had yellow fever. I grabbed for him again, but he made a cross with his right hand like they do on TV. You know what I mean, its the spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch thing so I stopped short and hugged myself. I needed the comfort.
This is what a race start looks like. Watch the first 30 seconds, then just know that if you are in the water in the middle of that mess, it's a way worse.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-KY3wNI81c
So, my race plan was to hang back and hit the water three minutes after the race start. I wanted to skip the mass hysteria and not get a broken limb. It happens. That plan didn't work out. My buddies John and Jim and Duane decided, literally 30 seconds before the start that we four were going to hit the water right up front. No waiting for the rush to be over. I had already told John that I was going to follow him, so I was committed. John pushes past everybody and jumps in the water with a war yell when the gun went off. That is John, everything he does, he does 100%. I followed him. I don't do anything 100%, but I feel safer when John is around. Sort of a security blanket thing. I waded in slowly, stopped and started to turn back to the car when two fat middle aged housewives are pushing me from behind. I trip on another dude who had a change of heart and was trying to go back to the car.
The wind picked up during the swim. It was a 20 knot blow out of the south, the wind sock was sticking straight out, so you swam right into the wind on the way out, and it chased you on the way back. I saw a wave four feet tall wash over a buoy. I was choking and swallowing water. It was hard to get a breath every stroke. I was lucky to breath every other stroke. Water was washing over the top of me. At least twice, the waves picked me up and everything above my belly button was out of the water. I smacked down and kept swimming. So far so good.
Then some hideous man-hater be-atch with bad teeth and a bunch of toe jam whacks me in the face with her iron tipped club foot. She knocks my nose clip off and I start to breath in water through my nose. So that sucks.
To tell this part of the story, I need to take you down a side road, back to a more innocent time, a more rational time, a time when Nixon was freshly pardoned and Welcome Back, Kotter was the rage. Those were the days, huh? Anyway, I need to tell you about Jim and Lisa. Jim and Lisa and I attended the same high school and while I spent those years without companion or soulmate, they did the opposite. Those two followed the time tested mating ritual of staring at each other for six months followed by a proposal of marriage. And, as Jim would tell it, through trial and error they found themselves with four chairs at the dinner table. One of the new occupants of said chair they named Bo, and this part of the story is about Bo.
Bo was about twenty two or so when I did Ironman and he signed up to be a lifeguard for the Ironman swim. I didn't really know what Bo looked like since I hadn't seen him since he was four or five years old, but I was swimming along minding my own business when I crashed into a surfboard. I looked up at the guy on the surfboard from maybe five feet away and I just knew it was Bo. He looked 10% like Jim and 90% like Lisa. There are 200 lifeguards on the event and I crashed into the kid of my high school friends. Coincidence? Well, ya it was.
The swim course is two laps. You start on shore, swim out, turn, come back almost to the shore to finish lap one, swim back out, turn, then come back to shore. We hit the first turn and the water was rough but I was doing OK. I sort of got lost on the way back in and went a little off course. I can't swim straight to save my life but I kept at it and so lap one down, one to go.
I started to feel good on the way out for the second lap. Then we hit the turn. The wind picked up between the first and second laps. I don't know how high the waves were because I was always underwater. I try to breath, that doesn't work. I think if I can stop breathing for the ten minutes it takes to swim around the furthest buoy I would be OK. I couldn't see where I was swimming so I went way off course. If I swam ten yards further to the right, they would have handed me a bike for the bike course. As it was, I was instructed by the kayak riding course marshal to get back with the rest of the slow swimmers. Three times he told me that.
I am 3/4 of the way through the swim, just starting to tell myself I can do this, when my stomach flips around like Linda Blair's head. I don't know if I can get to shore before I mess myself. Mentally, this is the point where I start to lose it. I consider stopping and tearing a hole in my swim gear. I can always claim the rough surf tore my clothes. I keep going. Do you remember the show Gilligan's Island? The Skipper, Gilligan, MaryAnne and the Moviestar? If you think of the intro where the Minnow was tossed, you get some idea of the swim in lake Coeur d'Alene last Sunday.
I came out of the water at 1 hour 38 minutes. That is really slow, but I feel really good about it. The water was so rough it was really a tough swim.
I took 17 minutes to transition from the swim to the bike. If you don't know, transition is where you change clothes from one event to the next. A good time is 4 minutes, average is 8. 17 is world record slow. I should feel bad about that but I don't. I was too happy about being done with the swim. While I was changing into my bike gear, I spent a few minutes talking to the guy next to me. It turned out I had met him in the parking lot the day before. He is 74 and he ran a 14 hour Ironman. What a stud. He got done changing and left. I looked around for somebody else to talk to. I was making friends instead of getting on my bike. I ran out of guys to talk to, so I had to go get my bike. I walked to get my bike. Everybody runs, I walk. I am clenching, if you know what I mean. I need a sani-can.
bike -
First loop. I had ridden this course before so I knew it was tough. It was. I stop at the first water station and stand in line for 10 minutes to use the sani-can. Saying that I have stomach issues is polite but not accurate. My bowels are rejecting the rest of my body. I think they want to defect like a Russian scientist during the cold war.
In case you are wondering, the sani-cans at the first rest stop are blue plastic and smell like fresh roses. No, wait, that is a lie. They are green plastic. The door to my personal sani-can doesn't lock. When I am exiting, I tell the attendant to keep the seat warm, I will be back shortly. He thinks I am hilarious.
So I am biking up this long hill, a five foot tall, 30ish beautiful woman cycles up next to me and she says 'nice bike'. I immediately think she wants me. I ride a trek, I look at her bike and she has a trek just like mine, but hers has a name painted on the seat stem. I say 'cool trek'. I stare at her seat stem for quite a while, trying to read the name painted on it. I keep staring. I forget to look where I am going and almost run her off the road. We chat for a few minutes about our twin bikes. I consider throwing the 'I'm married' thing out there while my will power is still strong. Another few minutes and I might not be able to stop her physical advances towards my person. It's a long event. I push a little and drop her in my wake. I need to find another sani-can but I don't want to tell 'cool trek bike girl'. I don't think we are that far along in our relationship yet to discuss bodily function.
Second loop - I am moving fine, I see my new best friend ahead of me, so I pull up next to her and say 'hey, it's cool trek bike girl'. She forgot to give me her name and number when she was checking me out earlier. I guess she likes my pet name for her because she laughs seductively. She must have passed me while I was camped out in the san-can. I was in there a long time. Bell bottoms could have gone out of fashion while I was in there. The Doobie Brothers broke up while I was in there. The dinosaurs became extinct while I was in the sani-can.
The next rest stop is maybe an hour ahead. I wonder if the interior designer used the same color palette in those sani-cans as the first set. I think I will check it out.
A couple hours go by, I bike and visit sani-cans and bike some more. After pit stop number 3, I see cool trek bike girl again. She doesn't seem glad to see me. I try to strike up a casual conversation, giving her opportunity to hit on me. She says 'gotta go' and takes off. Maybe somebody told her I am married.
So, in retrospect, I actually had a really good bike section of the race. I was moving fast and felt comfortable, but the 50 minutes in the sani-can still gets added into my total time. That's life.
run -
mile 1 - I can't make my legs follow my feet. My upper body is running, my legs are walking. Where is the first water stop? I am starving. I had a great nutrition plan on the bike. and it worked perfectly for the first 100 miles. The last 12 miles left me starving and thirsty.
mile 2 - I found the water stop, I ate an orange slice, a handful of potato chips, two cups of water, a cup of coke and put some ice under my hat. I jogged a little and started looking for the next water stop.
mile 3 - I just passed mile 3 marker and I thought, this isn't so bad. If I can do another 3, I will have walked a 10k.
mile 4 - I want to go home.
mile 5 - I see cool trek bike girl, she looks at me and sprints away. Playing hard to get. I let her run in front of me. Minx.
mile 7 - Several beautiful women are running in front of me. I think I will follow them for a while.
mile 8 - They run too fast, so now I am running with a guy who is 70ish and leaning over sideways. I think I can hang with him.
mile 9 - The leaner dropped me. Just another arrogant AARP supporter. When will they learn their place?
mile 10 - I want to go home.
mile 11 - I start to wonder how my dog is. Is he safe? Does he miss me? If he somehow managed to catch a cat, what would he do with it?
mile 12 - I am running and walking. I run as long as I can, then I walk until I feel better. Back and forth.
mile 13 - I talked to God for the next 5 miles. If you can't find God here, you aren't trying.
mile 18 - I am dragging up this hill, hurting a lot, a beautiful, tall athletic girl is coming the other way, she is staring at me and smiling. She looks great. A huge smile, a great body, beautiful face. I smile back. She says 'there is the smile I want to see.' I smile bigger and say 'hi, how's it going' or something equally mundane. Going through my mind is the whole scenario of trying to explain to my wife how this 23 year old tramp is hot for me and wants me to marry her and give her children. That is not a conversation I am looking forward to. My wife will be pissed.
mile 19 - It's dark. The girl with the big smile is long gone. I start thinking of the finish, the crowd will be cheering, cameras going off, utter chaos. She is going to look great when she finishes.
mile 20-23 - I don't remember.
mile 24 - It's almost over. I start to cry. I can't breath and cry at the same time, so I cry and get light headed from lack of air. That passes and I start to run. That run lasts about 50 yards.
last mile - Some super hot volunteer tells me I have 10 blocks to go. I think about stopping and chatting for a while, but decided to keep going. I have 10 blocks to go. I have 3 blocks worth of running in me, so I walk 7 and start to run. I see Patty and Rachel and some friends on the sideline. I give them hugs and cry some more. I run through the finish line.
At the close, I was granted more than I deserved, received more support than I gave, found strength of character in others that was shared unselfishly, while I shared nothing in return. Some people are blessed with money or beauty or great mental acuity. I have none of these, but I was given something far greater. I was given a brotherhood with a common goal. I thought the goal was to run Ironman, but I find now, it was something far more valuable. It's like I took a trip without a map, and I ended up where I needed to be. It's like going home.
Aristotle said The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life".
Ironman CDA 2012 is in the books.
The swim course is two laps. You start on shore, swim out, turn, come back almost to the shore to finish lap one, swim back out, turn, then come back to shore. We hit the first turn and the water was rough but I was doing OK. I sort of got lost on the way back in and went a little off course. I can't swim straight to save my life but I kept at it and so lap one down, one to go.
I started to feel good on the way out for the second lap. Then we hit the turn. The wind picked up between the first and second laps. I don't know how high the waves were because I was always underwater. I try to breath, that doesn't work. I think if I can stop breathing for the ten minutes it takes to swim around the furthest buoy I would be OK. I couldn't see where I was swimming so I went way off course. If I swam ten yards further to the right, they would have handed me a bike for the bike course. As it was, I was instructed by the kayak riding course marshal to get back with the rest of the slow swimmers. Three times he told me that.
I am 3/4 of the way through the swim, just starting to tell myself I can do this, when my stomach flips around like Linda Blair's head. I don't know if I can get to shore before I mess myself. Mentally, this is the point where I start to lose it. I consider stopping and tearing a hole in my swim gear. I can always claim the rough surf tore my clothes. I keep going. Do you remember the show Gilligan's Island? The Skipper, Gilligan, MaryAnne and the Moviestar? If you think of the intro where the Minnow was tossed, you get some idea of the swim in lake Coeur d'Alene last Sunday.
I came out of the water at 1 hour 38 minutes. That is really slow, but I feel really good about it. The water was so rough it was really a tough swim.
I took 17 minutes to transition from the swim to the bike. If you don't know, transition is where you change clothes from one event to the next. A good time is 4 minutes, average is 8. 17 is world record slow. I should feel bad about that but I don't. I was too happy about being done with the swim. While I was changing into my bike gear, I spent a few minutes talking to the guy next to me. It turned out I had met him in the parking lot the day before. He is 74 and he ran a 14 hour Ironman. What a stud. He got done changing and left. I looked around for somebody else to talk to. I was making friends instead of getting on my bike. I ran out of guys to talk to, so I had to go get my bike. I walked to get my bike. Everybody runs, I walk. I am clenching, if you know what I mean. I need a sani-can.
bike -
First loop. I had ridden this course before so I knew it was tough. It was. I stop at the first water station and stand in line for 10 minutes to use the sani-can. Saying that I have stomach issues is polite but not accurate. My bowels are rejecting the rest of my body. I think they want to defect like a Russian scientist during the cold war.
In case you are wondering, the sani-cans at the first rest stop are blue plastic and smell like fresh roses. No, wait, that is a lie. They are green plastic. The door to my personal sani-can doesn't lock. When I am exiting, I tell the attendant to keep the seat warm, I will be back shortly. He thinks I am hilarious.
So I am biking up this long hill, a five foot tall, 30ish beautiful woman cycles up next to me and she says 'nice bike'. I immediately think she wants me. I ride a trek, I look at her bike and she has a trek just like mine, but hers has a name painted on the seat stem. I say 'cool trek'. I stare at her seat stem for quite a while, trying to read the name painted on it. I keep staring. I forget to look where I am going and almost run her off the road. We chat for a few minutes about our twin bikes. I consider throwing the 'I'm married' thing out there while my will power is still strong. Another few minutes and I might not be able to stop her physical advances towards my person. It's a long event. I push a little and drop her in my wake. I need to find another sani-can but I don't want to tell 'cool trek bike girl'. I don't think we are that far along in our relationship yet to discuss bodily function.
Second loop - I am moving fine, I see my new best friend ahead of me, so I pull up next to her and say 'hey, it's cool trek bike girl'. She forgot to give me her name and number when she was checking me out earlier. I guess she likes my pet name for her because she laughs seductively. She must have passed me while I was camped out in the san-can. I was in there a long time. Bell bottoms could have gone out of fashion while I was in there. The Doobie Brothers broke up while I was in there. The dinosaurs became extinct while I was in the sani-can.
The next rest stop is maybe an hour ahead. I wonder if the interior designer used the same color palette in those sani-cans as the first set. I think I will check it out.
A couple hours go by, I bike and visit sani-cans and bike some more. After pit stop number 3, I see cool trek bike girl again. She doesn't seem glad to see me. I try to strike up a casual conversation, giving her opportunity to hit on me. She says 'gotta go' and takes off. Maybe somebody told her I am married.
So, in retrospect, I actually had a really good bike section of the race. I was moving fast and felt comfortable, but the 50 minutes in the sani-can still gets added into my total time. That's life.
run -
mile 1 - I can't make my legs follow my feet. My upper body is running, my legs are walking. Where is the first water stop? I am starving. I had a great nutrition plan on the bike. and it worked perfectly for the first 100 miles. The last 12 miles left me starving and thirsty.
mile 2 - I found the water stop, I ate an orange slice, a handful of potato chips, two cups of water, a cup of coke and put some ice under my hat. I jogged a little and started looking for the next water stop.
mile 3 - I just passed mile 3 marker and I thought, this isn't so bad. If I can do another 3, I will have walked a 10k.
mile 4 - I want to go home.
mile 5 - I see cool trek bike girl, she looks at me and sprints away. Playing hard to get. I let her run in front of me. Minx.
mile 7 - Several beautiful women are running in front of me. I think I will follow them for a while.
mile 8 - They run too fast, so now I am running with a guy who is 70ish and leaning over sideways. I think I can hang with him.
mile 9 - The leaner dropped me. Just another arrogant AARP supporter. When will they learn their place?
mile 10 - I want to go home.
mile 11 - I start to wonder how my dog is. Is he safe? Does he miss me? If he somehow managed to catch a cat, what would he do with it?
mile 12 - I am running and walking. I run as long as I can, then I walk until I feel better. Back and forth.
mile 13 - I talked to God for the next 5 miles. If you can't find God here, you aren't trying.
mile 18 - I am dragging up this hill, hurting a lot, a beautiful, tall athletic girl is coming the other way, she is staring at me and smiling. She looks great. A huge smile, a great body, beautiful face. I smile back. She says 'there is the smile I want to see.' I smile bigger and say 'hi, how's it going' or something equally mundane. Going through my mind is the whole scenario of trying to explain to my wife how this 23 year old tramp is hot for me and wants me to marry her and give her children. That is not a conversation I am looking forward to. My wife will be pissed.
mile 19 - It's dark. The girl with the big smile is long gone. I start thinking of the finish, the crowd will be cheering, cameras going off, utter chaos. She is going to look great when she finishes.
mile 20-23 - I don't remember.
mile 24 - It's almost over. I start to cry. I can't breath and cry at the same time, so I cry and get light headed from lack of air. That passes and I start to run. That run lasts about 50 yards.
last mile - Some super hot volunteer tells me I have 10 blocks to go. I think about stopping and chatting for a while, but decided to keep going. I have 10 blocks to go. I have 3 blocks worth of running in me, so I walk 7 and start to run. I see Patty and Rachel and some friends on the sideline. I give them hugs and cry some more. I run through the finish line.
At the close, I was granted more than I deserved, received more support than I gave, found strength of character in others that was shared unselfishly, while I shared nothing in return. Some people are blessed with money or beauty or great mental acuity. I have none of these, but I was given something far greater. I was given a brotherhood with a common goal. I thought the goal was to run Ironman, but I find now, it was something far more valuable. It's like I took a trip without a map, and I ended up where I needed to be. It's like going home.
Aristotle said The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life".
Ironman CDA 2012 is in the books.
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