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.