Mother's Day

I have twenty days before my half-Iron event in Kona. If I stay on my calendar, the next week should be my best week of training. If things go right, I would run my longest runs, ride my longest rides and swim my longest swims. And if the stars are aligned just so, I would feel strong while I did it. That is the plan anyway.

Yesterday, I started my run, made it about a hundred yards when my knee started screaming. I walked fifty yards to let it warm up, then started to run again. Two steps into my run, it started to hurt again. I walked another thirty yards then tried to run. Same result. I turned around and walked home. Total workout time, three minutes, thirty seconds, including the time it took to put my shoes on. I wanted to cry like a schoolgirl.

I knew a guy at work who's desk was about twenty feet from my desk so we chatted everyday and I got to know him well. He was about seventy or seventy five years old when I knew him and all things considered, he was in pretty good shape.  He started work at five and did a full days work, but when he climbed the stairs, he had to stop half way up to catch his breath. We had an elevator three giant steps from the stairs, but he never used it even though it was hard for him to climb the stairs. I liked him for that.

He told me once he was financially secure, and he didn't need to work for the money. I asked him why he didn't retire, then he told me he just liked coming to work. I said I understood what he was talking about, but I was lying.  I didn't understand at all. If it was me, I would have just quit coming to work. I didn't understand why he didn't golf or garden or whatever it was he liked to do.  I could think of a thousand things I would rather do instead of go to work.  I didn't understand then, but I do now. I get it. Work was what he did to live. He came to work because without it, he wouldn't know who or what he was. Work defined him.  We all have something that defines us. Without it, I think we are lost.

When I couldn't run yesterday, a great realization fell on me and I almost staggered under the weight of it. For the past four or five years of my life, Ironman has defined me. When I get up in the morning, I am planning my workouts, when I go to bed at night, I am tending to my aches and pains from my workouts.  In between, training is pretty much all I think about. I work to pay the bills, but that is not who I am. 

I am not sure what to do. Working towards some goal associated with Ironman is what I do.  My knee isn't getting any better.  I think it is getting worse every week.  With my knee keeping me from running, I feel lost.  If I can't run, I can't do Ironman.  These are hard days.

There is a thermometer hanging on my dock thirty feet from shore and it says the water temp is 63 degrees. 63 is reasonable to swim in with a wet suit so I told all my buddies that we were swimming a Mother's Day swim this morning. A few of them believed me and they showed up. We swam a little over a mile.

The thing is, while it may be 63 degrees at my dock, if you swim ten feet past that, its a tad colder. I put my face in the water to start swimming and almost blacked out, it was that cold. I might need to call upon medical services to disengage my frostbitten toes and fingers.