Casablanca

This post is about two real miracles that I have personally witnessed in the last two days.  Since these are the first real live miracles I have  ever seen, I thought it was worth a mention.

Miracle #1

Today I witnessed a miracle. It wasn't a major miracle, like raising the dead or turning wine into water, nor was it a minor miracle, like the '69 Mets. What I saw, what I participated in, what I caused to happen was a middle miracle. It was an unexplainable event. It was a once in a lifetime, never gonna happen again miracle. As I type this, I still can't believe it, but its true.

Here is what happened. Last night, I was working on my bike in the garage, cleaning this and fiddling with that, just passing time doing something that I like doing. I hadn't cleaned my bike since the half iron in Hawaii, so it was kind of a mess. There were race stickers on it, tri bike transport stickers on it, dried up spit and sweat and chocolate goo gel on it and some black chain grease. Typical bike mess after a race, so I cleaned and washed and adjusted and generally fiddled with it for two hours. I had the radio playing seventy's hair-band music and a half full glass of wine on the work bench.  I was in the zone.

I had thirty to forty tools at the ready, two of which saw action.  Some were in my pocket, a couple of screwdrivers were on the floor, I think the big hammer was on the workbench.   Speaking of the workbench, since it is usually cluttered with partially repaired projects from last year, I use the rear bumper of my truck as a tool bench. I set my tools on it when they are between use and sometimes I forget to gather them all up when I am done. That's what happened last night; I left my twenty five dollar super-neat hex wrench set sitting on the bumper when I finished with the bike. I forgot about it and went to bed.

Today, I got up, showered, shaved and shined, jumped in the truck and drove forty two highway miles, stop and go, over potholes and speed bumps, parked and went in the office. At lunch time, I drove to get a salad at a bad restaurant with a history of health code violations about three miles from my office, then I saw it; My super-neat hex wrench set was sitting on the bumper. That's it. That's the miracle.  That wrench set just stayed there, defying Newton's law of inertia.  How did that wrench set stay on the bumper and not fall off? I don't know but the phone is ringing and I think it is MGM calling about a movie deal. If I get to name the movie, I might call it “Miracle Hex Wrench Set”. Or “Casablanca” maybe.

Miracle #2

I have several friends that just finished Ironman Coeur d'Alene yesterday, which is a really big deal, but that isn't the miracle. My friends are all really good athletes, very fit, carrying at most ten percent body fat and a large portion of type A personality traits and they all have a good training program with oodles of time to get ready for the event. It isn't a surprise that they finished. I don't mean to demean their efforts. Ironman is hard. Its really hard. Finishing an Ironman requires incredible endurance, both mental and physical. It requires commitment. And money. When you are in an Ironman, if you have an hour of feeling good, I guarantee you will have an hour of feeling bad right after. All my friends were able to overcome their personal demons and emerge victorious. Congrats. It's a big deal, but a miracle? No.

The miracle I am talking about is that other group of participants. You know who I am talking about. They are a little heavy. A few are a lot heavy. They didn't prepare, or they didn't prepare enough. They didn't have a contingency plan, or if they did, it wasn't good enough to get them through unscathed. My bride and I were watching the live video feed direct from the swim finish in CDA.  The first 90% of the athletes that finished the swim came out of the water in good shape.  They had a good finish time, they looked fresh and ready to attack the rest of the day.  The other 10% didn't look good.  They came out of the water disoriented and physically beaten, and that was just the start of their day.  That's the miracle.  That last 10%.

Remember, its a process, not a destination. It's a process.  This whole Ironman thing is a process.

I have the Lake Stevens half iron in forty seven days. Last Saturday I was trying to home bake an Olympic as a training day.  The plan called for my daughter and I to swim a mile, ride thirty and run six.  Sounds good, right?  It seemed like a good workout, not too hard, but still challenging enough to count as a real bric.  The swim was fine, we had fun.  We got on our bikes in the sunshine and started heading west.  West towards the storm   Five minutes later, it was like we were in the Amazon in the rainy season.  I saw a pair of raccoons trying to get in a boat.   We cut the ride short and started our run.  

It's amazing how few miles you can go in a four hour workout when you set your mind to it.