Nice Bike Shorts

 A couple weeks ago I was in spin class in Scottsdale with a bunch on casual spinners who were trying a new workout routine:  they achieve fitness by looking like they workout but without expending any energy. You know the type. They have matching shirts and bike shorts, some of them have matching socks, they have a water bottle that they sip from but don't need because they don't get hot or sweat. Sometimes they have a hand towel with their initials embroidered on it by their girlfriend. If you didn't see them actually on a bike, they would generally pass the 9 iron test. If you don't know what that is, the 9 iron test means they look good from 100 yards away, but get up close and you see all the flaws.

If you compare that with the average 53 year old guy trying to drop weight and fight off a hangover, its night and day. My bike shorts and shirt never match. I wear decent bike shorts, but my shirt might have a piece of dinner on it from last night. I usually run through a full water bottle in a normal spin class and can put two bottles down in a hard spin class. I sweat enough for a family of four.

So anyway, I was in this class with a bunch of people way prettier than me, which, if truth be told isn't the first time that has happened. Then, the really really old instructor started yacking away about some sort of nonsense that didn't have anything to do with cycling but might save your life if you were in a trench in France, circa 1917. He said he was a Marine Sergeant so, as his logic worked, he must know a lot about cycling.  Plus, he really liked the sound of his own voice. He never stopped talking. I think he was in the manic phase for his particular malady. I was wondering if he was some sort of a idiot escapee from the local sanitarium. He was doing up/downs, shouting instructions to the class (he called the class 'his platoon', I shit you not) and he told everybody to spin like he was.  He said "OK Platoon, watch me and do exactly what I do", which would have been OK, but his butt was bouncing on his saddle so hard and so fast he sort of lost his balance and almost hit the deck. It was ugly.

It was at that point that I decided to just ride on my own for this class and not pay attention to the instructor. So far, so good. So I dropped into my triathlon position on my bike and started to ride for an hour at an 80-85% heart rate. That was my plan. It was about then that I noticed the person in front of me had the same idea. It was a woman and she dropped into the tri position and cycled a steady pace. Bozo the cycling instructor clown was having the class do gymnastics on the spin bike and, here is the weird part, except for my new best friend and myself, THEY WERE DOING IT. Lemmings.

So, in order to correctly describe my new best cycling/spinning friend on the bike right in front of me, I have to explain that I only saw her from my position directly behind her. Isn't that the way it always goes? Isn't that like life? We only see things from our own perspective. I think so. In this case, my perspective was from a tri position on a spin bike about 18 inches behind my new friend. If you don't yet realize it, that means my nose was 18 inches behind her bottom. It's not my fault. Somebody else put her bike in front of me. Maintenance staff maybe.  Perverts.

My friend wore Newtons, not bike shoes.  I deduced from that bit of information that she was a triathlete and was from out of town.  How did I figure that out?  Well, she was too good of a cyclist to not own spin shoes.  And, since she didn't have them, I assumed she didn't have room in her suitcase.  Sounds right.  Plus, Newtons are running shoes so, you add cycling and running, you get triathlon.

She was thin, but in a good way. I don't mean she was too thin, she wasn't. Maybe trim is a better term. She was athletic, well muscled, carrying about 8% body fat, I would guess. I didn't whip out a pair of epidermal calipers to measure, I just took a wild guess. 8%, maybe 7.  She was wearing these granite-gray bike shorts that had a little bit of a frill at the top.  The lycra/spandex material had a small snag right at the point where her bike seat hit her bike seat, if you get my meaning.  She had maybe snagged the shorts on a gym bag or something.  I wondered about where that snag had happened and exactly how it had happened.  My mind wanders a bit in spin class.  I mean, there we were,  two triathloners in spin class, working together for a common goal and both of us wondering how her bike shorts got a snag in such a critical area.  Well, I was wondering that.  I thought about getting off the bike and asking her if she was aware that her bike short snag was distracting me. I started to really feel a kinship with this girl.  We probably had a lot in common.

Anywho, I rode that spin bike for another 20 minutes in the tri position, sweating and thinking, thinking and sweating, riding right behind my new best friend. I named her Desdemona like you might name a pet.  I always liked that name.  Desdemona. Desdemona.  Desdemona's granite-gray bike shorts looked really good.

For the rest of class, there were two groups, first, there were 28 sheep doing the best they could to follow a neurotic, escapee ex-Marine with terrible cycling form and then there was Desdemona and I, riding to our own tune. I was happy as a clam at high tide.  

At the end of the class, I was going to say something to Desdemona, like “nice job” or “you ride well”. But that would have been dishonest. I wasn't thinking that.  If I said anything, it would have been something honest.  Something from the heart.  Something like “nice ass.”

Is that wrong?

Calendar Blues in G flat.

I think most guys and gals training for Ironman use some sort of a training calendar. I have a free one that my training partner found or stole and was kind enough to share with me. Its pretty basic; Tuesday run an hour, Wednesday swim an hour, Thursday bike and so on. I guess I am pretty happy with it. I used it in my last Ironman and it worked out OK so it must be good. My only complaint is that there aren't many days off in this calendar and I end up inserting some when I get tired or I feel like it.

The problem with training calendars is that they don't issue directives on effort and anticipated result. Maybe its wrong but I feel like the calendar should give me a pointer or two on how much effort I should put out. For instance, I biked 4 hours today, its my long ride for the week and I rode in a group of four. We climbed 3500 feet in 60 miles, most of the ride was pretty chitty chatty, running at a slowish pace, then throw in five or six hills just to keep it interesting. It was a good ride, not a huge effort but not a cake walk either.

So my question is this: Was that the right thing to do? Should I have pushed harder? Everybody in the group could have gone a lot harder. Should we go 100% all the time? Or, should we just put in hours and slow down when our legs start to burn? Or, should we just ride a flat ride at an easy pace then go to dairy queen and order the whole ice-cream menu? The bigger question is, how do we maximize our return-on-investent in preparation for IM Arizona?

When I swim with the gang, we do send offs. Send offs suck. I don't know why we do them but one of the guys I train with seems to think they are a good idea so we do them. We didn't vote on that. If you don't know, send offs are timed distances in a pool. Sometimes we do 30 second 25's. That means we swim 25 yards as fast or as slow as we want to, but you have to start the next 25 yard swim in 30 seconds. So the fast guys (not me) finish in 20 seconds, then they get 10 seconds of rest. They never get tired. Losers. I go as fast as I can, I finish in 27 seconds, turn around and I hear one of the other guys say 'go'. Off we go.

Or we do 4 minute 200's, but its the same deal. The fast guys finish in 3 minutes, they rest and scratch their junk and wait for me to finish, I finish in 3 minutes and 55 seconds, turn around and go again. You get the idea. The thing is, that is all we do. We do send offs. So think about it, our swim workout is essentially sprints with short rests between. My heart rate wanders between 75-99%. Our bike rides are the opposite, they are long distance constant hart rate deals somewhere in the 80-85% range when we are working hard, or 50% the rest of the time. Somebody needs to rethink that. One way or the other is better. We should do that.

I almost forgot, I was riding this morning and I tried to take a corner too fast without stopping pedaling. My pedal clipped the ground, it lifted my rear tire off the ground an it skewed my path into the weeds. I was OK, but it just reminded me that my bike skills are only second to my skills as an astronaut.

Then, a couple hours into the ride I hit a super bumpy section of road. My water bottle came off and almost took out the guy behind me. I'm pretty amazing on a bike.

The only girl I saw on the ride was sitting in a ditch, her bike about 10 feet away. She and I ride alike,

Ironman Glory

I was in Scottsdale last week for my job so I didn't get to work out as much as my calendar called for. I was there Sunday night through Friday night, enjoying the cloud free, 69 degree indoor imitation air.  When I wasn't suffering in the office, I did a swim, a set of weightlifting and a couple sets in spin class. It was OK and I guess anything is better than nothing but I have to say, I was getting grumpy by Friday. I wanted another swim and some time on the road. Nope. No time to workout. I did find time to visit five different restaurants for 2 hour, multi-course dinners but I couldn't work in another set at the gym.  There are like six kinds of cheesecake in restaurants in Scottsdale, and as surely as they sing their siren's song, I must answer.

I was in this restaurant on Monday night eating a light dinner and trying to fight off the unwelcome advances from my waitress in the tight pink t-shirt when I overheard the guy at the table next to mine tell his companion that it was almost 8pm and there were only ten minutes to get another drink under the happy-hour discount price list so I spring into action, flagging down my stalker waitress and she came running, with a big smile and a strong desire to participate in the human imperative.  With me.  I just want a couple glasses of wine and she wants to get horizontal.  I am pretty sure she was ovulating.

She was attractive I guess.  I mean, if you are into that athletic body type with the perfect smile and large, perky....personality.  And did I mention she told me, at length, and with color pictures as proof, she was a model doing swimsuit ads?  Whatever.  Not really my type.

So I am not sure if I should give in to her advances, and thereby get more wine, or forgo the wine and break her fragile spirit by explaining how I was married and I wasn't interested in her.  No way will I get another glass of wine if she runs off into the ladies room screaming my name and crying irrationally. This crap happens to me all the time.

So there I was, going back and forth, back and forth with that internal debate.  Wine?  No Wine?  Crying waitress?  Wife pissed?  I can't seem to sort it out and I start to get a headache.  Then boom, I get an idea.  Just Boom.  Well, two ideas really.  First, I could be truthful, break her heart, watch her run off screaming then flag down another waitress and order a bottle of wine under the happy-hour discount price list, or second, I could try to be less attractive.  Maybe I will be less attractive to her if I beat my head on the table and scream out something in Latin.   No, that wont work.  I don't know any Latin.

I am staring at her t-shirt, trying to think of something to say when she asks me “Are you an Ironman?” That's weird. Usually I need to hit people on the head with that like three times and tell them 'hey, did you know I am an Ironman?'  Not this gal.  How did she know?  This is just getting weirder and weirder.  I am dealing with the mind-reading, copulating t-shirt with a smile that brings me wine at discount prices and I an truly vexed.

   Finally, I answered “Ya, I am. How did you know?” I was confused.  

   “Really? How did I know?"  She thought I was kidding.  "Well, your hat says Ironman on it, your shirt says Ironman on it and you have spent the last hour drawing pictures of the Mdot on a stack of bar napkins. I took a wild guess.”

 I was thinking that she was being a little snippy and I tried to think of something rude to say when she cut me off again. “Oh, one more thing. My manager said you owe him twenty bucks for the cloth napkins you ruined.”  I am not going back to that bar.  Not for a while anyway.

I ran the lake youngs trail today.  The lake youngs trail is 9.5 miles of packed gravel trail that climbs like 32,000 feet strait up.  In the first mile.  Many attempt, few return.  I had a pretty good run, all things considered. I didn't puke, I had minimal cramps, and the cramps I did have were only in my calves (because I left my compression socks at home). Oh, I almost forgot. I only had to stop once to relieve myself in the trees on the side of the trail.  I didn't bring any Charmin so I made due with holly leaves and some blackberry bush branches.  You gotta pay the price to be an Ironman.  For me, that's as good as it gets.

So, for the past six months, I have been thinking about my personal Ironman journey and I came to this conclusion: there are two, and only two true paths to Ironman Glory.  Here, for the first time in print, are the Kung Fu certified paths to Ironman Glory.  Feel free to copy this as you see fit.  It's that good.

The first path: For you TV trivia buffs, its sort of like Kwai Chang Caine listening to Master Po. “When you can grab the pebble from my hand, it will be time for you to leave”.  To translate that into triathlon terms, you need to
  1. work out 25-30 hours a week with purpose and unfaltering enthusiasm
  2. forget you have a job
  3. forget you own a mortgage
  4. forget you have a dentist that misses you
  5. forget you have a spouse that will in turn forget you
  6. swim like Mark Spitz
  7. bike like Miguel Indurain
  8. run like Frank Shorter.

 When you have mastered that, it will be time to be an Ironman.

The second path: Visualize success.  See it in your mind.  Then
  1. sit it in a comfortable chair, close your eyes and see yourself crossing the finish line
  2. spend a thousand bucks on swim coaching
  3. buy three sets of goggles, each with reflective tinting to blind your swimming competitors
  4. spend seven thousand dollars on a bike
  5. get some zipp wheels and a speed helmet
  6. buy four pairs of 150 dollar newtons, track the miles each pair racks up in a spreadsheet
  7. start a blog
  8. watch replays on youtube of the Ironman World Championships.  Repeat weekly

Basically, spend your way to becoming an Ironman.

I am working on the second option. I already watched the youtube thing so think I can knock that out this week.

I have been dealing with a lot of personal issues recently and while that is no excuse for my lack of blogging productivity, it is the extent of my self-pity repertoire.  I wish now that I had something witty to say here to more fully rationalize my bloglessness, but I don’t seem to have anything worthy to put forth.   I got nothing.

My employer, who I believe wishes not to receive attribution here, has started a fitness program and I seem to be participating in this contest, although I think that my participation was agreed to under duress.   See, if I exercise enough, I get a hundred bucks.  I need to walk 12000 steps a day for two months, then I get a hundred bucks.  I couldn’t walk away from that bonanza.

 Ya, I know, I didn’t believe it either when I read it, but there it is.  12000 steps a day.  I have ironman AZ coming up in about 5 months.  To train for an IM event, I knock out 12000 steps before lunch.  This should be cake.

Last week, I swam, ran, biked, lifted, ran again, ran again, swam again and hiked.  Then this morning I went to spin.  That’s great but I feel like crap.  My legs feel like piles of goo.  If I slow down, I won’t end up where I need to be, if I keep going, I will feel like crap and if I pick up the  pace I will be injured like a a crossfit victim.  (there is a joke there, if you need me to esplain it, it wont be funny).  Anyway, I am mentally willing, but physically unable.  I blame my, training partners, they don’t support me emotionally.  I gotta blame somebody.

Last Saturday, I went on a hike with four teenagers and nine adults.  The teenagers told the truth, the adults lied.   It was a six mile hike up this mountain.  We used ropes and climbing techniques that belong on Mount Everest.  It was straight up.  

Like I said, the kids told the truth.  They ran up the hill and wondered when the hard stuff was going to start.  For them it was no big deal.  The adults all lied.  They looked at each other and smiled, as if to say ‘this isn’t hard’ and ‘what is wrong with you losers?  This is cake.’ I didn’t lie, I told the truth.  I soaked my tshirt with sweat in the first three minutes.  That sweat was truth.  I know my truth.

I Sold Fruit

Twenty years ago, I had a great job.  I sold fruit overseas.  I would travel to places in South East Asia like Singapore or Thailand or a dozen other really cool places, visiting with customers, drinking too much expensive liquor, eating too much great food.  I spent quite a bit of time there and I thought I had some great stories to share, but when I told those stories to people I knew, it was like the cognitive switch in their brain just flipped off and they quickly changed the subject to something really interesting like how the girl at the haircut place spoke with improper diction or how parking the car was such a burden because they had to park so far from the front door to the grocery store. I was doing something wrong I guess because everybody did the same thing, they didn't want to hear about my travels, so I just stopped telling them. I didn't tell anybody those stories for a long time.  I just put that part of my life in a box. In the process, I forgot about those stories, and I lost a little bit of myself.

Last year, I ran in Ironman Couer d'Alene. For me, it was and still is a huge thing and I think I have a few good stories to tell, but when I tell people those stories, they get that all-too-familiar distant, bored look and change the subject. I didn't understand for a while why my Asia travel stories and my IM stories bore the hell out of people, but now I have a theory and it's this - people can't comprehend things that are beyond their own small view of the world; they can't fathom the idea that Ironman is a possibility for them; they can't believe in the idea of participation. That is what it comes down to, isn't it?   Belief?  If you believe, you are already there. Write that down.

Anyway, if it isn't possible that they could compete in Ironman, or they don't believe it is possible, then my story of Ironman must be a lie. I must be a liar right? If they can't do it, how could I?

So my word to you is this, if you tell someone about your Ironman adventure, and they get a glazed 'I would rather be anywhere but here' look in their eye, then you are dealing with a non-believer. They might muscle up and walk a mile a week, but that is it. I pity them.

I ran four miles today. I had a good run, except my knee felt like my 35 years ago imp-of-the-devil ex-girlfriend that ripped my teenage heart out of my chest was back, sticking red hot needles into my knee. She must have bought a real voodoo doll that you stick needles in. She was a freak of nature in that she was the first human born without a soul and my knee remembered her today. My lungs were good on my run, my knee needed an hour with a psychologist specializing in exorcism.  And ice and Ibuprofen.

I get asked all the time why I run Ironman, or I am asked why I train like I do to get ready for Ironman. Good questions both. I get up at o'dark thirty to swim, I run in fairly constant pain, I bike on roads that are ruled by hill-billies that throw beer bottles when they drive by in their rusted out chevy pickups. Sometimes it's hard to see the upside. I refuse to use the 'because it's there' thing because using a cliché is beneath me. Since I have no imagination, I cant think up my own answer. Its one thing to not have a ready answer for others, but I should at least know the answer for myself. I mean, why do anything if you don't know why? Until today, I felt the answer more than I understood the answer. I know, that sounds like something your nineteen year old philosophy student might have said, but its real. Until today, I didn't really know why. Today I read in a book by my favorite author, Nelson DeMille the following:

“A boat in the harbor is a safe boat, but that's not what boats are for.”

Just soak that in.

Is your boat safe in the harbor? Risking nothing, accomplishing little? Or do you risk some for great reward?

If you like the quote as much as I do, feel free to use it. Be nice and give Nelson the credit.

Some Pig

A friend of mine sent me a link to a story, it was about this guy who saw a Beaver, walked up to the Beaver and took its picture with his iphone because he thought the beaver was cute, then the beaver bit him on the leg, cut into his artery and he bled to death. Funny, right? How often does that happen? The American beaver was hunted to the brink of extinction 200 years ago by men making hats, so this beaver apparently decided to turn the tables, good for him.

I didn't think about that story for a while because my daughter and I decided to clean the fridge out. We threw out seven or ten tupperware containers full of leftovers that had gone bad. There was some mashed potatoes that nobody ate a month ago when it was fresh.  We had turkey and mashed potatoes. The turkey was gone in a flash because it tasted good. It was meaty and juicy and smokey tasting. I cooked it on the smoker, which explains why it was smokey tasting.  De-Lish!  The mashed potatoes weren't very good because my wife made them. Her mashed potatoes are lumpy. I saw Julia Child make mashed potatoes once on TV and the ones I threw away didn't look anything like Julia's.

We threw out a tupperware full of celery sticks that had turned. How long does it take for celery to go from edible to rotten? The answer is four and a half months. We put that celery in the container the day after Christmas.  

Then we threw out some chip dip. I mean, who eats chip dip the day after? I do, but there was a lot and honestly, it was a little too salty.

There was a link of chicken sausage in a baggy that we threw out. It was still in the shape of a sausage, but when I picked it up, it mooshed flat. What happens to food that makes it lose it's ability to hold it's shape? I am not sure, but you shouldn't eat it, so we threw it out.

So we threw all this stuff into the garbage can, then I walk to another room and I hear this noise behind me. It sounded like “chu chu shumpa shump chu chu shumpa shump”. I turned around to see what the noise was and there is my dog with his big fat thieving snout in the garbage can, eating old salty chip dip and lumpy potatoes and a formless chicken sausage in a baggy. I kicked the dog and threw him out the door, which in retrospect, was the wrong thing to do. I mean, he likes it, so why not feed it to him? Lumps don't bother the dog and really, is it any better or worse than dog food from Costco? Who knows.

Now, it occurs to me that my garbage eating dog and the man killing beaver have something in common. They are just doing what is in their nature to do. Who am I to say it is wrong? The beaver was defending himself from an iphone, the dog was eating something he found delicious that nobody else wanted.

Nobody told Charlotte not to save Wilbur. Who am I to kick my dog? Who am I to condemn a fiesty beaver? It is in their nature to do what they do.

So what does that have to do with Ironman? It's this; it is in my nature to hate running. Running sucks. I wouldn't do it but for the Ironman thing and there's the rub. It's in my nature is to sit on the couch and eat ice cream, but I choose to run, even thought it is against my nature. I choose. If you choose to sit on the couch and eat ice cream, go ahead. I choose to run. Four times a week. Tomorrow is a run day and I have four miles on the calendar.

But I am just telling you right now, if some ass with an iphone crosses my path while I am running, I might lash out and bite him on the leg.

Missed Opportunities

Some years before I was tricked into entering into a marriage contract to my current wife, I was working on a farm with my best friend Dave.  Dave and I worked off and on for different farmers in the area doing odd jobs. Sometimes we bucked hay, sometimes we drove tractor, we didn't care all that much what it was, as long as it paid. It was that or work for Don's dad at the bag factory. Don's dad was a great guy, but I didn't want to work another summer on the bag line. That bag line job was nasty-hot in the summer. Working outside in the summer on an apple farm was not all that bad.

 So one day, Dave and I finished working on a Saturday afternoon, we got paid and were driving home. Another friend of mine was having a party so Dave and I were talking about the remote possibility that one of us might convince some inebriated gal to suspend her puritan view of the human imperative.  The chances were slim, but we were maybe nineteen or twenty years old and didn't bother to calculate the odds.

Anyway, we were driving home in my truck but for some reason Dave was driving. I don't remember why. Anyway, like I said, we were headed home on I-90, listening to a cassette of Lynyrd Skynyrd, we just passed through Vantage when we saw two hitchhikers on the road. The hitchhikers were beautiful girls wearing, and I swear this is true, short shorts and bikini tops. Maybe in California it was common place to see that kind of thing, but in Eastern Washington, you just didn't see it. Girls in bikini tops looking for a ride?  Jackpot. I screamed at Dave to pull over and give them a lift. I was thinking that opportunities for worldly gentlemen such as ourselves didn't often present themselves in such a grand fashion and we needed to get those gals in the truck pronto. Charlie Bucket didn't walk away from the golden ticket, did he? Why should we?

A series of possibilities ran through my head in a millisecond, all of them culminating in some after hours activity involving myself and one or both girls. We need to stop the truck. I yell at Dave. He keeps driving. I scream 'Stop!' Dave keeps driving. I reach across and pull the wheel, Dave fights me off. Dave didn't stop. He just kept going. I started to cry. I will never forgive him.

Roll the clock forward twenty years and I am driving home from work. To get home, I have to drive past 'The Piranha Bar'. I am sure the bar has an official name but nobody knows what it is. It's just called 'The Piranha Bar' by all the locals because they used to have a sign out front that said '17 pound piranha'. I guess they had a big fish in a tank at one time. The sign isn't there anymore, I think the fish died.

Anyway, I am driving by and I see walking in the parking lot towards the front door of the bar three beautiful ladies with big hair and white one piece swimsuits and red high heels. The The swimsuits had red print on the front. The first girl had printed on her suit the word 'Bud', the second girl had 'wei' and the last 'ser'.

Either they were employed by the Budweiser company or they liked to wear swimwear in public and cause riots. In either case, the first thought that occurs to me after I see them is Dave driving past the hitch hikers.   Well, I guess it was the second thought. I had another thought first.

So what did I do? That's right, I drove home as fast as I could to tell my wife.

The lesson to be learned here might not be what you think. The lesson is this: If you get a chance to participate in an Ironman event, do it. It might not come around again. Seize the day.  Put on your big boy pants and run in an Ironman.

The weather is cruddy today so I swam this morning for an hour, then went to spin for an hour, then I came home and fell asleep on the couch.