Leo And The Rest Of Us

My legs just wont stand up to the pounding of running five or six days a week. It hurts too much. I get too many injuries. I have limped home more times than I can count. So a year ago, I am thinking about the opposing goals of training for Ironman and leaving enough cartilage in my knees to allow me to walk upright for another couple years. It's a challenge. After thinking it over, I decided to keep running while I train for Ironman and buy stock in the Advil company. It's not a perfect plan, but it works for me.

So one day, my sadistic calendar called for a ten mile run with hills. I skipped the hills but did the distance. It was awful. Running and I often engage in a winner-take-all fight for domination of my knees. I usually lose. That run was no different, my knees freaked out and I felt sorry for myself.  On the way home, I thought I needed a treat to turn my frown upside down, so I pulled into the KFC drivethru; I figured I could find a use for a full deal meal with a three pack of chicken, some biscuits and a moist towelette. While I waited, I looked across the parking lot and saw one of those hot yoga places. An idea started to form. I got my chicken then wander over to the yoga place to peer in the window. My idea is taking shape and came down to this; I can still run two to three times a week, but in order to inflict enough damage on my body to prepare for Ironman, I can go to hot yoga once or twice a week as an easy filler. How bad can it be? Swimming is a grind and makes my shoulders hurt. Biking is hard and my quads and hamstrings cramp. Running sucks for lots of reasons. Yoga? It's just some girls doing a few light stretches and hopping around on one leg. Not a big deal. I am going to rock that hot yoga class. I might even get a medal.

So I went to hot yoga. It wasn't what I thought it was going to be. They don't tell you everything you need to know when they take your money. First, its hot. I mean surface of the sun hot. Next, its fall down exhausting. I can do the whole class, but I take breaks when I get dizzy. I get dizzy a lot. And, its intimidating. Everybody there is doing a bang-up job of making me feel inadequate. They all excel at that.

The class usually has two guys and twenty to thirty girls in it. One of the guys has a six pack and looks like he is packing four or five percent body fat. I am not sure, but he might have a super-power. I think he can pick both feet up off the ground at the same time. He probably drives a BMW. Nobody likes him. On the other hand, I am pretty sure he shoots blanks. Anyway, the girls in class are ruthless killers. They pack guns and knives to class in their Gucci gym bags. To them, yoga is a death match. They love to see guys like me show up. Those girls are so arrogant. They don't sweat, or grunt, or fall. They wrap a two hands and a foot and maybe three knees around their twenty two inch waist without so much as a primal scream. I don't get it.

There is this one girl, she is maybe five foot six inches and she can stand on one leg and put the other foot straight up above her head and not fall down. Freak. I don't know what she weighs, but I am guessing if she sat on one side of a teeter totter, my golden retriever could sit on the other side and balance her out. So, I guess she weighs one golden retriever. Next to that girl, another girl is maybe five foot five and weighs about one point two golden retrievers. She can put her foot above here head too. All these girls can all put one foot over their head except for the lady in the back that weighs about two golden retrievers. I like her. My kind of people.

There was a documentary on T.V. the other day describing the life and accomplishments of Leonardo da Vinci. It was only an hour long show, so they just hit a few of the highlights from his life. They talked about his accomplishments as a painter, as a sculptor, as an architect, as a cartographer, and as an inventor. It was really a great show and now, I find it impossible to describe him accurately in a blog. Calling his life 'amazing' belittles his genius.

What I find interesting is the degree of separation between Leo and the rest of us. Just try to imagine how far off the mark you are if you try to paint, or sculpt or invent something. Maybe you can do that stuff. I can't. I am a committed narcissist and I freely admit it is beyond me. He was a giant among men. He pushed the boundaries of human greatness and in comparison, none were able to compete at his level. The delta between Leo and the rest of mankind is hard to measure. Likewise, when I go to hot yoga, the difference between those yoga show-offs and myself is pretty good size too. I can't do some of the stuff they do. Actually, I cant do any of the stuff they do. Do I care? Not really.

Namaste.

Choose

In this life, we choose.  We choose our friends, our job, our spouse, where we live and how we live.  Our choices define us. When I was in High School, the kids were identified by which group they were in. You might not have known a kid's name, but you always knew which group he was in. You could pick out which group a kid was in by his clothes, by the way he talked or by the people he hung out with. It was like we were were wearing signs on our chest that described the salient facts of our lives. My sign would have read “My name is Mike. The groups I belong to are TheJocks and TheFarmersKids. I am sixteen years old. I am an underachiever.”

At my school, there were three or four big groups and a few smaller ones. The big groups, with lots of kids in the group, were TheJocks, TheStoners and TheStudents. And BandKids. None of the other groups liked the BandKids. It was like the BandKids all had the plague. But, that was thirty years ago. I am pretty sure that things have changed and the BandKids are popular now.

There were lots of little groups, like ThePoorKids, TheFarmersKids and TheFFAKids. I am just guessing here, but I bet there aren't more than ten or twenty schools outside of Iowa where TheFarmersKids and TheFFAKids were two separate groups. In case it isn't obvious, I should say that I grew up in a farm town. We had kids that drove tractors to school. Tractors. It wasn't an every day event, but once I was walking through the parking lot and I saw Dawn Patnode's brand new Datsun 240z parked next to Dave Walker's dad's twenty year old Massey-Ferguson tractor. The Massey-Ferguson was red. And a piece of crap. I don't remember what color Dawn's car was, but it was brand new. The rest of us rode the bus or drove our Mom's Oldsmobile to school. Dave and Dawn must have lived in homes without Oldsmobiles.

On my first day of High School, I was placed into two groups, TheJocks and TheFarmersKids. I was in TheFarmersKids because my dad was a farmer, which seems obvious, but that group was unique because it was the only group that you didn't volunteer for. If you wanted to be in TheStudents, you would skip woodshop and take AP math and maybe wear a bad sweater. Those kids made a choice. If you wanted to be in the TheFFAKids, you bought a blue corduroy jacket and went to the monthly meeting. But TheFarmersKids, we were marked at birth. Most of us lived in average houses, but our houses weren't in neighborhoods or on cul-de-sacs, our houses were all on dirt roads.

It is a little known fact that over ninety percent of farmers houses don't have lawns. Not many people know that. Most of the farmers houses were just stuck down in the middle of an orchard. The lawn would cut into the productive land so farmers, being what they are, they go without lawns. For most farmers, a lawn is strictly a financial decision. Our family had plenty of room for a lawn, but my Dad thought it was a waste of time and money to water and mow a lawn.  I thought that was weird at the time, but I have a lawn now, and I think it's a waste of time and money. I hate it.  I think that is a farmer trait, and while I am not currently a farmer, I was.  I wonder if that makes my kids TheFarmersKids, once removed?  Not sure about that and I don't know where to look it up.  Google has nothing on that topic.

A lot of TheFarmersKids wore jeans that had holes in them from working in the orchard. We all worked after school and on weekends for our Dads. Sure, we all were paid, but we were paid thirty cents on the dollar.  I guess the rest was deducted for rent.  One of the kids at school always came to school smelling like diesel oil, which immediately qualified the entire family for TheFarmersKids, cum laude status.  But, here was the rub; his dad didn't have a farm or work on a farm. His dad was a fall down drunk, but the kids in his family all worked on the neighbors orchard to keep from starving, so they were in TheFarmersKids group, but only held non-voting membership.

You could switch groups if you wanted to. If you got cut from the basketball team, and you liked to smoke dope, you could joine TheStoners. TheStoners didn't have a big prerequisite list to gain full membership, other than maybe a Bic lighter and I am not sure you had to prove you actually owned a lighter. I think you could say your Mom took it away and still get in.

Andy was one of my best friends, he was in TheStudents group and his girlfriend was in TheCheerleaders group. TheCheerleaders acted like they were in TheJocks group, but we hated TheCheerleaders. They served no useful purpose.  We liked TheStoners. TheStoners were a lot more fun. If we held meetings, we would have voted TheCheerleaders out and TheStoners in.

No matter which group you chose, you had to be in one. It wasn't an option to not be in a group. If you weren't in a group, you defaulted into TheLeftovers. If you were in TheLeftovers, it really meant you had no friends, or if you had friends, your friends were in TheLeftovers. Nobody wants to have leftover friends.

It's amazing to me now, but I still associate those people that I knew in high school by the group they were in then. I don't mean to imply that the person still qualifies for group status. Most don't. None of our Dads still farm, but I am still in the group. I think that is how the caste system got it's start. If I lived in a country with a functional caste system, I would be an Untouchable and my kids would be Untouchables.  This stuff stays with you for life.

The wheel turns and history repeats itself. Today, we choose. Do what you will, but choose something. For now, I choose to be in TheTriathlon group and I have an Ironman event always on the horizon. I like being in that group. The people in TheTriathlon group are fun. The lifestyle is healthy. I mean, except for your knees, the lifestyle is healthy. Gaining membership doesn't mean you have to do an full Ironman before you can get in the group. Just start training.  Or do a Sprint. Do an Olympic. Whatever. Choose. I fell into TheTriathlon group by accident. I thought I was going for a beer with friends but they lied to me and made me run three miles and throw up; In the end, it doesn't matter how you get there, it only matters that you chose to do it. 

There is a great line from the movie “The Shawshank Redemption”. One of the characters says, “get busy living, or get busy dying”. Words to live by.  I read that quote to my wife, she reminded me I was going to die in either case.  Killjoy.

If you want to be in the group, just show up. We take everybody.  Even BandKids.

Choose.

Simon Bar Sinister

Due to some genetically derived character flaw that was unfortunately passed down from many generations of low functioning social deviants, interpersonal relationships are a challenge for me. I struggle in group situations. There is always some guy in a group setting or at a party who can tell stories, or who can tell jokes or pick up women. Everybody loves him.. That's not me. There is always some guy who knows everybody's name. That's not me. I am the guy at the party in the corner who makes friends with the dog.  I was told I don't play well with others. Guilty. I relate well to food, not people.

Do you remember that 'Twilight Zone' show where the guy wakes up and finds he is the last person on earth? It was a pretty good TZ and it made you think. What would I do if it happened to me? How would I handle that situation? I thought about it. For thirty years I have thought about it and here is how that would play out: I would steal a Mustang GT 390 and drive like Steve McQueen in 'Bullitt'. I would move into a house owned by somebody famous. And, I would eat cheeseburgers all day and not worry about what I looked like. I think that would be an ideal situation for me. It could happen.

My wife and several of my more outspoken friends have mentioned to me that I might have lost a small bit of my cognitive function over the years. They said I am getting forgetful. They even said I repeat myself. I don't believe it. Liars. All of them. Liars. They even said I repeat myself.

I ran seven miles today with my trusty dog Rin-Tin-Tin. It wasn't a bad run I guess. I ran most of it, but I have to admit I walked a bit too.  I credit my walking to the dog and his poor running technique.  He can't handle my pace.  It makes me think about the diametrically opposed training methods that I have heard about. Here they are in no particular order:

Theory one is supported by a friend of mine and a Youtube video I saw, so you know it must be good. It goes like this. If you train with long slow distance runs, then you will race a long slow race. You can't expect to race fast if you haven't run fast in training. What you do is a lot of 800 yard sprints, with a minute rest or two minutes rest between them. Add to that a bunch of mile repeats. Run a mile, walk a minute, run a mile, walk a minute. Do that for an hour with negative splits. Makes sense, but it means the training runs you do are going to be short. You can't sprint for three hours straight. I cant anyway, so I don't know how that works in a Ironman. I mean, really, you do sprints in training, you end up running on fumes at the thirty minute mark. So what do you do for the other three hours of that training session?

Theory two is of course lots of long slow distance runs. You train your body to run longer and longer distances. Its fine, but you end up at a certain pace. You train your body to take the distance, but not the speed.

Enough about training theory.  Even I am bored with that topic and I wrote it. Here is what I really wanted to talk about. In my first Ironman, my training partners and I all started together. I don't think we were holding hands like those cute little kids on the first day of kindergarten, but we might as well have been. We stood together at the starting line, shoulder to shoulder, ready to inflict maximum damage on ourselves and those around us. At the end of the day, my buddies all finished ahead of me, but they politely waited for me at the finish line. We had our pictures taken together, we had our families together, everybody was standing upright and smiling. We hugged the spots off our finisher t-shirts. It was great and made me think we were all twenty years old again. No injury or harm could befall us. We were impervious to pain. We jousted with failure and failure was found wanting.

In my second Ironman, one buddy was injured all year, starting with a broken arm and a pretty bad genital rash, another buddy pulled a hip out of whack and limped to the starting line, and a third buddy messed up a hamstring which turned black and blue and he couldn't meet the bell in round one.

At the end of the day, the three of us that were able to attempt the day ended up in the medical tent. No pictures were taken, for which we were thankful. We limped back to the rented house, wondering where our youth had fled. Not once did I feel like I was twenty. I think somewhere around mile seventy on the bike Simon Bar Sinister shot me with his most recent evil invention.  I got zapped by the 'Getting Older Than Most Of The Other Ironmen' gun.  Curse you, Simon Bar Sinister.  Curse you and your evil ways right to hell.

Cheesecake

I racked up 350 miles over the past two days driving to visit the extended family and share the Christmas experience with the people I love. I packed my wife and progeny and a few presents in the family truckster then hit the road, participating in the Christmas eve travel experience with drivers of both persuasions, gruntled and disgruntled. Why does everybody honk at me on Christmas eve? Its a mystery.

We got to my Sister's house, went to her Christmas eve party then spent the night in the barn. At least, its sort of a barn. Its really an apartment with a bedroom, kitchen and bath that is attached to her barn, so when you stay there, everybody says 'Did you stay in the barn?' Yes I did. Now, I don't know the technical difference between a barn and a manger, but I slept in one of them, and it being Christmas eve and all, I feel really pious.

On Christmas morning, we stopped at Starbucks on the way home to get some legal stimulants, but they were closed for the holiday. Apparently, during the holiday season, Starbucks employees spend the day with family. I chauffeur.

I start my training cycle for Kona on January second. Until then, I am eating as much cheesecake as I can jamb down my trap. I don't know why. I think I read somewhere that cheesecake is workout power food. This time around, I am planning on doing more weight lifting, more yoga and more running than my past training cycles. I have a small hope that this gets me ready to show up in Kona and not embarrass myself. Its a pipe dream, but it's my pipe dream and it's all I have.

Do you ever watch those shows on the Discovery Channel showing how the icecap is melting and a mommy polar bear stands on a tiny chunk of ice and cant feed her baby polar bears and they play sad music and ask you to send money? I watched about four seconds of one of those and changed the channel. I don't need more depression. I ran today and that is enough depression for a whole herd of polar bears. When I ran, it was cold and it was raining and I ran slow. And my knee hurt. My knee hasn't hurt in a year and it sucked to run today.

 I think I am in purgatory. If I lost some weight I would be OK or if I ate more cheesecake power food, my knee would feel better, but I am stuck in this middle ground and that isn't good for anybody.  Lose weight or eat more cheescake power food?  What to do? What to do?

For Christmas, I ordered some new 2XU compression shorts.  For me. Then , I ordered new, guaranteed to make you faster Brooks size 13EE. Again, for me. And my cycling bibs were worn down, so I ordered up some of those too. Beat that.

I am doing the Kona half and I am 90% sure I am going to sign up for the Lake Stevens half. Its gonna be a big year.

Breath

Sometimes we need to look in the rear view mirror to see something real about ourselves. It's the story of my life, and I think maybe a few others suffer from a similar optically flawed self reflection. We see ourselves as we wish we were, not as we are. We see others clearly, but the one person we should know the best, we know the least. Crap. I hate that.

Impatience:  When I was fifteen, I couldn't wait to turn sixteen so that I could drive. I just blew through that year without taking the time to enjoy it. I spent all my effort trying to get away from my stupid parents, my idiot teachers, my lame friends. I didn't have a plan other than just get as far away as possible and I thought if I could get a license, it would all work out. If only I could get a license, all of those lesser humans that were holding me back from my limitless potential would then realize their error and let me go be king of..something. It seemed reasonable at the time. I breezed through that year and it was really a waste. When I turned sixteen, I got my license, I got to drive and nothing changed other than I had to work every spare second to fund my new automotive addiction. I didn't get the freedom I wanted, but I did waste what could have been a great year.

Fear:  On the day I was married, I was just trying to get through the day without killing the new family. I might have enjoyed the day if I hadn't been so eager to just get it over with. In retrospect, I now realize I was afraid of just about everything. Marriage to someone I didn't really know. Commitment and all that that implied. Sharing a toothbrush and a toilet seat. No way was I letting somebody use my toothbrush or my personal toilet seat.  I was, and I remain committed to a life built on below average intellect, but I was smart enough to know that while I didn't know what responsibility was, it was a really bad thing and, much like gonorrhea, and should be avoided at all costs.
All these things are bad things.  Commitment, sharing, responsibility.  All bad.  On my wedding day, I was locked up with fear and I missed what could have been a really good day.

I could do it better:  When the kids were five, I used to hate Saturdays. I had to miss college football, and I am still bitter about that. You only get so many football Saturdays, right? I had to drive the kids to a soccer game that they completely screwed up. I mean, if they have just listened to me they would have scored like six goals each. "Kick the ball into the net.  Kick the ball into the freakin' net!"
No, wait, I have a better idea. Why couldn't I play instead?  I could have kicked ass. I got game, right? Why do the kids get to play every freaking Saturday while I suffer on the sidelines watching them miss another goal. And another. Let me play. I pay the bills. I should at least get to sub in.  I could run circles around those five year-olds.

A month ago, I did Ironman AZ. When you do yours, here is what not to do.

Impatience:  Don't just rush through it, hoping for a better situation when it is over. It doesn't get any better. What do you hope to improve on? The day is one and done. It doesn't get any better, so take a minute to enjoy it.  You aren't going to be blowing a sponsorship opportunity. I am not saying you should pack a lawn chair and take a nap.  I am saying you can compete and enjoy it along the way.  The family is there, friends are there, people you have never met before are cheering for you until they lose their voice. What could be better? Enjoy every minute. Every second. Are you in pain? Embrace it. Are you feeling frisky?  Throttle back there big guy and don't event think about picking it up past your race plan pace.  You have a race plan, right?

Fear:  Don't be afraid of what you don't know. Nothing bad can happen. Suck in some water on the swim? Maybe. So what? Crash your bike? Maybe. You will just pick yourself up and carry on. And you will have a great scar to show your friends. Run until you barf? Probably. So what?  Nothing bad will happen that you can't fix.  Just know that even though it is new, it's nothing to be afraid of.

When I was training, I spent a lot of mornings at the pool. 5 AM, swimming laps at the stupid pool. It sucks and I hated it.  How many times do I have to do that?  I spent a lot of days running ten, twelve, fifteen miles. I hated that.  Before I did it, I was afraid that Ironman would just be one long, bad training day. It isn't. I don't know why but it isn't that at all.

I could do it better:  Really? You can win? You can beat everybody else? Then do it. Don't talk about it, do it. In the meantime, while you travel back from fantasy land, realize there are some really good athletes that are getting beat by better athletes. If you hang your hat on having a better race than your buddy, you are going to be disappointed.  You can do what you can do, and a little bit more.  Do that.

In the meantime, enjoy your day. Smile. Ironman is your day. It's put together with one idea; to let you achieve something bigger and better than you have known before. Fill your lungs with it. Breath it in.   

The Year Behind, Kona Ahead

Six months ago, my employer sent me to Phoenix for a week. I was told to pack a bag, catch the Sunday red-eye and not return for five days. I learned later that the fiscal quarter was approaching and the company thought I would do less damage to the stock price if I wasn't in the office distracting my co-workers. I think that was a win-win. Everybody wins. I got to go hang out in the sunshine and the Dow-Jones didn't fall off the cliff.

One of the great things about the upcoming new year is the opportunity it affords us to participate in a short period of self-evaluation; we can conduct a calm, rational review of our successes and failures. Perhaps we might identify areas where we fall short and set in motion a plan to improve our lot in life. Its a good thing. For instance, you might look at the past year, realize you could give a bit more to a charity, or you could stop beating your wife or maybe refrain from flipping off old people who made you two minutes late for work because they were crossing the street with a walker. Whatever is appropriate for you.

While I was thinking about that, I had another thought; What are the defining moments in our lives and what do we do to control how those moments impact us? For instance, and this is just a what-if, what if you see a car crash and a person lying in the road not breathing? Do you conduct CPR? Or just drive away? And if you do choose to put on your good Samaritan hat, and you are performing CPR and look up to see that the hearse was in a fender bender dumped this three days dead body on the street? Do you keep going with CPR?

For myself, some of my life defining moments are, in no particular order,

1. Finishing my first Ironman

2. Finishing my second Ironman

3. Watching this when I was a kid, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf3mgmEdfwg
I am not sure how that defined my life, but it's darned funny.

Last week, I went to a 7am spin class with buddies. The very reliable car thermometer registered a frosty 9 degrees Fahrenheit on the way to class. No problem, we are going to be in a spin room and it will be a human-tolerable 68 degrees. For some reason, we had the front door open during class and I suffered frost bite. Or, maybe it just felt like frost bite. Whatever, it was cold. I guess I am OK now.

I ran twice this week. My right ankle is swollen and refuses to participate in any athletic actions for the next three days. And I have a blister on my left heel. Sigh.

168 days until the Kona half.

Holiday Beginnings

I was at a pre-Thanksgiving-pre-Christmas party last night. There were about thirty people there and for the most part, they were really nice folks. There were some pretty good Scooby Snacks, chips and dips and cheeses, candy and other stuff that I didn't need. They even had a stack of deep fried egg rolls. Those egg rolls got scarfed down pretty fast and I only got one. I was rooting around for a second one, but I got shoved aside by somebody hungrier than me.

It was a BYOB party. As soon as we got there, we found a wine opener and popped the cork on our B, and when that was gone we started in on somebody else's B. Now that I think about it, I think we went through three or four B's.

Everybody was chatting away about something or another, I sort of lost track of the topic and quit listening. At that point somebody, and I am not sure who, but somebody mentioned something about Ironman. It might have been me. Anyway, I found myself the center of attention, pontificating to those around me on the wonders of all things Ironman. It's like the joke

Q: How do you know if somebody is an Ironman?

A: Just wait a minute, he will tell you all about it.

One of the people at the party asked me what my finishing time was, I told her and she said that she heard the winner finished in eight hours and change and then she asked why I finished so far behind him. I didn't have a very good answer so I said I would have been faster but I got tired. At that point, I stopped talking about Ironman and started watching the football game.

About a month ago, I decided I wanted a pastrami sandwich. Since I was pretending to be in training for Ironman, I didn't get one, but I did promise myself that I would get one after Ironman. So yesterday, I went to Cash and Carry and bought an eighteen pound brisket. I am going to corn it for a week or two then smoke it to make pastrami. An eighteen pound brisket is actually about twelve pounds of meat and six pounds of fat, so I expect it to net out at somewhere around thirty bucks a pound. I promise, I wont post a picture.

If I didn't mention it before, I am already signed up for the Kona half in May. I don't know what to expect, other than I probably wont win. I guess as far as places to start my training, that is as good as any.