Half marathon

Before the race: I'm locking my door to leave and a neighbor walks by with his dog warning me that it's all ice out there. I think "I'll be fine" and head out. The cab won't pull into the driveway and i mini-step to get into teh car. Seriously you don't see me having trouble? On the way I see people hobbling on ice.
Thoughts: no PR in this, just get through safely. Chat with other runners. everyone agrees these are not pr conditions. some debate whether they will end at 10k rather than doing a full half marathon.

I see all sorts of people in warm gear. I do not have said warm gear. I dressed not to get sweaty in the cold. I might get cold? uh oh.

Thoughts: holy fuck this is disorganized. They didn't consider what 5,000 runners would do in this space. People walk through the crowd shouting instructions that contradict what the DJ announces once you get closer to the starting line. Whatever! I have a chip!

.5 mi in - i automatically start running in the grass off to the side for better traction. immediately start passing people.

1 mi in - calves do their weird tired thing. I tell them to relax.
When i cannot be on the grass this is terrifying. Everyone is slipping into each other and holding on for dear life.

2-4 mi. notice all the warm gear i saw at start tossed off to the side of the path. I remember who was wearing what in some cases! I feel fine.

Mile 6: WHERE THE FUCK AM I? What just happened? Hips are starting to say "no" I tell them to relax and keep going.

Mile 8: knees complain a bit. I tell them to relax. Stop at a water station but don't really need to stretch.

Mile 9-11: cheer on other runners. YOU CAN DO ANYTHING FOR 2 MILES!

Starting at mile 10: i feel super strong! keep hitting patches of black ice and swear like a sailor. But i'm trucking and i feel good.

I want to sprint the last quarter mile but it's all ice. Really? you couldn't salt this bit? All through the race i've been crafting a nasty email to race organizers. But I know this is silly. I signed  a waiver and it's on me to run or not. They do not care about safety, they care about their event.

Finish: 2:23. If it weren't for icy conditions i could have totally pr'd this race. I feel super strong. I don't get as sore as in the past. I take my strength as the reward and move on. Now I know what running a half in ice is like. Now I know that i can wash out mud but not injury.

Spending the next two days tied to a computer for work lead to some odd soreness in my buttox. Like it really hurts. But it responds easily to acetaminophen which tells me it may only be swelling, not a tear of any kind.

I have to get help with planning and doing these sorts of things or i may hurt myself. almost ready to join Mo's training group - if he'll have me.

Disappointment

I won. I won 4/5 of my indoor triathlons. One of them was done by points and I somehow edged out someone with a better bike and run than mine. One of them I go down on record as having come in 4th (first in age group but 4th female) because they counters confused my bike time with another racer. Race officials refuse to fix it and give me just lip service.

I shouldn't care because I know what I achieved and the point isn't some piece of base metal with a sticker  on it saying I was first. The point is that I have come off the blocks strong from my off season.

But I worked for it. It's MINE. That recognition should be MINE. There's a selfish child in me screaming. I told the people at FFC I would never do one of their indoor triathlons again. Like they care.

I get the "so"? reaction when i tell people...correction...when i tell MEN. It's as if I should be grateful for any little thing. I should be wildly grateful that I'm allowed an equal stab at any athletic achievement.

And i sit here with a migraine, sore legs, some weird pain in my backside wondering if I should just stop now. I could sign up for another race... but what if this little pain isn't gone by then? Fear. Fear sabotaging a dream. Am I doing this to myself? Am I making myself injured? I half think the migraine is my body's way of screaming STOP. Stop and let me sleep for christ's sake.

We have no time for sleep. Keep going.

shoulds

I should have rested the day before so I wasn't so tired in the pool.
I should have not messed up getting the treadmill up to speed.
How is that girl running that fast? What is her age?
How is it all the work I do and I'm still a slow swimmer - but I was catching up with that gal wasn't I?

When will I have a gauge of performance that does not include comparison to other people?

.44 mi swim,
6.4 mi bike
1.72 mi run.

Not bad results. Just...very typical Caroline results. Well, what did I expect? I AM Caroline! I keep going to the website looking for the rankings. Not uploaded yet, nope. UGH! I have to remember that the run and bike numbers are better...even the swim is a bit better for me. And I'm a year older. And I was tired because I had swam a mile and a half the night before.

Guy next to me in the pool looked like the character on a bottle of Mr. Clean. Holy shit. He was beautiful. But I look at that in a way not as if I want to have that as much as to be that. What would it be like to have a torso that strong? What would it take to have that?

the suck 1

Somedays this sucks.

5 laps from the end of of a 70 lap swim (two miles) & I get the WORST cramping in my legs. Two and a half laps from the end I get such a painful cramp that I cannot swim and I cannot bend my leg back into normal position. There is my left leg stuck stiff in an unrelenting ballerina pose. My ankle won't bend even when I put my full weight on the leg. Finally I un-snap it. I finish. Damn you I finish! My leg still hurts from that cramp two days later.

Salt. Pickle juice. electrolytes. Magnesium. Magnesium Calcium Potassium. Stretch. Hydrate. The internet is full of solutions. I actually find the pickle juice one a bit interesting. The salt theory very much interests me. What's not working? little bottles of stuff that is supposed to treat muscle cramps.

What's not working? The questions that creep in. This is such a big goal. This is such an expensive undertaking. Are you sure? ARE YOU SURE? Even the voices in my head, usually game for any manner of stupidity, are fighting me.

Having a goal that looks a bit, ok a lot, scary is no reason to not reach for it. Lots of scary goals in history books. Easy to forget how frightening getting in a tiny wood ship and sailing into a  blue sea must have seemed back when no GPS guaranteed a destination at the other side. Easy to forget how easy it would have been to shut one's mouth, "live humbly" and not be the holy one, the buddha, the christ. Once it becomes black and white photos in a history book it is easy to forget how terrifying it must have been to face police, mobs, firehoses, burnt crosses, drive-by shootings, and white robed goons in order to simply declare one's humanity.

Pictures make it all feel inevitable. "Of course humans went there, did that, said that." None of it was preordained. None of that great stuff went off into the ocean, up into space or deep into the heart without fighting the "flesh". There is no place for sweat on these pages. There is no room for doubt. There is often no mention of those wee little things that, had they been different, would have sent history spinning in another direction.

A mediocre painter from Austria gets into art school. The twentieth century becomes an era of peace.

A man in a hotel in Akron takes a drink at the hotel bar instead of making a phone call. Over the next 80 years, millions of people live in misery or perish because two men did not meet that night in 1935 to birth something brilliant.

Or not. Maybe it all would have found another way because it had to find a way. May be. So why not now? Why not me? It's just an Iron Man! Not rocket surgery.

I hear my mother's voice in my head. "Well honey, give it a try, then you will know." It's one of her few nuggets of support - possibly because I didn't tell her how long an iron man is! But she knows I love this and that's enough. That really is enough. Just to love it, not be pushing to do it. Even love the cramps.

There will be more suck. Just call this #1 and move on.

Rules of the good ship lollipop

One destination with many vehicles.

My destination shows up with all manner of candy coatings camouflaging it's nougat center. I hear them labelled "being at the top of my career field", "being a gold medal athlete", or "making a great living as an artist". But that tasty shell is not the truth - it's not the real destination. This has lead me into all manner of chasing the outsides (or at least the outsides that we think someone else has) and missing the real treat at the heart. Every destination is the same as if i were picking from a variety box of chocolates to find them all filled with cherries. The aim is to create, express and experience Who I Really Am and to allow the universe to shout through me that unique tune only my one voice can carry into a sour world.

There are abundant vehicles to that destination. 12 steps; 140.6 miles; 70 years; good ship lollipop; pick one - or all. The important thing is to get on and hang on.

• Don't let go when it dips through dark valleys - it may be time to rest.  
• Don't hop off in frustration if the ride seems to have slowwed down. Take in the scenery. 
• DO NOT KICK OTHER PASSENGERS OFF THE VEHICLE! When it's their time to leave they will be happy to go. 
• Don't hop off because it seems to travel through strange and smelly country. There are friends I haven't met yet living there. 
• Most especially - do not hop off the vehicle and look for an express line- all the while being convinced that there must be one because that person over there looks like they found it. All of the express trains in life only run backwards!

I say this because I look at the goal for this year and feel truly terrified and still excited by it. I know I won't win. I might not finish. The ironman race isn't the destination. It's a vehicle.

second

Second. I came in second. I had the fastest swim but... bitch got me by .9 mi on the bike and .4 mi on the run. I knew I could have run faster. If I had started faster on the run i could have caught up that distance. If my seat hadn't been failing me on the bike I could have done just that much better & made up the points.

Oh well, something to improve on. 2nd out of 17. 4th out of 22 if you include the men (why were there so few men?).

Did weights... is this enough of a challenge for today? I look up races and see the course maps and now I'm realizing what I've bitten off...what I've unapologetically chomped onto as a 2016 goal. I'm a bit terrified of this one. Good.

The lectures are already starting. Here come the "beware of over exercising!" and "are you going back into your eating disorder?" questions. Here come the comments asking why I'm not in my studio making art instead? Why don't I just do what I'm REALLY good at? Caroline the world needs you to be a person making art!  All editorials  mean well. Luckily the FeMale of the species has long grown accustomed to having people chase her about with their doubts all the while trying to broom up her dreams. The world will benefit more from me following a passion than from me already doing what I know how to do - what other people have decided that I'm "good" at.

"Why did you ever decide to start doing these?" I never decided to do triathlons. Not. Once. The desire was there the minute I heard the word. I just stopped saying "later" or "I can't" to the desire.

"Seek not to find yourself, but to create yourself."

First indoor Triathlon

January 10. First indoor triathlon of the season at DePaul's athletic center.

Swim: 21 walls in 10 minutes. Tempo trainer set at :93
Bike: 13.7 mi in 30 minutes on indoor spin bike set to gear 12. It's a super easy resistance but I'm not allowed to touch the red handle. Use clip shoes. Used app to do sprint intervals.
Run: 2.19 mi in 20 minutes. Started at 6.3 mph and got up to 7.1. Used app to do sprint intervals.

Found out about this race from Derrick at 6:29 am on Thursday. I was registered before 6:45 am. I love races. I love all the little winter races because I can train my swimming, biking, and running until I'm sore. But the only way to train for the mental state of racing is to race. And this is going to be a big year. This year I go for a full 140 iron man.

When I started with a coach in 2012 he talked about doing an iron man and I thought "oh hell no". But that's what a good coach does. He shows you that what you think you want in the immediate future (I'd like to swim the .5 mi of a sprint triathlon without getting a headache or sucking) might only be just a tiny taste of a lavish karmic meal of personal challenge and discovery. He saw an iron man in me and I thought he was stoned. Until now.

9:40 am: "It think you'll win this! You were the fastest woman swimmer at least. You were nice and consistent. All the others did what I thought they would and started out full blast and petered out. But you just stayed consistent. If the swim was 5 minutes longer you would have aced them." Those 3 tall men. That would have been fun.

I'm not an amazing athlete. Nope. When I tried to play sports in high school I ended up playing bench. But I signed up season after season because that cross and closeted lesbian coach was saying things that were sticking with me. (still do...wish I could thank her). I wasn't getting a ton of support for trying to be an athlete in a historically bookish and musical family. Mom would race from work to pick me up from a game when her turn to drive the carpool came, but she never made it to watch one. I think she might have wanted to but the other girls in the car irritated her to death. Dad was all silent ridicule - laughing at me for running around country roads to train in the summer. I'm still a bit flabby and slow.  I win some smaller races. I placed in the top half of the half iron I did last summer. But when I hit Chicago, "where the world comes to race", I landed in the lower third.

How could I possibly go for something as daunting as an iron man? Why now? I may still be a bit  slow. I may have more talent in my veins for bookishness and musicality. But now, I am a champion because I choose to see myself as one.

10 am: "I think it would be good to hook you up with a nutritionist. I'm concerned with the whole person because that is what you bring to the starting line. " Coach short circuits the voice in my head telling me I should take fat burner pills. THAT voice. That cucaracha who likes to crawl out of filthy mental corners to infect my thinking.  I know how it feels. It tells me to do something and not tell anyone. Nice try cucaracha. I know to shine a light on that shit today.

I choose to carry myself as a champion because I have a passion for competing with last year's time. When I approach the pool, the gym, or the bike I ask myself "what would a champion do today?" I answer that by making myself a little more uncomfortable with each training. There are no champions in the comfort zone. I choose to call myself a champion in 2016 because I choose to take on the work of training my thinking as much as my physique.