Ironboy Rules!

As of May 23rd 2007 I was still telling my friends "I'll never run a marathon." This was usually the comment that came right after "I will never, ever go in an Ironman!"

So I was wrong.

Last June I found myself saying "yes" to one of my more persistent friends when he bulldogged me into joining his Ironcops For Cancer group, and eventually entering Ironman USA.

A year of training went by in the blink of an eye. The thought (threat?) of a 3.8 km swim, 180 km bike and 42.2 km run focused my triathlon training like never before. There were very few workouts blown off, or mailed in. I found myself getting up at 3am (just weeks into a brand new job mind you) to do gruelling indoor rides on my trainer. The pool - where I'm never comfortable - became my second home, and I fell even more in love with running.

I worked so hard at it all, that by early May of this year, I was happily making predictions in private about my sub- 12 hour Ironman!

It's funny how things change, and not always in a bad way either. In late May I ran my 7th Cabot Trail Relay in Nova Scotia. I took on the easiest leg I'd done in years, and promptly had my butt handed to me. It was a bit humiliating.

Then a week later, I joined a crazed bunch of tri-geeks at Lake Placid for "Epicman." It's a nine hour training day where we swam in 55 degree water for 45 minutes, rode the entire 180 km bike course in a cold, constant downpour and then ran until the nine hours were up. It took me 20 minutes to get my face in the water...the bike was a disaster...and my run turned out to be a 2 km jog, just to say I did it. It was humbling.

I had six weeks to try to reset my priorities. Time was no longer an issue. The goal was simply to finish this crazy thing, and hopefully, have a great run.

Two weeks before the race, my training partners weren't sure I was even going to show up. They were concerned about the number of rides, runs and swims I'd missed, and by how I'd slowly disappeared from their radar. I was concerned too...very concerned.

When we showed up on the Wednesday night before the race, I had all the stuff I needed. My body was fit and trained. I had a place to stay, and stuff to eat. And deep deep down, I was freaking out.

We swam the course on Thursday morning. My time was the best I'd ever put in on that distance. We rode on the run course. It felt great. Leading up to race day, I got in all the rides, runs and swims I'd need to boost my confidence. But I was still not ready.

Saturday, my wife and son showed up. Seeing them calmed me down, and also pushed my anxiety up. I couldn't fail in front of them. Now the stress was getting to me.

Race day, I got up at 4 am, which for me is sleeping in. I ate, talked a bit, then got a ride to the start. It was cloudy and cool, with no wind. We got into our wetsuits and slowly 2300 Ironwannabes slipped into the warm, clear waters of Mirror Lake. Just before the gun I got into a great conversation with a woman who works with the Elizabeth Glazer Aids Foundation in Washington DC. What she does was so much more impressive than doing a triathlon.

The gun went off. I stuck my face in and swam hard. There were hands, and arms, and feet, and legs and bodies everywhere as we all stroked our way to the turn buoy. Two minutes in, I stopped. I couldn't do it. I was having a full-blown panic attack with no more than 200 metres done in my swim. I tried again. No way. It's impossible to describe the feeling of intense dread that takes over. It was enough to make me entertain thoughts of swimming to shore and calling it a day. I tried again. Worse. Looking behind, there couldn't be more than ten people, and they seemed to be swimming just fine. Finally, after 20 minutes of stopping and starting, I got going. It was tentative, slow and painful, but I was moving forward. The the rain started. At first it was just a light shower, but by the time I hit the beach, it was a full-on downpour. Lap one took 57 minutes. That's about my slowest time ever on 1.9 km. I ran across the beach and back in for the second lap. Slowly and steadily my strength and courage took over, and I pulled out of lap two with a respectable, but way-slow 1:34 swim.

A quick 300m run in the rain to the change tent (after having my wetsuit stripped off by a complete stranger - oddly interesting) where I got into warm, dry bike clothes, and I was off to the races.

The bike started a bit squirrely. It's a very tricky, steep hill with a couple of sharp turns, and hay bails for those who get it wrong, just to get onto the bike course. After the long climb out of town, we had a rain-slicked hell ride down horrible pavement for the legendary descent into Keene. After fifteen minutes of thrills and luckily, no spills, I turned onto the most pleasant part of the course, wet, chilled and happy to be there. The entire first loop was uneventful. Volunteers and spectators were rain-soaked, but incredible. They yelled, cheered, and even held our bikes when we used the porta-johns. We were fed, bandaided and basically coddled unlike anything I've experienced in a triathlon, ever! I got into a kind of weird Zen on the ride. I talked to other riders (I never do that) and I looked around at the gorgeous scenery. For reasons I'll never know, I never once looked at my watch. Lap two was even more fun than the first. And all this with the rain coming down harder and harder every minute.

I finished the second lap, ran back to the change tent and got into warm dry running clothes.

Now for the last ten miles of the ride, my legs were feeling pretty bad. I found every hill harder than the last, and my speed just wasn't there anymore. So I was very surprised that my first steps felt awesome when I took off on my first-ever marathon. I had to pull my speed back at the one mile marker because my time was way under my plan. My wife had told me before the race "don't think about how far you have to go, just how much you've done." So when I hit the one mile marker I said out loud "one mile down...one to go." That kept me in it the rest of the way. I passed my wife and son twice on the bike and three times on the run. I swear I went faster, and felt stronger each time. By mile 10 I was the clear favorite for "most annoying athlete on the course." I badgered anyone who started walking to "run with me." I hammered up the hills, and down the other side. Water stop people were thanked, hugged and thanked again. As I passed the last water stop of the day at mile 25, I gave them a standing ovation. Then I took off hard for the finish line. Three people were in front of me with 200 metres to go. I put them away and had the best finish of my life.

I stopped at the line and just drank it all in for a few seconds. Then the nice people there asked me to walk forward ten feet to get my timing chip taken off, and to get my finisher's hat and shirt. Someone had already put a medal on me...wish I could remember that! I could barely walk after the finish. I left everything on the course. It was exhilarating!

The world looks a bit different to me now. I see more things as possible. I feel that I can achieve anything I put my mind to. I'm so ridiculously content.

I am an Ironman!

Happy Trails

I just got back from the Cabot Trail Relay Race in Cape Breton NS. Here are some observations from that experience:

Running is Easy

Compared to driving 14 hours just to get to Moncton, anything is easy. We headed out under cloudy skies, which just got worse as the trip went on. My co-driver got nailed for a $125 ticket by the Quebec Provincial Police just 20kms after leaving Ontario. Then the rain hit. The wipers didn't stop working for ten straight hours, some of which were pretty shaky considering how little one could see when stuck behind a water-spewing semi trailer. Then after a good night's rest, we did it all over again all the way to the Cape!

Plans Don't Always Work Out

Since I didn't have much time to run leading up to the race, I figured I could get a few quality jogs in before my leg of the relay. I didn't factor in the +3 Celsius temperature, with rain and fog, and ground so wet that you got two instant soakers just going out the front door! I also conveniently forgot that there would be scotch and beer. Neither of those two items encourage one to "go for a run."

Gas is Cheap

At least here in Kingston it is. We filled up at the Shell downtown at $1.23 per litre. It was $1.40+ in Quebec, about $1.26 in New Brunswick and $1.36 all over Nova Scotia, where the government legislates a one-price-everywhere policy. The spending money I withdrew before we left was gone before I knew it.

Running is Hard

I was in great shape for my leg of the race. I knew the terrain, the distance and what the conditions would generally be like. But there were a few things I didn't know such as: not warming up would mean I ran tight for the first fifteen minutes; coming down with a cold really does make it harder to push your body to the limit; and skipping that last-minute visit to the portapotty can be nearly fatal! I'd planned to make the top 15 and finished 15th. However, my time was slow, even by my standards, and I got beaten by a woman just ten seconds from the finish. And so it goes.

Good Times Don't Last

It seemed like the five days were over before they even started. Good friends, good music, good food and some pretty good running went by in the blink of an eye. But still, I'm glad to be back.

Fast is good!

I'm training to race Ironman USA this July. I am not an Ironman athlete, nor have I ever aspired to be one. As I've said in this blog, I'm doing this for the Ironcops for Cancer who I admire and support. I'm happy just to get the opportunity to experience and Ironman. I won't be racing to see what heights I can take my performance to.

That said, I don't want to suck at it!

On the contrary, I would really like to do well, and when I say "well," I mean "better than anyone would expect of me."

So I've trained. 3am wake up calls to get on my bike in the basement in the winter on a spinner, sweating like crazy, hammering out workouts that felt ridiculous. But I did them.

Swimming for 1 hour and a half in the pool, where I never like to be because I not only am not a very good swimmer, but because I also am afraid of the water. But there I am.

Running has never been difficult for me. That's because I've always been able to get away with trying just hard enough to do well.

So yesterday I put it all on the line and ran the Limestone 1/2 Marathon. Nothing new here, as I've done this many many times in the past. After pbing six years ago at 1:38 and change, I was happy to come in at or near that time every race. But this time it would be different.

This time I made it impossible for my usual "just hard enough" effort by telling everyone I knew of my 1:35 goal! No pressure. Now I HAD to come trough with something.

My friend Dalton is fast. He wins tris and running races. He always strives to get the maximum out of his performances. But two weeks ago he came down with a very bad strep infection, and then relapsed a week later. So as a recovering runner, he offered to pace me. I like a fool, accepted.

He and I were joined at the line by another Ironcop, Allyson who is much much faster than me, and so I knew the day was going to hurt. But I did it.

Dalton took us out at a steady but manageable pace, which we held until about 3 ks to go. And by the time I finished, dry heaving and barely able to process oxygen, I'd ripped 4 and a half minutes off my best-ever 1/2 marathon finish, and took home a medal in my age group.

Now I can go back to my steady, but not fast training. I can go back to pain-free workouts that will build my base, but not my speed. I can go back to working on becoming an Ironman. But I'll never go back to running any race "just hard enough."

Thanks Dalton and Allyson.

Green (with smoke and mirrors)

Tomorrow, you'll be blasted from all corners with Earth Day hype. Radio, tv, newspapers, and the internet will all be teaming with advice, guilt, fear-mongering and just about anything else that works so that they'll feel like they've done their bit to be at the leading edge of the environmental movement.

And whether it's the radio person showing up in their hot logo-d SUV at the groundbreaking for the new Green library branch in Calvin Park; or the TV mobile truck idling incessantly out front of City Hall or the tons and tons of colourful inserts in the local paper, or even the ridiculous over-packaging of yet another should-I-try-to-recycle-this-thing-when-its-obsolete? modem...it will all just prove how the media, as usual, will have you thinking that we created the entire environmental movement.

NBC is "green" all this week. Good for them. The paper here has a new "green" column that pops up several times a week. Love it! My own radio station and it's cluster jumps in every year with Pitch In Kingston, to do our bit to clean the city. Yay us!

I just wonder if the desired effect is happening, or are we in the media just making ourselves feel better by preaching a "tough" message to our users.

The roads are littered with crap that didn't have to be thrown there. Our city still dumps raw sewage into the lake and river. Gas prices are out of control, but talk to anyone and they'll tell you how "it's not like you can get by without driving."

I saw someone driving a Prius throw something from their window the other day. My family throws organic stuff in the garbage when the composter is just 30 metres from the house. We all drive buy junk laying beside the road...and keep on driving.

Tomorrow we'll all be talking a good game.

How many of us will actually have the guts to take things one step further...change our bad habits, and save this planet?

Geek or Nerd

I could never tell the difference between geeks and nerds. For my first ten years of school, I was probably one of the latter, then even though I worked very hard to change my image, there was still a lot of nerd showing through all the way to college.

Post-secondary education was Radio Broadcasting. Definitely geek. Though I read the liner notes on every recording I ever bought, which in hindsight is kinda nerdy.

Then it all changed. Suddenly I was one of those ultra-cool radio djs. Those slick pseudo-celebrity dorks who don't really have jobs, or at least job descriptions. I had finally pulled myself as far from nerdiness as my limitations would allow.

The fact that I had lots of extra time on my hands, lead me to reconnect with my inner jock, taking up golf, skiing, hockey, softball, running, swimming, triathlon, oh and Frisbee Golf (alright, Frisbee-anything is nerdy, no matter how jock-ey you think you are playing it...try describing your sport to someone who doesn't play it. If the word Frisbee is part of it...you're a damn nerd).

After all those years of having to know facts and formulae. After all that studying math and science, and politics and all that other uncool stuff, I was finally able to forget it all and just get out there and sweat!

And yet.

Golf just never made sense. No amount of reading, swing analysis or watching other golfers added to my results. It was as though one could just not think their way to a better game.

Skiing was pure joy. No thinking involved. This lead to my being excused from several hills, and eventually abandoning the sport. Softball was worse. The more I thought, the worse I got. My brain was best used in my eloquent vitriol, which was usually wasted on the opposing teams and unfortunate umpires.

Running clicked though. Biking too. And swimming...now there's a sport where no amount of physical effort will ever help.

Yes, triathlon combines three sports that take constant and exhaustive analysis, thought and discussion. Every footfall, every turn of the pedal, every degree of the stroke is a wealth of information (and misinformation), fed back to my far-too-curious mind. Can't keep up with the other runners? Get a heart rate monitor! Don't just use it though. Even better, read ever article ever written about the thing, then spend months putting together the way you SHOULD use it. Then when that all fails, declare that hr monitors are useless and should be shunned. Then buy a "better" one and repeat the above process.

Can't ride fast enough? Get a better bike. Wait! Spend at least three years of potential work time researching the exact bike that will make me a near-pro. Then spend the next seven messing with it to make it "better." Not to mention the need for at least a dozen different spin philosophies. Then when things are working just right, decide that you need a new bike.

Don't get me started with swimming. That much time spent with your face down in the water in near hypoxia has lead me to believe that I can actually think my way to the other end of the pool without actually moving my arms or legs. Oh yeah, the shaved legs that were meant to tear tenths of seconds off those swim times.

In a word after all the time I've spent cleansing the nerdiness from my being, I think I have finally become...a geek. Sigh.

The Planet Is Saved!

Saturday night the whole world came together in a huge show of support for what's becoming their favorite planet. For an hour, all of us shut down all the points in our house that drew power from the grid. We burned candles. We talked about the environment. Some even fondue-d!

For one whole hour.

Sixty minutes.

I really enjoyed it. The house was so quiet. The neighborhood was filled with people out walking as families, taking in that suddenly-brighter starlit sky. My family got into it too. My son commented that he liked the silence, and he grudgingly passed on watching the Habs/Leafs game (which, as it turned out, wasn't the result we'd wanted anyway). My wife said it made her much more aware of the "phantom power" draws around our house.

In the midst of Earth Hour, my sister called from Arizona. I asked her what they'd be doing when their turn came in an hour and she said: "what is it?" She said there hadn't been a word spoken in their rural corner of the state. I had to tell her the concept, to which she commented that it was "a great idea." Yet she was unsure as to why Earth Hour wasn't being promoted on any of their local media.

And that's where my cynical brain starts to get fired up. In Sydney Australia, Paris, Toronto, Kingston, Seattle or any other modern, post-industrial centre, we already get it! The people in charge (the Dick Cheneys, and the Stephen Harpers) privately have to admit that we need to change some things before all is lost, but they won't in public for fear that we'll suffer dire economic consequences, and worse...they'll fall from power. The public though, is showing that more and more, we really do get it.

But in the other world... In the parts of our planet where people have for too long suffered in poverty and oppression, and where in just the past decade they've begun to taste the possibility of a better, modern, more convenient way of life...in India, China, Brazil, wherever. In those places, all the awareness in the world about climate change, won't keep the population or their leaders from the status quo. In places where the media is used for little more than just a pr service of the government, the public will know only what the government wants them to know. Perhaps rural Arizona could be lumped in there, along with rural Alberta and a lot more places that are closer to home than we'd ever imagine.

Earth Hour is a great way to get the message out to ourselves. It's a really important exercise we should partake in on a regular basis to keep us on-task, to fix what we can with global warming.

But we've got to get the other world to buy in too.

Al Gore is making trips to India now to preach environmentalism. He's teaching small classes of local folks to get the message out to the masses, in hopes that the billion citizens of that country will be there with us. He thinks he can do the same in China (if he can turn that regime around in their thinking, he deserves a second Nobel). Perhaps he could take some shorter trips to Yuma, Cold Lake, and Tamworth to make sure we're all on the same page.

I laughed on Saturday night when I saw it. We'd already overloaded the grid for the few hours before "lights-out" by charging up our cell phones, Psps, laptops...whatever. Now here in the middle of our our of self-congratulatory hour of darkness, I saw who the true benefactors of this Earth Hour were. It was written in clear, easy-to-read font right on the package of tea light candles we were all burning: "Product of China."

Time to Commit

About a year ago my good friend Chuck the Cop talked me into joining his Ironcops For Cancer team. This was a group of motivated individuals who've decided to help raise cash for the Canadian Cancer Society by fundraising, and to draw attention to this, they compete in an Ironman triathlon.

4km swim...180km bike...42.2km run

I talk to quite a few people every day on the radio, and my family has been deeply touched by cancer, and I like to train with motivated people. So I had to say "yes."

Yes to long gruelling bike rides. Yes to swimming until my eye sockets puff out like an iguana. Yes to running long, slow, solitary runs. Yes to stinky, sweaty, filthy running/biking/swimming gear in piles near the washing machine. Yes to eating even more than I already do. Yes to constantly feeling tired. Yes to every joint in my old beat up body screaming at me to stop.

Perhaps if I'd paid more attention to what Chuck the Cop was saying to me, was that I was saying "yes" to actually RACING in the Ironman triathlon too!

4km swim...180km bike...42.2km run

After that finally sunk in, I started to slowly freak myself out. I've raced three 1/2 Ironmans in my short career, and none of them went well. I'm getting older, slower and no smarter, so how the hell was I supposed to turn it all around and finish one of the most challenging outdoor pursuits going?

Oh, and I've also gone on record as saying I thought Ironman "was a ridiculous distance." Oh, and that "friends don't let friends race marathons." I've never run longer than 30km at one time, and that was just last year, and it was long, and it was tough, and I swore I'd never go that distance again.

I used to ride at a respectable speed. Last year that all got away from me, and I found myself getting dropped by the other riders earlier and more often than ever.

Let's not even talk about the pool. I'm not a good swimmer. I'm not a mediocre swimmer. At best, I'm a bad swimmer.

4km swim...180km bike...42.2km run

By the end of last summer, I'd raced another 1/2 Ironman. My swim was so-so. My bike ride was dead-on what I was aiming for. My run blew big time. It was even slower than the last time I tried to do a half.

Another couple of races brought less than great results.

Then I got injured running.

Finally, I found every reason to not swim; not ride...just plain not do anything.

I went to a talk with Tony O'Keefe. Tony is a mutant. He races ultra-Ironmans. These take place over two days, and in them the athlete has to do basically double the Iron distance...which is ridiculous. And Tony is one of the best in the sport!

But I listened to what he said that night, and I listened very well. He told us all that we do this running and triathloning, because we want to be good at it. We want to beat our last time. We want to beat that person who finished in front of us before. We want to win in whatever way we can.

I thought about how I'd talked about the Ironman: Stupid distance. I'm not trained. There's no way I could pull it off. Don't have the time to commit to that. I've been injured. My bad friends made me enter. I realised what a load of crap that was. I wanted to do an Ironman race as badly as anyone, and I wanted to do it well.

I just didn't want to SEEM like that's what I wanted. I dreaded the thought of letting people down, so I was acting like it was something that was being foisted upon me. That way if things didn't go well, it wasn't my fault. And if I did really well, then I must be really special. What a crap attitude.

So, I went to the pool. The hated pool. The horrible, breath-stealing, humiliating pool. And I started swimming. 50 laps the first time. 50 laps that seemed like 500. Nice old ladies doing the breast stroke were passing me. I had to stop at the end of each lap and hold on to the pool deck to catch my breath. But I went.

And I stuck my bike on the trainer and rode. 1/2 Hour the first time. Didn't think I could get through another second, but I did, and I told myself that I 'd do the same thing at least twice more every week.

And I ran. I hurt, but I ran. It wasn't far, and it wasn't fast, but I ran. Funny thing is the injury went away, and I remembered why I do this silly sport: I love to run!

By the end of January, I was getting in the pool even on the days I didn't want to. I was riding the bike at a ridiculous time every morning (I work at 5am...you do the math), and I was saying "yes" to everyone who wanted to go for a little jog.

By the end of February, I was starting to see results in the pool. I was feeling better on the bike and my running was getting pretty smooth.

Now here I am about four months away from the race, and I feel like I'm on track. It's not just that I can train. I want to train. I'm having fun in the pool. The spins are giving me lots of time to catch up on my iPod and the runs wash away the stresses of the day.

4km swim...180km ride...42.2km run

It's not gonna be easy.

But it's what I want to do...and it's gonna be fun!