Friday 20 November 2009

Waiting is part of the transition


Waiting.

There's a lot of waiting in life.

From the moment of conception until someone turns the lights out permanently, it seems like we are always waiting for someone or something, or even ourselves to make something happen.

Take right now.
I'm waiting for the cold/flu sickness-thing to be purged from my body.
I've been waiting for days.

Not quite sure what I'm waiting for.

Well...

To feel better perhaps.
Or, I'm waiting for my T-cells to fight off the attacker - or less likely, give up the ghost and turn out my lights.

But, and here's the rub. I'm not really waiting.
I'm multitasking. I'm taking medicine, drinking fluids, resting, writing this blog, thinking about how I'm going to spring back, wondering about dinner...

I'm doing stuff.

Even if I'm immobile in bed, feeling sorry for myself, I'm still going forward - or thinking back and using that to look forward (as how good I felt last time I started to feel better after a cold).

So for the anxious triathlete waiting for the season to start, I ask: "when did the season ever end?"

Every day not training is a day preparing somehow for the very first time your hair gets that familiar and now comforting smell of chlorine.

Every day that you drive by a runner, you wonder when you can pull on your own shoes and feel the aches of the first few miles melt away to a middle distance bliss.

Every day you walk past your bike, hanging and lonely in the basement is one less day before you'll be back on that saddle and moving your feet in the circle of life - triathlete style.

This isn't waiting at all. It's all race prep.

Wednesday 18 November 2009

Looking forward from the depths of a cold.

So.
I'm sick.
Not the kind of sick that deserves any sympathy.
Just a miserable cold, or flu or something.

From this vantage point, shivering and feeling sorry for myself, I find it easy to look forward.

Ahead of me I see a third Ironman. A race where my run is not something that I just get through, but, part of the race that I actually race.

A race where the hills on the bike are no more challenging than the wind I see everyday on the prairies.

I'm looking at my limiters: speed, technique, climbing, body weight.

And balance. Always balance family and work and multisport.

I see this quite clearly.
But it could be the fever talking.