Feeling Awkward and the OSM

From time to time, we all find ourselves in situations about which we may feel slightly uneasy. I was reminded of this by the recent World Triathlon Corporation's Ironman Access program launch and almost immediate rescinding of that program after considerable customer outcry on social networking sites. I've said my piece on this issue elsewhere...

But what I am interested in is that moment of discomfort. That instant when an individual (or a corporation's CEO) has an OSM -- an oh shit! moment. Everyone has had these. Something that seems like such a good idea at the time, actually turns out to be the worst of all possibilities.

Think of how you felt while getting stitches after using the pocket knife to tighten a screw. Or standing awkwardly, alone, after sharing an anecdote with someone whom the anecdote was actually about! Or, realizing that 300m into a mass swim start that maybe going full speed and keeping up with the leaders wasn't such a good idea, especially with more than 3km more to go. Or, my favourite, having your partner photograph someone who is not your partner straddling you in the cockpit of a car.

I've had more than my fair share of OSMs. Some of them in triathlon, and just as many, if not more in the dress-up, adult world. What intrigues me is that the moment of realization is not after the gaff has occurred. For me, the OSM happens just before the damage is done.

As I'm forming words in my mouth, but have not yet recruited my larynx, I have found my self inexorably hurtling towards uttering something that should never, ever have left my lips. It is like a train wreck. Everything is in slow motion. It actually feels like I've left my body and I'm looking down at the show. The verisimilitude is stunning. Sometimes it is even in 3D! What always whips me back into reality is the sudden sick feeling in my stomach, the unexplainable clammy hands and the palpable feeling of sickness that floods my blood stream riding shotgun with the adrenalin release. 

In my life, OSMs follow patterns. I see them coming. It is like Tourrettes but with a built-in early warning system. When I pay attention, I can stop them before anyone but my inner self notices. No damage is done. And actually, sometimes I may even learn from the only-in-my-head experience.

I'm in the middle of an OSM right now. I have very few definitive races planned for 2011, no set training plan, no regimen to follow. I've been sticking to a training plan for the past four years. This year...zip!

My OSM? Oh shit! I'm starting to gain weight, I'm sleeping too much and not very well, I'm eating the wrong stuff - at the wrong time and I'm becoming more and more lethargic in my own sluggishness.

At the height of my Ironman training two years ago, I could tell, when on my bike or on the run, if something was about to go wrong. I had become so attuned to my body that I knew that a slight feeling of confusion and lack of conviction meant I was running on empty. A quick jolt of carbs had me back in form withing a couple of minutes. Similarly, a twinge in my quad while climbing out of the saddle reminded me that I was pushing too hard and maybe I was running a little low on electrolytes.

Just days before Halloween, I look in the mirror and find that I've started wearing a scary costume that I haven't worn in years - I'm dressed like a couch potato, albeit a sweet one, I'm told.

This is my OSM! It is time to change my course, and alter it before it becomes my reality. Some may call it a wake up call. I think it is the end of T3 for me. It is time to HTFU and get back to living the lifestyle that works. Back to training tomorrow.

Training for what? Training for life.

Leaving Footprints.

In a different era -- BTE -- before triathlons existed – at least in my consciousness – my sport of choice was walking. I used to walk everywhere. I grew up in a place where the transit system was cheap, convenient and efficient, yet I often would start the day a half hour early and walk the few extra miles or 5 to get to where I was going.

Walking was my outlet, my time with myself – a time of pure and simple self-sufficiency. With such a history of walking, it was no surprise when good friend, SP, suggested we explore hiking the Appalachian Trail, that I fell for the idea. 

It has not occurred to me, until now, how back then, decades before I knew anything about chaffed nipples, I was learning about pacing, endurance and mental toughness.

 

Thinking back to that glorious time of self-sufficiency, dried food and iodine water purification tablets, I learned a lot about myself – during that gloriously challenging month clambering and hiking among the rhododendron, wolf spiders, moonshiners and invisible bears on the Tennessee/North Carolina portion of Appalachian Trail.

Preparing for that trip involved countless planning meetings at Dunkin Donuts pouring over maps and supply lists and equipment catalogs and bus routes trying to plan for the big excursion. The parallels between how I approached this and my current race prep are unmistakable, except of course, there is no Dunkin Donuts where I now live and I prefer to not take Greyhound to race sites.

On the training side, the tools were different, but the methods and theory were no different than what I have done for Ironman.  I would fill my pack with books – 70 pounds worth and walk for hours and hours up and down city hills, uptown, downtown and anywhere that seemed would be a challenge in my urban landscape.

I would try different socks and shirts and pants. I practised walking with and without water.  I would try granola bars and GORP and Snickers bars. Occasionally, I even splurged on some Gatorade. When my legs or my back and neck started to ache from the strain, I would take a break for a day or two and ride my 10 speed.

And in so doing, I became more confident in my abilities and even a little cockier.  Even though, as a teenager, I was apprehensive about jumping on a bus and traveling so far from home, I was beginning to anticipate the challenge.

When we finally arrived and found our way to the trailhead, we were greeted with several days of non-stop rain. All my hopes and dreams for a great adventure into adulthood were dampening, like my wool socks. I still have my journal from that time and that section reads like the last words of a man forever trapped underground with supplies dwindling almost as fast as patience. 

This was the same experience I found myself in some of my first races. All of a sudden, 300m into the swim, wearing a third-hand wetsuit that was too big for me, I realized that my arms were already tired and I still had 1600m to go – just to finish the swim!

The nascence of the terms “suck it up, buttercup” and “Harden the fuck up” are unknown to me, but it is precisely those sentiments that got me moving. In Tennessee, where we were holed up in our tent for days, stupidly waiting for the rain to stop, I hiked up out of valley and realized it was only raining in the valley! 

In Morden, Manitoba, it was a kick to the head from another swimmer that made me realize that I was in a half-iron distance race and it just wasn’t going to get any easier. 

The interval between my Appalachian adventure and start of my life as an endurance athlete is just over 20 years. In that time, I moved and lived some great adventures and had wonderful relationships and found the love of my life and together we grew a family that I still have to pinch myself about.

At the end of some of my races, I feel great, but always find that I could have done better had I just pushed a little more, or spent a little less time in transition. This realization leaves me often with a feeling of a void – like I missed some opportunity. 

Looking back at the decades between my youthful adventures and my middle-aged athleticism , I don’t feel that void.  I can’t imagine getting to where I am now without having experienced what I did in those 20-plus years.  I am sure, on further reflection, I will also discover even more examples of experiences that made me HTFU and get on with it.

Just this week, I finally completed the tattoo on my ankle. I never really wanted a tattoo, but the accomplishment of three Ironman races created in me a need for some kind of footprint in sand of where I’ve been.   

This marker of where I’ve been reminds me of some words I first read many years ago while I was preparing for my Appalachian sojourn. 

It is reportedly a quotation from Chief Si’ahl, (c. 1780 – June 7, 1866), the leader of the Suquamish and Duwamish Tribes. His name, was anglicised to Seattle. Take nothing but memories and leave nothing but footprints, he is alleged to have said.

I took that line, apocryphal or not, to heart as I entered the wilderness with a sense of awe and respect. 

As I exit an entirely different sort of wilderness, I see the footprint in indelible ink that circles my ankle like barbed wire grown into the fleshy bark of a tree.  

I must keep stepping forward, making new memories, if I am to leave any more footprints in the sand.

Failure?...or this is where two dimensional reasoning gets you.

I was thinking about a high school geometry class earlier today. I spend a lot of time thinking about triangles. More specifically, I was thinking about points.

One point is a point in time/space. 
Two points make a line.
Three points create (potentially) a three-dimensional plane - although the math guru I spawned  would say: "but do not necessarily define a line -- they may not be collinear."
To summarize:  You need three points, at least if you are going to watch Avatar in 3D. You'll probably also need those geeky glasses too, though.

So after I sat down and let the blood rush back to my brain after these esoteric thoughts mathematical , I started to put into perspective a half marathon I ran on the weekend.  My goal was to finish in under two hours. I finished in 2 hours, 3 minutes and change. My personal best for that course is 1:58:48, my first ever run at that distance - and that course was 2:40 and change.

Ignoring the fact that I have been training for my first Marathon (two Ironman finishes don't count) at the end of May and am not completely focused on speed, I initially felt like I failed.

Of course I failed. All the other cool kids are running 1:40s or 1:50s...So what if I'm "big boned" and still running heavy and asthmatic and not very fast over long distances.  I still wanted to get from point A to point B in less than two hours, and I failed. didn't I?

Well. This is why I started thinking about geometry and Euclid, or was that Pythagoras - some Greek in any case. I became aware that my goals have been too two dimensional. I've been thinking about two points, when I should be thinking about three, or four or more.

My goals, as obtuse as they may sometimes seem, are so much more than point A to point B. They involve so many more dimensions, including time - but not necessarily finish time. They include building a healthy life, growing with my family, shrinking girth, and genuinely learning from the journey.

When I crossed the finish line,  I was disappointed. But I have to look at all the individual segments or points of the run  including the points that I was running a 4 minute/km pace; the preparation for it;  the ongoing prep for the full marathon in May and the sprint triathlon in two weeks. Oh and the rest of life that never goes on pause.

I realize that this triangle may not be as easily defined as  a2 + b2 = c2, but it has more relevance to what I'm doing than I first assumed. 

For those of you that are mathematically inclined, you will recall that a sum of a triangle's angles add up to 180 degrees. As I was running 21.1k, preparing to run 42.2k, it became acutely obvious to me that I would be seeing that 180 number before the run...180k bike ride in late August. Coincidence? Hmmm.There are no coincidences!

It is time to pull up my big boy tri shorts and HTFU. I started this journey because I grew tired of looking like a cuddly rhombus. It is not individual races or goals of finish times that motivate me. It is doing the training and building structures, physical, intellectual and emotional where none previously existed. And learning as much about myself in the process as I can.

No, not failure. Eureka!
I'd better get out of the bathtub now.