Days go by...time stands still.

So I'm now in the thick of the off season in the middle of a year that I am not pursuing any major events. Of course I'm already registered for the Great White North triathlon and the Queen City Marathon, the RPS Half Marathon and I'm considering the Gopher Attack...so, no major events. Sorta kinda...

I was doing a 750m time trial in the diving tank of the pool yesterday and thinking about races, and whether or not I will miss them if I don't register. Of course I'm doing the time trial because I'm considering a sprint aquathlon in March.

There is something you have to understand about doing laps in the deep tank of the pool. Usually, there are no ropes to calm the water. There seem to be more jets creating currents. And, of course, stopping and resting is considerably more complicated - especially since one can't stand and the bulkhead is a bit of a reach. All this makes for the closest thing to open water swim on this side of the of the outside.

So, I'm swimming in the deep tank thinking about the the Splash and Sprint - the adjacent picture is of me exiting (in the shallow end) of that race) - and I start to think about the relativity of time. This isn't too much of a stretch because, when I'm swimming, I can't really do any kind of math - how many laps I've done, how many back and forths equal 100 metres, what the hell those arrows on the swim clock mean?

Think about time passage in a race. Morning of the race,  time just seems to fly by...before you know it, you are already running late for getting to the site. Once you are there, however, things seem to go into slow motion. As if somehow time has been added to the clock - unless you forgot something, like to put on a wetsuit or go to the bathroom, and then time speeds faster than normal.

I've noticed the same phenomenon near the finish line. One km from that line, time blurs a little, as does distance. It seems that you have much more distance to travel, but with each stride or stroke, your pace surprises you. It is a much misunderstood phenomenon why people look at their watches at the finish line. It isn't because they want to know how well (or poorly) they did - it is because they are confused by what time their watches say and they are trying to synchronize it with the official race clock. Really!

But none of this is why I was thinking about time. I was thinking about what happens to time in the middle of the race. While you are halfway through the swim, or the bike ride. Or when you have just as much distance to run as you have already run. When you are far away from cameras and volunteers and spectators. Just your brain and that miscreant pile of flesh, bone and sinew that comes along for the ride. 

It is precisely at these moments when time somehow becomes infinite. You have no time to waste, but you have lots of time to spend. If you speed up you will have more, if you slow down you will have less. But you will only see how much you have saved or spent at the end of the race. Before that time you are floating...timelessly. There is is nothing but possibility,

The Dairy Queen I passed in Morden, MB

I remember doing on HIM and passing a Dairy Queen and thinking, I could just jump in for a Blizzard and I could still finish the race in good time. Now, part of that reasoning was fatigue-induced delirium, especially since I don't overly like Blizzards. But the point holds that time had become difficult to quantify.

It is a bit like walk breaks...It doesn't seem like you are taking up that much time when you walk during the run - until you look at your final time. While you are walking, it is as if time is infinite - that's why they feel so good, it almost seems like they are going on forever - until someone passes you, or some "friend" sees you and yells at you to "move your fat ass!"

It is these timeless moments that I relish the most during races. Not the fat ass part, but the being in the moment, losing the sense of time and hearing and felling nothing but what's going on inside and beside me.

Will I miss not doing as many races this year? Oh yeah! But I won't miss the start or finish, I will miss the in between. It is a bit like a sandwich. For me all the best parts of the race are what's between the two ends. That is where I learn, that is where I grow, that is the most painful part - but the part that I remember most.

The swim will segue into a highway. Anyone can start or finish a race. It takes real effort to have a metaphysical and temporal epiphany right in the solar plexus of the event. It's about time!

HOCl and the sweet smell of total body fatigue

Sixty-one days. That's how long it has been since I was last in the water with the express intent of doing something other than bobbing.

I distinctly remember the last time. It was late August. there were several thousand of my closest fellow masochists waiting to go from Point A to Point A  trying to stretch it into a 3.8km hour-plus sojourn in Lake Okanagan.

Now I have been in the water once or thrice since then, but that didn't really count as I also spent some time in a eucalyptus steam room, and that negates any actual attempt at exertion.

It has been a full two months. And on the first of November, I made my triumphant return to my favourite pool, the pool that has so much HOCL that it is used as a remedy for athlete's foot and a host of other conditions that I try not to dwell upon.

I have always maintained that swimming is not so much a sport, as it is a means of not drowning. It is one of the few public activities where there are actually people employed to sit around and, occasionally, save your drowning ass if you have a momentary lapse of understanding that lungs and fluid don't mix.

Sure, there are medics and other people with bandages at races and rides for those who fall, or have a pre-existing condition catch up with them. But in a pool, or on some swanky beaches there are folks out there to actually pluck you out of the water.

It is that sense of risk and danger that keeps some people away from the pool. Others it is the fear of how they look in a Speedo, or worse, how others look in a Speedo. The Mediterranean vacations of my past notwithstanding, I chose this day to return to the pool and, not one bit ignorant of the religious undertones, re-mmerse myself into a ritual that, for four years has punctuated my lunch hours.

To say it was a triumphant return, is a bit of an overstatement. Had I bellyflopped off the high platform and then completed 1000m using a one-armed butterfly stroke, then I could have bragged.

But no, I meandered to the free lane, avoiding puddles on deck, as I had forgotten to pack my pool sandles. I wear these more to deal with the "gross factor" of stepping in warm liquid of unknown providence, rather than out of a genuine concern for hygiene - see HOCL above.

Having found my place in the slow lane. I observed several other swimmers swimming clockwise circles and a walker bouncing to and fro and looking quite determined to splash as much water as possible.

I wasn't in any rush. I was back in my element. I had long ago conquered my fear of this aqueous substance, and somewhat overcame the embarrassment of the follicular overabundance everywhere, but on my palms.  I licked my goggles - an anti-fogging trick first used in this country by fur traders and gold rush prospectors, I believe. I stretched on my swim cap, put on the goggles and gingerly lowered myself into the 18c degree water.

And with a kick off the bulkhead, so began yet another season of the striving for a dull, happy fatigue created by swimming and that no other excercise can mimic.

Typing these words now I am surrounded by a subtle, but pervasive bouquet of Chlorine. And I know at last, as Frankenfurter once said. I'm going home.