Race Report

Through some combination of being overwhelmed by how long this post is going to take to relive and record, and the recent resurrection of my pre-Ironman social life, it's been a week and a half since the race and I'm just sitting down to write this. Every time I think I know where to begin or end, new thoughts or memories make themselves known. I suppose 3:30 am, Saturday, August 1st is a good place to start.

Just like before Wildflower, I woke up about 45 minutes before my alarm was going to go off, completely alert and ready to be up. Since it was 2:45 however, I went to the bathroom and then laid back down. My eyes re-sprang open at 3:29, and I waited for my alarm to go off for a minute. Then Rizzi and I both hit snooze and got up at 3:40. We sat up in our beds, looked at each other, and then said "Wh-ha-ha-ha-what??" Then we swung our legs over the beds, looked at each other, and said "I guess let's eat breakfast! This is ridiculous!" They had taken our bikes from us, our run stuff was already at T2, and they were going to drive us in a bus to the race start. They had made tri-babies of us.
We ate - cereal for both of us, and a PB&J for me - and dressed in our bike clothes. We went through our swim bags one last time and I realized I had lost my goggles; Rizzi lent me a pair of his. Scary. We kept giggling and telling each other we were about to do an Ironman, realized how strange it would be to be back in the room in 19 or so hours, and then headed to the lobby.

4:20 am at the Hilton Sonoma Wine Country was Nerve O'Clock - 28 pacing teammates in a too-small lobby, looking and talking, laying on the floor, getting up again, taking pictures, here and there someone humming the Rocky theme. On a day where you will have such intense inner focus driving you forward, and focus constantly on your own will to keep going, its strange to just stand and wait to be told that the bus is here to take you away - there are no decisions to make or power to exercise, and it made me incredibly anxious. Maybe I was already anxious. I blame something! I blame helpful infantilization!
Got to hug Momm-ee and Dadd-ee before the bus came, which was nice even though I was fundamentally distracted. Eurie and I found each other and did our routine of being funny and cynical but really happy and proud, and went outside to sit on the steps away from Jiggle Nerve Party.

The buses arrived and the team distributed across two of them, so that everyone had their own seat; they turned off the lights and we descended down the hills in pre-dawn darkness, and we all fell quiet. This was the first time that I got a little calm, excited and overwhelmed by the feeling of sitting on this bus with these people, my team who I had been with for ten months, all being shuttled to a riverbank to begin doing what we all knew we were all going to finish. There was this question of how hanging in the air, but there was no disbelief - just waiting. Everyone in their heads, alone together on the bus in the cold quiet morning.
The drive is about 25 minutes, most of it along vineyards and through redwood forest. Just before we got onto the winding wooded roads, out the window the fog was pulsing some where it hung over a distant field. In the seat in front of me Carlos said, "Is that lightning?", as his nervous brain scanned for the race-worst possibility that flashing light in the sky could be, and we watched and quickly realized the pulsing was too quick and too rhythmic for nature, and thought maybe it was runway lights for a mini airport. We traveled closer and the light doubled and continued to pulse, and we realized it was a RAVE in a field at 5 in the morning, and I loved this. We hurtled up closer and then past the rave, a bus full of people up far too early to do too much exercise, still waiting for our day to start, past a field full of strangers winding down their epic night, the silhouettes of their lights in the trees slipping behind us and then gone.

Hours.

I'm in the hotel room in the first tidepool of calm today has afforded. The window is open, traffic on the 101 whizzes by at a distance, the tree branches move just enough to vibrate the light dappling the edge of the room, a chain clanks on a flagpole a couple times a minute. There are still a couple bags to pack, though I have left my run things at transition, and my bike waits in a hotel conference room until someone who is not me will load it onto a truck, and reunite us tomorrow morning, while it is still dark. I am not with anyone, though Rizzi will be back soon, and I am trying to sink as deeply into this momentarily calm as I can. I do feel calm, and accepting, while I understand that there are hard times to come. I am just not stuck in them yet.

My brain is tight sort of behind my right eye. I have almost gotten my pee clear, but not quite. My body feels tense - less like a coiled spring, more like when you have to stand on a crowded train at the end of a long work day - being jostled and moved about, but still needing to stay centered and and ready for tempo shifts; knowing you are getting closer to where you are headed, but tired in the interim. Calm. I feel calm, and almost content, in this moment. There is just the slightest breeze.

I had a one-on-one talk with my coaches Paul and Rad and the thing they said that has stuck is - Stay steady. Steady will get hard. That will be tomorrow, and it has been today. I suppose its been all ten months...riding in aero position is probably what I've come to love most, and I suspect because it feels symbolic of the whole effort. It's not an entirely natural position to find myself in, and I've never considered myself...I should say, if I were to make a list of adjectives describing myself, I doubt "athletic" would make the top 20. This experience, however, has settled itself into myself, and I look up now to find myself quite comfortable, and steady, keeping up a healthy cadence as my legs go around and around, feeling my body sway so slightly side to side as the ground travels backwards under the bike. There are long stretches of straight, flat road where my hands don't even hold the bars, but sort of flop between them and over onto each other, my back is low and flat, I bend down my head for seconds at a time to watch my knees as pistons or the shadow of the gears against the asphalt, feel how physically close all the parts of my body are in that compact, dynamic position, and feel how connected I feel to all of myself, all of me hurtling towards a new achievement. Even feeling sweat trickling down my face and collecting at the tip of my nose is joyful - wiping it away is one of those small, intensely visceral pleasures where the seconds from when you realize you are going to do this small thing until the time you do it are filled with deep, rich excitement - all the senses centered on effort and its results.

Early on I had a mantra for myself that I'd forgotten until today - I'm not as weak as when I stop, I'm as strong as when I keep going. I forgot about this, and hadn't even realized it had melted away without notice until I was thinking about the new mantra, which came to me unwilled in the most acutely frustrated part of some long ride - I will because I can. I can because I will. It's simple and true. It works.
Steady. Can. Will.

I have some packing to do. And some pee to get clear.

Hella hella hella nervous, nervous, nervous

If my heart has a mouth and can vomit from it, that is what woke me up this morning. My heart puking. Usually when something momentous is going to happen, you wake up, wonder why you are in a hotel room, lie there staring at the ceiling while the color of the day slowly bleeds in, and you remember you are supposed to be nervous / excited. That's not what happened today. I think the "Oh shit Ironman is tomorrow" thought is what actually made my eyeballs flip open in a way that says You're never going to sleep again, buddy. I have a few things to do today, and a brain that is increasingly wanting to go Frantic, so here I go to think outloud:

8:30 am
-when I said I would get up. When Mom & Dad will call. Maybe should eat breakfast.
9 am - 11 am
-need to go to the store: cereal and soymilk, bananas and PB&J makings for tomorrow morning.
-need to get my bike back from Eurie's room, deflate the tire I practiced inflating with CO2, reinflate with floor stand.
11 am
-pack bike-to-run transition bag. will be dropping off at Transition Area this afternoon, and will not see until tomorrow. This makes me so nervous. Maybe I will take a picture of its contents to prove to myself, later, that I didn't forget anything.
11:30 am
-Brunchy/Lunchy at Hotel with Team and Family - coaches gonna talk to us.
12:30 pm
-maybe do that bike stuff here
1:30 - 3:30 pm
-meet Team in lobby to drive to high school for Official Pre-Race Meeting & Course Explanation
-Expo and Race Registration with Team; drop off run stuff at Transition
3:30 - 4:30 pm
-drive the bike course with my parents.
5:30 pm
-load bike into transport truck, not to be seen until I pull it off the truck, riverside, at 5 am. This also makes me nervous, but less so. Oh! I need to re-set the clock on my cyclometer.
-LA Team Pasta Dinner
6:30 pm
-Last talk from the Coaches, and then we head to bed. If last night is anything to go by, Rizzi and I will be overwhelmingly nervous, and attempt sleep many times before it's a go.

I have no more days left to separate me from the thing! Being able to take care of something later has slipped away. Being ready or not ready becomes increasingly moot. Every event we anticipate sneaks up as suddenly as the time we spent waiting seemed to crawl by; everything hypothetical rises as Real one morning, and we find out we want the anticipation back. Once it is here it falls off the agenda, stops being Special, and soon becomes Done. Ugggggggggh how is this going to happen? I rub my eyes, I rub my eyebrows, I rub my forehead, I rub my chin, I massage my worried face with two small hands like a forest animal. My stare goes blank and I stare at the computer screen for two minutes. My thoughts drift to my hungry stomach and my parched throat. Time to start the day, I guess.

p.s. Pardon the Gravy Train reference for the post title. If ever there were a song whose only relevant part was the chorus, its that one.

I Get So Emotional, Baby (Lobby Song)

I'm in the lobby of my hotel in Santa Rosa forcibly listening to '90's rock - songs I know but don't know the names of. In-room internet is $10 day, which is never less surprising for its determined anachronism, every time I travel. Come on, Hilton Wine Country! Cater to the business traveler / destination racer! Our rooms are in buildings named for wines - I'm in Cabernet but have to troop to Burgundy to see Eurie, and I think a couple people are in the outlying Chablis bungalows. The kleenex in the bathroom was shaped into a rose, and the two hand towels were used to make a giant bow tie, which was then placed in the towel rack over the toilet, just at eye height for wizzing gentlemen.

Being here with two days to spare feels like the rightest choice. I slept for 11 hours last night, punctuated by waking up to watch bad tv with Rizzi, my roommate, or being attacked out of sleep by Rizzi, the big brother I never had. We discovered "America's Got Talent," though we didn't stick around for the ending, as we'd stumbled upon stoppage time and then penalty kicks for MLS All Stars vs. Everton.

I ate 13 hours ago and it feels like two days. We went to downtown Santa Rosa, which has a Wednesday night Farmer's Market that closes a few blocks, and it was filthy with all-alterna-kids of every stripe, and I remembered that Santa Rosa was the last jewel in the Bay Area all-ages crown that I was never able to get...two hours from San Jose, it was too far to win parental permission. We asked some cops where we should eat, said we wanted pasta maybe, and they recommended a place called Checkers. I was concerned. Concerns were justified by late '80's-era giant paint splatter canvases, and disparity between fine table settings and generally low menu price point. In the end, food was fine, and I had a beer to relax even though it brought some color back to my urine

- - important interruption: "Kiss from a Rose" just came on, and I wish I could describe this guy that just walked into the lobby and know that you're actually seeing what I'm describing - -

We were supposed to swim at 9 am today, but enough people had trouble getting up in time that we've been given permission to sleep in, and meet at 11 to do bike check - make sure everything is happy, mechanically. We'll go down to the river to swim at 2. I can't wait for the river - my body feels creaky and extra. There is some balance being struck by the anxiety that keeps me a bit muted and the gnawing energy of my body that will be used in the extreme in two days but is being kept dormant now. I find myself daydreaming of the specific feelings of different strokes, imagining the feeling of my arm extending from the shoulder and drawing down across my body while my torso turns; feeling water on my face and hearing underwater then abovewater sounds in each ear. I want to be moving. I might sneak down to the pool.

Today's primary goal is to get my pee back to being clear. That feels really survivor-y! What a small, obscure effort! Also think I'll read some and try and get back to where I can type more clearly. I'm pretty hampered in weird sentence construction right now...nervous and not relaxed.

Anatomy of a .... zzzzzzzzzz

I'm tired. I made this picture. Everything I'll use on race day, minus my watch, which was hiding in a shoulder bag. I leave in the morning, still have a lot of work work to do, trying to see if I can stagger out of bed at 6 am to go swimming. Maybe write more when I get to Santa Rosa tomorrow. Sleeeeep nooooowwww....

I'm Gay for My Bike but Also I Wrote Some Real Things

I came out to the living room this morning to this vision in aluminum - look at her there, bathed in sunlight. I feel weepy and proud like a parent - either Stockholm Syndrome accumulated over literally thousands of miles on the road together, or a pre-race (5 days!) hormone surge. I just got her back from the shop yesterday - needed a new chain, shifting was getting a bit gritty - and apparently in the absence took to using personal pronouns to think and talk about her. I cannot rationally explain the love swelling in my chest at the moment; part of me wants to wax lyrical about all her mods, additions and sweat stains, but it's weird, possibly boring, and not what I sat down to write about.

I want to say, but not quite discuss at length, how strange it is to be this close to the event. Units of weeks have become superfluous to describe how long is left. We're down to days - in a focal point diagram of the last ten months, I'm past the point of focus and slipping down the narrow cone towards the thing itself. My days go Doppler Effect weeeeeeeerrrreewwwwww in anticipation. I am gathering up all the moments around me into myself, and I have so much time that I spend pondering that I want to describe myself as in a vast ocean of contemplative calm, so surrounded am I by the lapping of my thoughts, but even now, sitting on the couch before work, there is a filament running between my heart and lungs tapping and buzzing with energy.

People tend to ask two questions. Are you really gonna do it?, and What are you going to do after? I know the answer to the former, and it strikes me to realize - as all-consuming as this experience has been for me - how foreign it remains for most people I know. That that could BE a question strikes me freshly every time, in two parts. First, to realize the incremental acceptance and confidence in myself that I am going to achieve this - how its distance and difficulty has become relative, drawn down from the impossible to the possible - I realize that for most of those around me, the event has stayed as daunting as it ever was, was to me once, and I have moved toward a different conception of it, largely out of sight of my friends. I biked by Chris and Tati walking to brunch last Saturday, and Chris has commented since how good it was to see me actually out and doing it, in spandex and gear, on a bike and on the road. That is the second realization, just how invisible the process is, and how bizarre it is NOT to realize that, to come to understand that I can think and do something so much as to forget no one else is aware of it.

The second question chokes me up some. I don't know what I'm going to do after. I imagine myself a bit adrift, and the closest experience that comes to hand when I desperately grope through the inventory of my past is break-up. I will re-discover my time, and wonder what I did with it pre-training. I will certainly drink and be drunk more; I will go the movies alone here and there; I will fill my time with friends that I will try not to burden with hearing how much I miss it, and who will be nice, but won't understand. I will seek out others similarly heartbroken, and we will connect purely over our loss, we will order more rounds just because we are greedy to each be allowing us each to continue vomiting words, the permissive deserted.
I used to worry about being "heavier" than I wanted, or "thicker" or some other weird euphemism, but now I worry about getting fat - a sure sign of obsession, and weird because by and large I am so much happier about my body now, think of it more as a partner and tool than as a focus for issues or unhappiness. But I think the heart of the worry about getting FAT is an acknowledgment of the extreme level of activity I've come to live with, and a subsequent acknowledgment that it won't be possible to maintain - and this is the sadness. I have gotten so much benefit from this - a lot of which I am still processing - and I am scared and sad to step away from that. I have gained time to think, and be with myself in quiet and solitude; I have so frequently pushed through what I thought I could do that I have stayed cloaked in a calm blanket of pride and humility in equal parts; I have faced, questioned and tried to repair much of what I like least about myself; I have faultered, stuttered and doubted enough to start to learn to be okay with those parts of any process, and to be kinder to myself through that stage.
On Saturday the 28 of us were made to march through a room of prospective TNT participants, and a teammate and I whispered to each other at the back of the auditorium, before our show pony dance. We were discussing how we had each signed up, initially, for the half-Iron, how quickly we changed to the full, and how glad we were to have done that. About four sentences into our conversation we were both a bit teary, and took turns repeating to each other, "This has been such an incredible experience." So here I am wondering again, as I type and tear up for the billionth time this week, whether I am stronger or just comically constantly weak-exhausted; whether my humility is not just being worn out - maybe the fight has gone out of me because I'm just too hungry; where the line between struggle and achievement blur into each other. The connection to the cause - training for these events in the name of cancer research and treatment - seems so inspired when you dig into this cellar of thought, of going as deep into awareness of what is happening to you as you can. I am struck with such wonderment at people going through a struggle that was foisted on them, so brutally assigned, and not signed up for - and I wonder, though most days my thoughts are on myself and not anyone my efforts might touch, whether I could have or would have signed up, gotten through, or finished without that external motivator. It is the cornerstone and finial of the entire process.

Time for work!

Short Sentences on Big Question

It is one hour from midnight. At midnight it will be Saturday, July 25. Seven days from tomorrow I will do an Ironman. The idea seems distant while the time seems near. I know I will do it but I'm not sure how. It is a wide open feeling of waiting to find out. It is a small, cramped feeling of furrowing my brow and opening my eyes hopefully, extending my arms up from the floor like a child. It is my spine like a question mark. It is sitting on the edge of all my seats. It is a constant conversation at the back of my mind, it is the corner of the room my eyes dart to while I try to listen to what someone is saying, it is the texture that worries my dreams. It is a threshold.

The Post Where I Try to Think

Once, walking along an East London street on a November morning, I shook out the last bits of tobacco from its pouch, and rolled an anemic cigarette. I turned to Dan, the smoker of my two companions, and my bleary, hungover, upturned eyebrows asked him if he wanted to split it with me. He shook his head, which meant that we were really hung over. I felt a bit chastised for wanting to smoke, and bent against the wind to light it, saying, "This is either going to go really badly or really well." Dan chuckled that he understood, and I felt at least a bit less disgusting and totally alone. This post is going to be like that. Pardon my thinking outloud.

To swim, I need my tri shorts and bike jersey on under my wetsuit. I need a swim cap under my goggles and then a swim cap over those more to protect against my superstition that the goggles will get knocked off in the scramble of the swim start than to actually protect against that happening. I become a really nervous version of myself before sports happen. The top cap will be provided when I check in on Friday by the race people, so I have the right color for my wave. I just need to bring the bottom cap. Maybe I will wear the cap from Wildflower, as a talisman that I Can Do This. No, that is crazy. I have worn the black cap all season. I will wear the black cap.
I need to lube my wrists, NECK, and ankles with Body Glide to protect against chaffing. I prefer to spray PAM on my wrists and ankles to get the wet suit on and off more easily. I heard once that this is bad for the wet suit, and I am borrowing the wet suit, so I will feel bad when I do this, but I will do this anyway.
So for swimming I need:
-tri shorts
-bike jersey
-swim cap x2
-goggles
-Body Glide
-PAM cooking spray
-ah, and I will have to have my timing chip on my ankle already.

When I transition from swimming to biking, I will need to have my towel, laying under my bike on the rack. I need to lay things out in the order I will need them. I will have begun stripping off my wet suit upon exiting the water and running to my transition area. I will get that off. I will already be in my biking clothes. I will sit down on the ground, and rub my feet on the towel to dry them. I'll put Body Glide on my arches, across the tops of my toes, and on the back of my ankle, along my Achilles. I will wonder if this will still be present at all by the time I am running, when I really need it. I will need a second tube of Body Glide in the Bike-to-Run transition area (note for further down). I will rub some Body Glide on my arm pits which are nowhere near rubbed raw at all, but which I am superstitiously worried about, never having attempted this much effort in one day. My socks are in my bike shoes, I put on my shoes, I put on my shoes. I think I should spray more sunblock on myself, but I think they have more on the course, and I will skip it. I stand up. My helmet is resting on my aero bars on the bike hanging from the rack. In the helmet, on top of a pile, is my bike cap. I put it on, backwards, tucking my hair in the back; I turn the brim of the hat up. I shove on my sunglasses. I pull on my bike gloves, which I have made sure are ready to go on - the fingers are not bunched in their holes. I put the helmet on, adjusting the back around the brim of the bike cap, and pulling the front down low on my forehead. I tug down my jersey, I pull my bike off the rack, I run to the mounting line. I get on my bike, I bike out of Guerneville.

WAIT.
Shit.
Fuck.
Water bottles. Food.
On my bike I have four water bottles - one an hour, a low average of 15 miles an hour. This should get me to Mile 60, and Special Needs is at Mile 57. The first and second water bottles are Food Drink - Sustained Energy, no flavoring. The third bottle is Gatorade, probably Fruit Punch. I'm basic. The fourth bottle should be Gatorade, but I have been advised to make it straight water, to douse myself with when the temperature gets to 95 or so. I will most likely throw this and any other empty, non-nutrition bottles away in the course of the day, in favor of bottles full of water handed out along the course. There should be two or three aid stations before Special Needs. I briefly (now, not on race day) think about taking fewer bottles. I decide, now, that this is not worth the possible panic this will give me on race day. I have already had anxiety dreams where I forget to bring ANY bottles to the race. I have two PowerBars, each cut in half, that I shove in my jersey. I will eat these during the second and fourth hours. Part of me is scared that I should take more food, even though, if anything, this is more than I have ever needed. There are Clif Bars at the aid stations. I decide not to carry more food than I am used to.
Now I ride out of Guerneville.
For the bike ride I need:
-towel x2 - for feet and just in case
-Body Glide
-socks
-bike shoes
-bike cap
-sunglasses
-bike gloves
-helmet
-sunblock?
-Water Bottles x4 - 2 Food, 1 or 2 Gatorade, maybe 1 water
-two PowerBars - a Chocolate Brownie and a Honey Nut
-Survival Kit - spare tube, CO2 cracker, CO2 cartons (shit! I need to buy more!), patch kit, dollar bill, tire irons - should I carry an extra spare tube?? I am so paranoid!!!

At Special Needs, I will have a spare tube and that one Allen wrench - my water bottle cage always gets loose, and I might need to tighten it a bit. I will have two empty water bottles - they will each have Sustained Energy powder in them. I will have two store-bought bottles of water that I will have cracked the seal on - I will dump water in the Food bottles now, and give them a shake, but save most of the shaking for out on the course. I will have two more bottles - maybe a Gatorade and a water. I will have one more store bottle of water, in case I want to dump the Gatorade and just have water, if it is very hot and artificial & sweet foods are cloying to me. I should have spray sunblock in this bag, probably. This is probably a better place for it than at Swim-to-Bike. I will have two more PowerBars that I won't be able to cut in half - they will probably melt as it is, even in their wrappers.
To pack my special needs bag, I need:
-water bottles x4 - two with only Powder, 1 or 2 with premade Gatorade, maybe 1 just water. Wait, go with one just water. Will need for dousing, it is 1 pm or later and very hot.
-3 store bought bottles of water. Is that right? I don't want to read back. Sure, three.
-spare inner tube, maybe a spare tire. Oh, spare CO2 in case I have used it all. Allen wrench.
-two Powerbars - chocolate brownie & Honey Nut
-spray-on Sunblock
-my capitalization is going tits up.

For bike to run....oh I am feeling tired just thinking through it all. I want to change my jersey, I do not like running in this jersey. Stop. Lay it out in order.
I will have a towel on the ground, underneath where I will rack my bike. I will use the colorful squiggly beach towel, so I recognize my spot quickly. I will rack my bike, toss my helmet off, rip off my gloves. I will rip of my jersey and try not to mind that I am losing time. It's already been nine or more hours. What's 30 seconds? I pull on the new jersey. I sit down. I take off my bike shoes. If I think I need more Body Glide, I will roll down my socks and put it on. I take my watch out of my left running shoe and put it on my wrist. I slip on my running shoes WHICH ARE UNTIED AND LOOSE, ready to lace and tighten!!! I quickly apply Body Glide to my armpits and under arms. I start heading to the RUN OUT, and I turn my bike cap around so the brim is in front. I forgot my bandana. I have a bandana, I tie it around my neck. When I get to the first aid station I will soak this with water, maybe pack it with ice. I forgot my food. I have four GU's (flavor = Just Plain) that were on the towel - they go in the pockets of my run jersey, but it is cumbersome to put on if they are already in it. I don't need a water bottle, because there are aid stations every mile. Hm. I will take a water bottle. I will chuck it if I don't need it.
To run I need:
-run jersey
-running shoes
-watch
-Body Glide
-1 GU per hour - 4 - is this optimistic? I think its okay...there is food on the course...
-water bottle (take from bike)
-Head Lamp - for when it is dark on the course. I won't pick this up til the 2nd or 3rd (please 3rd not second, please never maybe!) loop through transition, but it needs to be in the bag.
-spray on sunblock

Is this it?
I should go away from this for a day. Read tomorrow. See if I forgot anything.
Pheeeeee-eeeewwwwwwww.....ffffffffffffff (deflation sound).

Where Dd Me Go?

See what happens when you make a promise to yourself to post everyday? Life explodes.
We've been tapering, whch - sigh. Ths s a good tme to say that the "i" key on my laptop s n functonal revolt. I can make t work, but It's very HARD.

We've been taperng, whch means somethng very dfferent leadng up to an - oh how rIdIculous thIs Is - Ironman than a half Iron. Before Wildflower we were barely movng, and felt fat, useless and sleepy. Maybe a bt cranky. Our training schedule snce we've entered taper - two weeks ago - has ehm...I wouldn't call ths a taper. We stll are supposed to be workng out two times a day, more often than not - say a 45 mn run and an hour swm. We stll bike for 2 hours on Wednesdays. But we must be doing less, my body s achy in the way t gets now f I haven't moved for a three days...and the funky moods are palpable.

I've been gettng reinvolved very intensely wth SFSU - specfcally the Theater Arts Department - my alma mater and undergraduate department. The CA budget crisis has become really dsastrous for the CSU, whch has been n slow declne - in terms of budgets and how faculty and admnstraton are meetng the challenge of reduced fundng - for as long as I've known it, since 2002. Most recently, ts been realzed that not only are thngs beng slashed drastcally - 30% fee increases for students at the same tme that 1,200 sectons are beng cut from the fall semester, and mandatory 2 day/month furloughs are gong nto place for staff; lecturers are next n lne at the choppng block n those departments whch they have not already dsappeared - the pcture s not gong to reverse or even much mprove any tme soon. I got wnd of how bad ts gotten and thought that many years of frustrated hypothetcals and ideas I ddn't thnk could get heard to be tred were maybe fndng ther moment. Two of my frends and I spent a week craftng an open letter to the faculty, I spent many hours gettng to know and talkng wth one of the most actve current students, and went sent t off. I was staggered as I watch ths effort throw itself to the top of my pile of priorties, supplantng Ironman n the homestretch. My traning dropped off - at one pont I went Sunday through Tuesday wth only a 45 mnute run - and everytme a team emal came n, or a bt of plannng for the trp up north needed consderng, I would realze wth a shock how much there stll s to do, and how much I had relegated the thought of all of t to the back burner. The Vineman anxety dreams kcked in almost on the eve of sendng out the letter. Now we're at the foundng an Alumni Associaton stage. I hit a wall yesterday. I found some new limts to how much I can take on. Full tme job, near full tme training, part time alumni network foundng and department restructurng correspondence, etc etc. Spent a large part of yesterday cryng and askng friends to help me, or just lsten. Also I forgot when to break up large blocks of text nto smaller paragraphs.

There were some smaller, more contained topcs I've wanted to wrte about lately, so I thnk I'll go grab a beer, sit down in front of the Tour on tv, plug in an external keyboard, and start a new post.

FUCK

I'm at work and don't really have time to say anything except: the Vineman people just emailed all participants to say the Race program is online.
I clicked, and while waiting for it to load discovered I feel very much like I'm going to throw up. This just became real.

Money Party!

I had my fundraiser party (a.k.a. Major Source of Stress) last Saturday, and it went almost as well as I'd imagined and hoped. Which doesn't mean it didn't go really well, just that I always imagine astronomic possibilities for any endeavor I undertake. As a delightful internet list, reasons the party went well:

-raised $800 dollars ($798 to be exact). As a portion of my total, doesn't sound huge, but it got me to within $400 of the $6500 mark. Wonderful!
-all my great friends pitched in, and it was fun: Colin got 250 bottles of beer donated (!!!); Dave and Marly booked comics and hosted & performed, respectively; Lee DJ'd; Tina, Sam, Trevor & Mike let me use their lovely backyard; Rizzi leant me a PA system; Keith brought some mic's and Bella the Dog to wander around; Charlyne and Mookie performed; Raj Desai performed, who I would like to call my friend but am still a little on the creep-stranger side for that; a few others helped just to get things set up last minute, especially Mike, Josie & Delia; and Justin really helped with picking up chairs and tables & swooping into BevMo to rescue me from my keg indecision (ANCHOR STEAM).
-people's 'tudes were swell, and getting them to toss donations in was relatively painless. I was really grateful for this.

The atmosphere was as cozy, familiar and specific, which is what I had wanted - I wanted people to get some genuine fun in return for their 10 bucks, and a community-based night as unique to our Angeleno microcosm as it gets.
The fundraising meta-lesson learned was: low overhead, fearlessly asking for volunteer help, negligible ticket price, keeping people happy. Everything I need to know about throwing fundraiser parties I learned from throwing house parties in college. DIY: Achieved.

WIP

Just got home from swimming and then bar with teammates, and I'm t i r e d. I'll start this post for daily posting technicality's sake, and then zzz-time.

Eastbound & Down loves picking on tri, and it's right on in a way that makes me feel horrible. Searing, missile-guided truth-sting. At about 1'45" into this trailer is the joke from the first episode that I can't rattle out of my head, and which makes me run for the thesaurus almost every time I write about tri now. A weeny, suburban, shit-grinning guy who thinks he's nice and got it sorted out says he does triathlons, and lays out the news waiting for the awed reaction he usually gets. Reaction: "I play real sports, I'm not trying to be the best at exercising."


More later....

Picture Feeling

Okay. Blogger won't let me toss a third photo onto the last post, forcing me to create a whole new post for one picture, which is...I'll say TRIPLY embarrassing as its just a big shot of my grinning mug on a bike.

Last Saturday on the century my teammate Floyd rode up behind me, whipped out his camera and grabbed this shot. He did it quickly enough I didn't have time to process more than "Camera equals smile," and I like it! I look happy, and I feel proud, remembering at the time - mile 15 of 100 - how well I felt the ride was going, how much progress I felt I've made.

One of my friends, Joe, I met while he was at SFSU on exchange from Britain. In the couple months we hung out, I drove him all around the place - up and down California, Vegas, the entire Bay Area - and he would buy a disposable camera about every week and take some fairly boring photos. Finally, being overly opinionated and far too forthright, I told him he was taking pictures of nothing he would remember, or nothing special enough to be memorable. He looked at me and told me one of the best things I've ever heard (as well as something that ages his comment at just before the digital watershed). He told me that he was taking a picture of what he was seeing at the moment that he was FEELING something he wanted to remember feeling, and that the vista he was capturing would basically just be a psychological mnemonic - that when he remembers trips, he naturally remembers the highlights, but then gets out these unremarkable shots and has memories flood in of the minutia that really made up the texture of an experience. Needless to say, beyond the fact that I'm proud of...well, LOOKING like a triathlete, the bigger importance of this photo for me is just that - it got sealed with everything I was feeling when the shutter closed. Here it is.

Illustration Post Counts Double

Vowing to post every day = best way to ensure you just pass the heck out two nights in a row. Last night I got in from my run at 10:12 pm and was asleep by 10:20 - and then I sprang up, chipper and literary, five minutes ago! Hello morning!

Let's just do a couple pictures. Three. Three pictures.

One of two chaffed-raw armpits after my 22 mile run on Sunday. Four days later they are healing well, but I have to run like a chicken and sleep with my sheets tucked right up in there. I BodyGlide 24 hours a day.


Dirt tan after the 22 miler. A good part was trail, I'm not just a filth magnet.

Funburn

You know, I wrote a whole other post a couple days ago and then just closed the browser. Like the red button was the publish button, I just cruised the mouse right up there and said Goodbye Forever. I don't even remember what it was about anymore, which brings us to a simple goal that I can't believe I'm making:

I have 25 days left until Ironman, and I'm gonna write something here every one of them.

It really shouldn't be hard, but I take it so hard when I don't do what I've said I would. Okay, so I'll just do it. Okay.


I did a lot of working out this weekend. "Shit ton" is an apt description, and the vulgarity suits a couple elements of both days. Generally, probably because there's only one real training weekend left, the unbidden theme my mind kept coming back to was Where I Used to Be, Where I Am, and Where I Still Have to Go.

Where I Used to Be
-once I'd committed to doing this, but before training started, I went out a ran a few times for, I'm guessing, about 30 - 40 minutes. Our first training session at Griffith Park was a 40 minute run - 20 out and 20 back - and I ran harder than I was used to, keeping up with some of my teammates for the first time. I had to walk a little bit at the end, and talked with Coach Paul while he rode next to me, about picking a point up ahead to keep running until, or to start running again upon reaching.
-I used to run at the gym! On a treadmill! HOLY FUCKING MOLY, DUDES.
-I used a stationary or recumbent bike at the gym! A few times! For like an HOUR. Pure torture.
-I'd come home and make a bowl of pasta 1.5 times the normal size and think I was really getting away with something.
-I got away with washing my hair maybe...once every 2 days.
-Haha, I just remembered: I used to go around Echo Park Lake twice, and then come home. Are you waiting for that sentence to stretch out? It's not going to. Remembering rules.
-I didn't take squat with me to eat or drink, used to be. I suppose I took a bottle of water on the bike, and once we got over two hours I grabbed a PowerBar. The first time my calves cramped so hard I couldn't get out of the pool was the first time I realized I needed hydration every workout - when I almost fell over getting onto dry land because my leg muscles were actually in too much shooting pain to be useful, and my coach smirked and said, "Welcome to Ironman." In 7 years as a teenage swimmer, I had never experienced anything like this. It was strange and totally fascinating.

Where I Am
-Saturday, July 4, 2009 - up at 5 am, on the road at 6, biking out of a parking lot in Moorpark, CA at 7 am. By 10:30 I am 50 miles away, in Malibu. 6 hours and 12 minutes after I started, I'm back in the parking lot, my second 100 mile ride a fact. Then I eat 6 pieces of pizza.
-Riding into a headwind that won't allow me to go faster than 7 miles an hour for 25 miles elicits only ONE occasion of actual out-loud profanity.
-Sunday, July 5, 2009 - running by 9:40 am. A 3.5 mile loop up into Elysian Park behind my home, then a couple miles to the reservoir. Around that three times (6.6 miles) - at the end of the second loop I can feel my armpits starting to chaffe a bit, and I'm worried I haven't put enough BodyGlide on them. By the time I leave the reservoir to head to the lake (around that twice), I know they are going to be raw, but what am I going to do? Stop this run? I pitstop by my house for a third Gu - eating a Gu is the grossest sensation on earth, a grossness not tempered by your body's pure desperation for ANY nutrition, and I choke-gulp it down every time - and then go back up the park to do the trail loop a second time. 22 miles, total. A thing I do on Sundays.
-There are chaffings that, a day later, are now scabbing over, in both armpits. My right Achilles tendon is surprised that I'm such a jerk every time I attempt to go down stairs. Other than these things - maybe that should read "even with these things" - I'm in a great mood.

Where I Still Have to Go
-140.6 in a day. Four hours of running gives you time to wonder how it will feel to be doing the same after 8 hours of biking (the swim being such a long forgotten fact as to be inconsequential). I can't say. I don't know how much pain it will take to get through it, but I know I will. It's a strange but calm thing to feel, and turn over in your quiet head. Technically I suppose I don't know I will make it through - but...? I do? I just do.
Haruki Murakami, who I haven't quoted in awhile but quietly guides my training, has a simple phrase his brother told to him - Pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice. Thinking that sentence through a couple times gives me a gentle brow furrow - it strikes the simplest chord in me in terms of running/biking/swimming, but it's a chord of such resonance that I come to understand how this entire activity - not tri, but the journey - is reverberating in my life. I'm an Overthinker and a Dweller, as well as an epic Feeler of Feelings - REAL ones, guys! Big old real FEELINGS, you know? - and I hope that when the lessons of this experience settle into my self in a few months, I'll have learned how to step back, and breathe, and think, then act, and then step beyond the Thought Thing.
-Deep into my run on Sunday, I finally let myself realize that I want to apologize for something, a way I mistreated a friend about a year ago, an underestimation of how my actions could impact someone else. The crucible that lets physical movement sublimate into psychological reaction and reasoning is still something I am learning to articulate. It could be a factor of pure alone time - you come to think about almost everything, so certainly failings come line up to get considered. But I suppose it is stretching out for hours the place of being Weak Strong is how, for now, I'll choose to explain it. You come to face some limits, or at least some literal pain, and understand that just yourself is both what keeps you from going further and the only thing you have to continue. With only the purest of external inputs - the temperature, time passing, the quality of the road or your running shoes, maybe an appointment you have later in the day - the internal becomes everything. It is the reason you are three hours into a run, the excuse you think of to stop as well as the motivation you find not to listen to the excuse; it is the signals traveling up the legs or from the stomach to become Who shouts saying "Feed us or stop,"; and it is the flabbergastment (yep) of Mile 20 making Mile 22 inevitable. I can't explain it better than that for now, and I'm as amazed and grateful to have experienced it as I am wary that I sound like a hippie in explaining it. I suppose it is a pride that understands its own relationship to necessarily humility so well that...I don't understand well enough yet to write the sentence correctly. I will sleep and see what I come up with in the morning.

Stutter

A couple days after the last post - maybe a day after - the NY Times had an article on how hard it is to "listen to your body" in training; about the difficulty in interpreting what it's saying, and when it's being serious. The article opened with a few paragraphs on motivation that are a nice bridge between last post and this. The article is worth a read, though its major heft is not what I'm discussing today. It kicks of thusly:

A COLLEAGUE of mine at The Times who is a triathlete had a question: Everyone tells you to listen to your body, but what are you supposed to listen to?

Turns out it’s not so obvious.

Deena Kastor, the American record holder for the marathon, interprets the advice selectively.

“Running isn’t always comfortable,” she said. “I remember running through a lot of discomfort and pain.”

And, Ms. Kastor added, she also runs when she does not feel like it.

“So many times the alarm goes off in the morning and you tell yourself you are too tired,” she said. “There are times when you are unmotivated, you don’t feel your best and most accomplished.”

But if you ignore those messages from your body and just go out and run or do your sport, she said, “those are the days when we have the most pride.”
-Gina Kolata, NYTimes, June 24, 2009

(Can you believe I don't even know how to properly attribute that AND I'm not even gonna look it up? Web...hubris....webris? Catching on? Ahhhh wah.)

If you have come to this post in deliberation over whether to donate money, please look away. Try this post. I think you'll like it.
If you've come for the RAW TRUTH: I fucked up this weekend. I took some me time to deal with my overactive heart and brain, and indulged in not really doing anything. Three weekends left before tapering for two weeks and then doing a motherloving Ironman, and I essentially took the weekend off. Not a second of non-exercise went by without knowing I would feel 400% better for persevering, and I still stood at the edge of the cliff looking. Struck out staring. Leaning back and polishing my nails, even. In the novel or score of my life, this is the repeating theme. Backing off.

I still got on my bike both days, and I still rode both days - about 45 miles total, the happy end goal of training weekends long past. I didn't run 17 miles. I watched my teammates post status updates about doing these things, the victories we absorb every few days, and did not join them. I don't think it was my personal crises that kept me lethargic and complacent. I think I gratefully accepted the crises' being then. I think it was the pattern - how I have to push myself to panic to perform. I'm not sure I've ever done it on this scale before. I'm stunned to find I'll do it on this scale.

**INTERRUPTED - to be finished **

No, it won't be finished. The day after I wrote this I got back on the wagon, and it's been great. I had a great two hour morning bike ride - left my house in Echo Park at 6, circled Silver Lake Reservoir, took Glendale to Griffith Park, rode along the river for five miles, and came back home through Chinatown while the morning fog was lifting off the skyscrapers downtown. I was using my Aerobars for the first time, and feeling how far I've come, how strong I'm still getting. I ran for an hour the next morning, swam with the team that night, took Friday off and kicked ass this weekend. I feel great, Ironwise. New post.

Snooze (Penance Post)

It's 7:32 am, sort of overcast, and I'm sitting in bed typing when I should be out biking. Take out typing and substitute "staring at the ceiling, berating myself but nonetheless not getting out of bed" and you've got, oh, 3 out of 5 mornings in household Kinskey. I still can't decide whether this guilt routine is massively Catholic or massively post-modern, acute self-awareness. Hedge my bets and blame both. Ah fuck it, it's just human. Right? There is a Durer-woodcut-peasant in a painting somewhere, lolling with his leg hanging out of the covers, moaning while he future self, one panel over, is out tilling the fields, right? There's no evolved thought pattern needed, it's just a thing we do because we can.

Instead of biking then, this morning let's explore motivation and procrastination. Procrastination is more my specialty, so I'll start there.

Here is a simple, 100% reparable issue from the get go: my perfectly good alarm clock sits on my desk across the room, gathering dust on its buttons, dark and unplugged for months now. I bet if I plugged it in, set it and had to get up and cross the room to turn it off, that 3 out of 5 might come down to 2.5 out of 5. Instead, I use my phone for my alarm clock, which is plugged in right next to my bed, and in fact lays mostly in the region of the pillow or mattress next to my head - phone boyfriend! What this translates to in my daily routine is hitting snooze somewhere between 2 and (this is not a joke, oh god, I wish it was a joke) 18 times before I get up. Yes, it goes off every 10 minutes, and there have been at least two mornings where it was optimistically set for 5:30 am, and I managed to blow all expectation out of the water, catching snippets of whatever low quality sleep I could in 18 10-minute intervals until 8:30 am. You have to really be a seasoned veteran to be able to have the mental mumbling soundtrack going "Just get up, you know you're going to feel bad later, you're already pretty much awake, you're doing an Ironman, you might have anxiety on Mile 110 and blame it on THIS very second of procrastination, etc etc" and still be able to lose consciousness 10+ times. A logical segue to thanking my parents for signing me up for morning swim practice from the age of 8.

So why, having signed myself up for Death Race, am I comfortable not getting out of bed and doing the damn thing? Because.....there's always.....AFTER work! Yeah, you heard me. Yeah, I know I didn't do the 40 minute run I was supposed to LAST night, so I was already planning on doing the run tonight and the 1.5 hour bike ride this morning. So what if I do them both tonight? TV's in re-runs, I don't have kids and....yeah, whatever, back off. That's how it is in the real event anyway. Pfffsshh.

Ugh, why did I say this: "let's explore motivation and procrastination"? Motivation now? I have to explicitly talk about that, too? Just go back and read between the lines of the procrastination stuff, they're inverses. I'd love to sit here and explore more deeply and out loud what it's all about, but...I think I just feel a little frustrated with myself. What's THAT about? Why willingly not do something, knowing the not doing will make you less effective for having to deal with mental garble? Why do we have a hard time getting to the end of the road unless we toss some speed bumps and pot holes out for ourselves? What's wrong with just cruising down a freshly paved street? The inclination is to say we're creatures of plot and need challenge even in our daily routines, but man, doesn't that sound like a lot of ex post facto justification? I want to sit here and tell you the silent bargaining and thumb twiddling gives me time to really think about whatever I'm putting off, explore it, know it more and then do it right, but there's not a lot of cognitive processing that's going to qualitatively change the experience of going out for a bike ride, or, say, paying the utility bill. It IS a nice counterpoint for those days when you just spring up and get going - then those days feel like Victory, you walk around punching the air, You Are Rocky - and all you did was the thing you had to do. I'm sure someone more eloquent than myself has thought this through previously and more thorougly, let's go quote hunting!

Oh god, the quick Google brings back grim stuff! I might just go cry in the shower now:

"Procrastination is suicide on the installment plan." - this one isn't even attributed! It's just an internet asshole nugget.

"How soon 'not now' becomes 'never'." - Martin Luther. I really wasn't expecting a procrastination quote from M.L.; all I can see is him nailing the Theses to the church doors, except sitting at home drinking coffee for awhile first - this great historical moment of passion being deferred by whatever domestic excuse he can find...I'm finding this thought exercise really freeing, and its not just the sketch-comedy enjoyment of seeing Martin Luther in a robe and slippers.

"Procrastination is, hands down, our favorite form of self-sabotage." - Alyce P. Cornyn-Selby. Word.

"Procrastination is the grave in which opportunity is buried." - not attributed! Everybody chill out with the death diction!

This one is vaguely helpful in its gentle admonishment, and quite literally true today as I tack on the run from Tuesday, so I'll end with it: "Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday." - Don Marquis

See you when I get out of work, workout schedule!

Fact Potpourri !

Oh yes, things I've been meaning to write down and not forget:

-it took extra detergent and a long soak to get my exercise clothes to NOT smell even after being washed.

-the pile of exercise clothes threatened to become as large as the pile of real clothes!

-I only have one pair of socks right now! I don't know where the others went. It's been like this for three weeks. I won't tell you what I do, but trust that it's not as gross as it sounds. Or maybe it is. Sock hygiene is as relative as it is personal.

-It's really hard to eat Powerbars quickly on the bike - chewing makes breathing harder, and breathing is incredibly precious. I can eat half a Powerbar in about three bites, so this is the routine: cut Powerbars in half, in the wrapper. Shove four halves in your jersey (right) pocket. This is enough food for four hours - until you can get to your special needs bag at Mile 56. Most importantly: when you take the half-bar and tear its wrapper off with your teeth while riding, take your bite and then stick the rest of it onto the top of your top tube. It just hangs out, stuck to your bike, until you have chewed and breathed. This is my favorite thing after peeing in my wet suit.

-our coach said when it's hot, wear a white hat on the run (I already do! Pro without knowing it, gosh), and "you can stick ice up there!" Have I become a boring jock or is that a super cute way to say that? Really amused.

-Jocks are boring. Empirically now, we know this. We suspected it, and now we know. I am boring.

What Two Inches of Seat Post Feels Like (That's What She Said)

What do I possibly have to say? What is there? I'm so tiiiiiiired of training. I want my life back. Ah, that's not true. I do want my life back, but I'm not sure if I'm tired of training - I'm still making gains.

I'm still proud for having done the century ride last weekend. I swam just under 2 miles today. Yesterday - no new distances, but I rode with a bike that fit me properly for the first time and WOW! I can ride my bike, it turns out. Went fast, kids; I'd say I started to lose the line between a person on a machine and an organ-muscle machine riding an aluminum one, but the sweat, aches and occasional crankiness kept my wah-wah humanity front and center. My first impulse is to say it was exciting to feel my potential opening up, but I feel more like a basic frustration melted away - I wasn't fighting anything, and my bike was letting my legs do what they were really capable of. $200 well spent? Sigh. Probably. Ugh.

Getting really stressed about the fundraising, and opening myself up to the possibility that I'll be going out-of-pocket for what I can't raise between my current $4300 and the $6500 I need. I have 80% of a party planned, but a couple details just won't settle themselves...and the training schedule doesn't leave a whole lot of time for much besides work and tri. But! It's what I signed up for, so ahead I charge.

My brain feels flattened out.

Bike Fit, Schedule Insanity & 100 Mile Ride

Dateline: Overwhelm City.

Okay, that's as conceptual as I'm getting. I don't have time for brain things. Today I will talk about:
-how busy I am with tri and with the things that I wanted to get motivated on, hiding from which and getting pumped for which were the reasons I signed up for tri
-getting a Not-New New Bike
-and oh yeah that century ride this weekend

So. How did I ever get signed up for Ironman? I was walking along, doing my desk job, minding my own post-collegiate beeswax, thinking about my dreams and goals and how I have a lump in my throat about how to start achieving them. I felt like I was cresting the hill of not being scared, but wasn't quite there, and I needed to prove something to myself. Creepily, Danielle Hinde IM'd me pretty much RIGHT as I had this realization, and told me I should do Ironman. And that folks, is how 9 months of body mutilation happens!
But. It worked!
I'd barely started training in December when I started pursuing the insurmountable dreams in the rest of my life. I met the kids I've been waiting and wanting to meet in my LA life, and wrangled a few of them into a directing / producing / whatever group - still finding its feet, but that door became more doors, and understanding what I'm good at and want to do out here in Hollywood. So now I find myself planning to make a pilot in the fall. That's interesting! That's real stuff!
What it brings us to is how full to the brim all my minutes are...work is 9-6, working out bookends my days, and when I can fit it I'm making plans for the big stuff after the finish line. And this week I am having to get my fundraising party together, to close that last $2000 gap. Even while I know I need to keep Ironman up top for just another month and a half, my mind is moving beyond it to the things I feel really ready to tackle after the experience it has given me. Again: it worked! Tah dah! The metaphor lives! The girl struggles to breathe!
PHEW!

Next thing: I got a new bike! Except I didn't! This is a very good time to acknowledge how much I have or haven't abandoned the "on a shoestring" premise I originally had for the training and the blog.
I've spent a lot more money than I wanted to on this. I've spent a lot less money than most people would have. I've spent money only when I couldn't justify not doing it any longer. All this adds up to my having spent a lot of money much later than I should have, and giving myself a lot of indecision headaches in the meantime. I still don't have a wet suit, because a teammate has leant me theirs for so long I've forgotten I still have another $160 to lose. I'm not going to Vineman training weekend, because I saw the course so intimately last year that I can't justify the cost of travel, hotel and a day off work one month before I do it for real - even though this will probably be an excuse for anxiety in one way or another. I run without a water bottle more than I should because I don't want to buy a jersey or a run belt that will let me carry it - I toss it in bushes along my route. Etc.
The most worrisome thing I've put off has been the bike fit. When I bought the bike in December, the shop roughly fit it to my body and expected I would be back for a fit quite soon, since the shop is run by people with enough experience that they are sensible and believe no one would put their own discomfort above shelling out $100 for a fit. I sure showed those jerks. And then they showed me back by actually charging $175. I don't know where I got $100 from, probably made it up.
As our mileage has crept up, the pain in my knees has gotten increasingly excruciating. Touch the back of your knee with your leg extended - feel those sinewy bits on each side? Those - on both knees - feel like they want to snap after about mile 70. It was scaring me, along with how bright red the fronts of my knees would get. I'd noticed that each time a teammate got a bike fitting, they seemed to really improve. All of this = Sunday found me at Cynergy cycles, biting my lip about the 200 bucks.
Usually in a fitting, there are a lot of pretty small adjustments that get made - the seat post goes up or down a couple centimeters, a new seat post or handle bar stem goes in that brings it forward or back a couple centimeters, etc. We ended up raising my seat two inches. Extraordinary. I've been told I'm effectively riding a new bike, and boy does it feel like it.
Full disclosure forces me to mention that I also traded out my half-platform pedals (for commuting in pedestrian shoes) for, uh, I don't know what they are called - here's a picture:

And of course you can't get Speedplay Light Action Pedals (looking for a picture necessitates actually figuring out what they are called, ironically) and plan to use them with your ancient mountain biking shoes that you have been using all season in the name of not spending money...especially when the last pair of Specialized BG Pro Road Shoes with Body Geometry Engineering and Lightweight FACT Carbon Soles are on "sale" for $190 and every time you touch them in the store a new employee or customer walks up and goes "OH! Those are AMAZING!" OF COURSE YOU CAN'T DO THAT! OF COURSE YOU MUST SPEND THIS MUCH MONEY! Your knees!!! NEED IT. Oh, did you want a picture?

I'm trying to remember if I've ever, in the style of a cartoon Rich Guy funding his Young Beautiful Mistress' every shopping whim, actually felt faint when receiving a total before. Oh wait, it was in December, when I paid $1,600 for a bike. You would think that would have toughened me up for Six Hundred Dollar Sunday. It's an investment in my future / continued ability to use my knees, right? That's what she said.

Geez blogging makes me tired! No, wait. Disorganizedly trying to jam three blog posts into one blog post makes me tired. No, wait. Planning my fundraising party while writing a horrible blog post makes me tired. No, wait. Planning my party while blogging while trying to get my work at work done so I can leave it time to make it to swim practice makes me tired. Yeah, that's it. No, wait. Planning my party while blogging ABOUT SPENDING ALL MY MONEY while working while swim practice looms makes me tired. Yeah. When do I get to be President? I'm ready!

In other news, I rode 100 miles on Saturday. Anaheim to San Diego. 6 hours, 26 minutes. Anything else I could say about it is going to have to be officially filed under "Fell Through the Cracks."

BYE!

My Body is a Wasteland

UGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHH is the sound of me NEVER BLOGGING! Hi! I don't have a life anymore! Just sports! What's up?

That's not true, really. I also eat a lot. And sleep. And do past life regression exercises to summon the cloudy memory of my former existence. On the other hand, here are some things I've done recently that are interestingly rad:

-I swam tonight for an hour and a half, never stopping for more than 20 seconds. It's pretty safe to just say it was a straight swim, but that would technically be LYING, and explaining the intricate set itself would be BORING. So. How about this? Total distance = just about 2 miles (lost count!).
-I ran just under 17 miles on Sunday. It was brutal. I have never been in more acute physical pain in my life. Pride swells.
-I biked 85 miles two weekends ago. This also resulted in acute pain. And daydreams of pulling over and texting my coach "Eat a dick." Exercise makes me angry!

On this weekend's agenda:
-Saturday: bike from Anaheim to San Diego. The route is currently shrouded in mystery, but this will be between 85 and 110 miles. Cutesy +/-, Coach!
Some friends have invited me over for pizza and whiskey after and I....might not be conscious.
-Sunday: run 20 miles. Do YOU think its ludicrous that this is the post-ride activity? I do, and I signed up for this!

Two weekends ago, as I forced my knees to keep moving on my 13 mile run, I quietly thought to myself: We've entered Terra Incredula. This is as surprising to me as anyone else that I can and regularly do achieve these things - it's only the monotony of being robbed of what I have heretofore called My Life on a daily basis that makes it digestible and prosaic, makes it the sort of activity I insist over and over aloud to others that they could also do (they could).

Now, however, I've entered some more ridiculous place. These are the borderlands of comprehension, or at least the fringes of meaningfulness. On mile 16 on Sunday, as I ran past people doing WHATEVER with their Sunday - family picnics, yard sales, late lunches, neighborhood errands - the mental negotiation was a trading floor of activity. I told myself I could stop at the next water fountain. I got there, and passed it. I told myself I could stop at the NEXT water fountain. I did, and getting running again was more painful than the pain that led to stopping. T-rex baby steps and floppy arms leading to a granpa-hunched back took me a bit further - I told myself I could stop running at the end of the park. I got there and it just didn't make sense. I can't explain it. Why stop when it hurts that bad? Yes, what? What is that sentence? I don't know. Why stop when it hurts that bad. I can remember it making sense.
I ran for another 45 seconds, to a corner 4 minutes' walk from my house. I had told myself I could stop running there. And I did. Nothing has hurt more in my life, without exaggeration, than the next 2 minutes of walking. Then I had to cross the street, and all four lanes of traffic on Sunset Boulevard decided to stop for me - how could I not run? I ran the last 200 yards home - was dumbfounded to find the movements a relief after the walking, like my legs could only do the thing they had been doing for the last 3 hours and 10 minutes.

As I walked in my front door and to my room, my mouth made involuntary baby squeals, and I felt suddenly desperate to try and figure out what I could do to make my legs stop wailing at me. The only analog I have is when you have a simple problem - really simple, like maybe a battery door on a remote control that you can't get open - and you know there is something, not even a SECRET, but something stupid you are NOT doing that will make all the frustration end immediately. That sort of panic was how I felt about my legs. I went swimming, by which I mean I floated for 30 minutes.

Watching Shotgun Freeway last night, towards the end Joan Didion says (I can't imagine anyone saying this in any documentary about a city but one about LA, and I mean that in a lovely way) how the experience of meaninglessness is one of the most religious, and I found my brain drifting. What do I think of that? What is the meaning and meaninglessness of what I went through on Sunday? Clearly, beyond the event itself, I'm heartened to know what I've achieved. And this feeling is only possible by actually having lived through this bullshit. But at the time what did it mean? Sheer existential perseverence manufacturing it's own meaning step by step? Each step a log pulled out from under the back of the huge limestone block and quickly hustled up to become the front log? It's like quitting smoking - each day of not smoking becomes the next day's reason to not smoke. Also a thing that hardly and totally makes sense.

They tell me that after 17 miles its all the same. I'll leave my one eyebrow cocked until I've seen it for myself. Sunday.

Wildflower: The Bike

I was pretty excited to get out of the water and onto the bike, since I felt good. Before my swim start, wandering around in the transition area, I had almost been run over by some pro's doing their bike-to-swim transition - for them all it consisted of was ripping of their wetsuit, clipping on their helmet, grabbing their bike and running to the bike start line - their shoes were clipped onto their pedals, and I guess they just jam their feet in once they are on. This is nuts, not to mention sockless. Have I said already that I think one of the coolest things about this sport is that you are in the same race as the best people in the world at it? Not that I would say we are competing. They are just there, being freaks, quite close, and that's interesting.

So. I ran to my rack, I ripped off my suit, pulled my jersey on, socks on, shoes on, gloves on, sunglasses on, helmet on, grabbed my bike and ran. James and Justin were right at the mounting line - neat again! Here's a picture they took! I'm the one in blue looking way more action-y than whoever THAT is next to me.

Weird energy took me up the first mini-hill standing and through the first mile, just until I began the ascent up Beach Hill. Then I did what I normally do when met with scary hills on the bike: can't stop my eyes from going all big and scared, wonder how I'm going to make it, put my head down, and start pedaling. Look, sorry reader, but Fuck the Guy who put a 1 mile climb + less severe but still WHAT climbing for another 3 miles after that right after I get out of the water. DID YOU SEE? I SWAM A BUNCH? WHAT'S YOUR ISSUE?
Point being that even though I powered up Beach on the practice weekend, on the day I actually pulled over, put my right foot on land for 30 seconds, WTF'd a couple times, and kept going. WhatEVER.

The special thing about being a good swimmer and a mediocre cyclist is getting passed every 5-10 seconds for basically the entirety of the bike course. Meh. The weather was nice, I tried to enjoy myself, and I was averaging about 1.5 - 2 mph faster than I had a month before. There's just not much to complain about.

As the miles counted up to 41 and the dreaded Nasty Grade, my brain got a bit cloudy. I was doing a lot of negotiating with myself - I essentially accepted that I would be walking my bike up Nasty, but left a small sliver of a chance that I might surprise myself. I think this sort of giving up was the only option I had besides berating myself for not believing in myself outright, and so was some perverse respite and good mental survival option. Have I not explained Nasty Grade and the black cloud it built in my brain? Here's a course elevation:
You don't need to understand much to see that piece of crap matterhorn towards the end. GROSS. They - the tri community, universally - call it Nasty Grade, no article. That's its name, it's personified. You know the only soulless things that get names like people? Demons. The point is I was ready to walk the last bit of Nasty.

The way Nasty works is this: you start climbing, and its a good, consistent grade for about 3 miles - you (if you are are me) can go about 10-11 mph up this - down from a usual 17 or so. The breeze drops away, so there is suddenly no noise but your gears, your breathing, the leather of your shoes heaving, and your inner monologue. The road winds, and as you turn corners, the pack of cyclists goes in and out of view - a scattered mass of backs in colored jerseys, rhythmically humping up and down as they slowly power up ground you have not quite reached, which part of you doubts you will reach as they have reached, which part of you takes their having reached as proof that you can reach, a scattered mass that understands you but is not doing this with you, that you are part of having your very private struggle. The experience is not unique, but the struggle makes it very specific, and this sense of going in and out of individuality and community is strange - I think it is a pendulum of continuance as much as the muscles.

Nasty turns a few times, flattens out slightly a few times - has a water stop just before the last big surprising turn, where kids are handing out water bottles and high fiving, which is as cartoonishly heartening as if I were a marooned WWII paratrooper being given bread by village children. The kids really helped. JESUS I KEEP SWITCHING TENSES AND VOICE. That's a sign of trauma, right??

So the real dirtbag thing on Nasty is there is this steep climb that leads to a sharp left - its one of those turns that disappears off and to the left in a way that just has to be a crest, it has a telephone pole at the top that looks so alone that the wires can only be falling off to where you can't see, and this. just. has. to be. the end. You ride up, using the pole as your goal - when you get there, you're there, you're there, and you crest and turn...and there is this unbelievably straight, dishearteningly steep...climb...still ahead of you. Betrayal is palpable, and the wrinkles in your brain become question marks - why is this happening? What haven't you proved? Why was that turn built like a trick ending? So this is where I had told myself I could walk. I knew the trick turn was there, and I was convinced I would be tricked by it. I turned the corner, and my memory of the sight of this climb and the actual sight of this climb left their red and blue corners of the ring, ran towards each other and became the 3D knowledge of the climb that I was really on. While those reckonings met, I found myself still pedaling, all the heaving backs ahead of me pedaling...I don't know why I didn't stop. The climb was surely not what I had made it in my head, in weeks of anxiety; not that it wasn't a beast, but not the beast I had expected. A guy in a speedo on the side of the road holding an inflatable woman told me I was the most beautiful girl in the world, and I'll tell ya - platitude as pure jet fuel - the power of just a bit of humor to put the worst suffering into perspective! I could see a teammate up ahead, powering up standing in her pedals, and I was climbing at 4.5 mph - a month earlier I'd been barely managing to keep my bike upright at 3 mph. I have no idea where the will comes from, but it bubbled up, and like anonymous cyclists had called out to me in the same spot a month earlier - Nasty didn't last forever.

The rest of the ride was still climbing, still struggle, and not comfortable at all. But it just doesn't need recounted - that is, my self doesn't need to remember and relive those last miles, because they weren't where proof happened. The hill was the hill and the hill was what I made it, and I got up both.

Wildflower: The Swim

I'm not one to waste an accidental wrap up, so I started a new post for this chunk of the race. BECAUSE I'M A WRITING / TALKING MACHINE and I WANT YOU TO KNOW EVERYTHING I EVER THOUGHT OR EXPIERENCED AT ALL ON THE DAY.

Okay, check it out: I love swimming. I have no issues with this part of the triathlon, and long for the day I can feel the same way about the others. Last night while doing my mile and a half in the pool, I spent a lot of time with this thought going around and around: "Man, this shit is so EASY! It's like walking. Seriously, I could do this forever. Seriously. It's like if this pool had a sidewalk, I'd be on it. On a Sunday afternoon." This might TECHNICALLY be referred to as hubris, but if it makes you feel better, the swimming is the shortest part of any tri, so my victory is practically defined by its brevity. Did that sentence make sense? I've had a beer.
The POINT is I'm actually on the fence about making a bike jersey that says "I'd rather be swimming."

Because I wasn't able to get to camp early on Friday, I wasn't able to check out the swim course (a big 1 mile rectangle in the water) with the rest of the team. This meant that when the pro men started at 8 am, I was up on a hill watching them to see where the first turn was - after that it would just be a matter of following the buoys.
Tri swim starts are the strangest thing - a combinaton of running, diving, clawing, swimming and churning that has almost nothing to do with your actual swimming ability. How does standing in a crush of 100 people and then swim-sparring with them 'til the pack thins out enough for you to actually just SWIM translate to "I'm better at this athletic skill than you?" Aberrant but I suppose a space shuttle of adrenalin.

My wave - Women 25 to 29, I think - wasn't until 9:15, so I still had another 45 minutes of truely aimless anxiety, and a good 30 minutes after that of directed anxiety, standing near the swim start with my teammates. We stood on the boat launch ramp and watched most of our guy teammates make their way out of the water, running up the ramp while stripping out of their wetsuit and over to their bikes. People looked ROUGH coming up that ramp, which was a nice icing on my jitters. But I should say, I loved standing with my wet suit half on, my goggles and cap tucked into the flap where the upper half of the suit hung from my stomach, recognizing what it feels like to be waiting for a whistle. I loved it the same way I love wearing a walkie on set, or a headset backstage - it's just the edge of pomp and the accoutrement of a culture that means you're part of something, and having an experience that not everyone gets to have. It's so fun.

I mentioned zipping up as a ritual before - I've taken too many dramaturgy and performance history courses not to consciously relish the costume changes of tri, most especially this first one. If endurance sport has a locus, it must be the body itself - through water and over roads, it's the one true & constant place where the phsyical runs into the mental, and you find how they are related, allowing each other their possibilities. Zipping up a full body wetsuit, in contact with all of yourself, is a tremendous feeling of being held in - everything that will make the day possible is in containment and waiting. Then you stand, covered in neoprene but with the most basic silhouette possible, a strange accessorized basic body, with your extremities and head au naturel. And then you get one more ritual! Putting on the cap and the goggles - and then fiddling with them. Now you look alien at best and goofy at worst, and you are and aren't your desk-sitting self.

My pack had green caps to distinguish us from the groups before (yellow, Men 50+) and after (lavender, Women 30 - 35). After the group ahead was signaled off, we wandered down to the water line, and were given five minutes to swim to the end of the dock, swim back, and stand back on shore. This is nice, the first phsyical activity you have had in 18 intense hours of thinking accutely about physical activity, and you get to doggy paddle a bit with the other laydeez. ALSO THIS IS THE BEST TIME TO PEE IN YOUR WETSUIT. What? Yes. You can do it in the race if you want, but this is my preferred time. It helps get a bit warmed up, it's weird enough to be a little distracting, and it's an immense relief. Dirty secrets of the tri community EXPOSED.

What does it mean that by the seventh paragraph I'm still not in the water? OKAY THEY MADE THE WHISTLE AND WE STARTED SWIMMING, all hundred or so of us. I could see the first giant triangle buoy where we were to turn right, and by the time I got there the crush had effectively thinned out - still got a few folks who couldn't orientate, and which I spent a lot of time trying to get on one side or the other of, but mostly it was an open and straight shot. Except that - oh man wow was that long lap out a long lap. I would raise my head to look ahead at the next five or so buoys and could only ever see about..maybe 200 yards out, and was sure I was looking at the next turn. About four times I thought I was coming up on the last buoy, and then I'd get there and find another four buoys peeking out from behind it - knowing not only was I not turning yet, but I'd have to do the same distance again on the lap back. The upside was how FRESH the water was - getting it in my mouth was like cracking open a new and nicely refridgerated bottle of water, it was so clean. I found myself drifting mentally a bit, just enjoying myself - I would start to think about the bike or run, and would have to pull myself back to the swim, and then I'd realize I was auto-swimming, and then I'd wonder if I wasn't pushing my pace as hard as I should. And then you know what? I'D GO EASY ON MYSELF - this is the only part where I have the luxury of it being easy enough that the insane thought I should be going faster (that it's a remote possibility) even occurs, so I try and let myself have a little FUN. It's great!

I passed a fair few yellow caps, which I have to say was encouraging, no matter what the means. By the time I rounded the last house boat to start heading to shore, there was a thin pack of about 8 other girls, and 3 of us got really bunched up and were gently jostling to get ahead for about the last 100 yards. When my fingers finally scraped mud and I got to follow down to bottom with my feet I was chuffed to feel like I still had energy, and plenty of it...the racers around me seemed like they'd had it taken out of them - I take my smarmy superiority where I can, thanks. The strongest memory I have is of my teammate Caroline calling my name from the dock as I was taking my cap off - I saw the camera and realized I needed to smile - I was having fun! And I do love the picture that resulted. I ran up the ramp, stripping my wet suit off, got to see James and Justin and get a weirdo picture snapped while they yelled "Take it off!", and head for my bike, maybe trying not to be sad that the best part was over.

In the end I did the swim in 35 minutes, which is respectable as hell and put me 25th in my age group (out of 80). I can deal with that! I dunno! That time is better than I thought! See the exclamation marks? Get ready for those to go away....bike time...

WILDFLOWER FOR REAL OK OK OK

Weird! My stomach went right back to my throat just starting this blog! I'm nervous to sit and recapture it all, nervous about what a sprawl it might become. Wait! I have an idea! Resultcap GO:
This is a rad thing. Under 8 hours makes me totally happy. The Pros did it in four, which is almost - really, quite literally - unfathomable. HOW would you even fit that much into that amount of time? So if I'm only taking double the time some genuinely insane people take to do it, I can sleep at night. Great, now that I feel proud again, let's recount.

I'm skipping all the stuff about camping except for saying that my friends Justin + James came with me, and that MADE the weekend. A.) Having people I could count on to cook for me, set up tents, complain to, and get hugs from = priceless. B.) Having faces to scan the race for really gives you something to look forward to. C.) Letting people from your real life witness what all your hard work has been for is gratifying. D.) They are funny boyz. Justin in particular gets my personal MVP for seeming interested in the training since the fourth day I really knew him, incessantly calling me 'Ironman' and thereby casting a general support-shame-rahrah aura over my would-be procrastinations, dealing with the fact that I've taken his interest for permission to verbally crap all over him whenever I want, and then actually coming to Wildflower. It means a lot. Here is a picture from when he accompanied me for awhile on the run - I gave him a medal to make up for flipping him off. It was Mile 9!!!
That was fun, no? Okay, let's finish this post. And by finish I mean I am about to write A TON. Settle in.

The night before the race we met as a team after dinner. Wait, I should say: I had a sausage, and started to drink a beer, and was spotted. I wasn't really sure how bad consuming those things was for me, until it was pointed out that I'd been drinking water until my pee was clear all week - a reminder that almost everyone else pays more attention to the vagueries of nutrition, gadgets and planning than I do, which in turn made me believe them that the sausage was going to "screw up [my] stomach" the following morning. Okay. That's nuts, but at this point I'm willing to do almost anything to make Hell Race easier. I might be ignorant but I'm also compliant!

So. We met as a team after the Pasta Feed, and our coaches said some of the best things I've ever heard. The reasons I'm doing this seemed to really be what was on the table for all of us, and I think had less to do with athleticism than even I would normally imagine. I've always been drawn to endurance activity, but have never meditated so heavily on what it's about as the past few months, and Coach Paul articulated it beautifully. He told us that the event - any Iron event, but specifically the brutality of the Wildflower course - was about patience. The cogs in my brain slipped into gear, hearing that, the way I had wanted them to when vainly reading The Tao of Pooh or Siddhartha as a teenager - is THIS Zen? Is that what this is? Is this being in the moment? Will I lose track of my brainself?
He went on - those of us assembled at those two tables had signed up because we wanted to explore something about ourselves - and he didn't specify what. We all heard and knew it was true, and this is when I felt my head slowly start moving back and forth - slow barely side to sides - while my stomach buzzed and my brain tingled. I noticed my teammate Allan, the one most directly in my line of sight, just staring. We were all alone together, and our tables were still. There was no false solemnity, but there was a gravity as we each pulled into ourselves. I took turns being aware of the hat on my head, and the grass below my chair, and the texture of the plastic molded table, imagining the ride, remembering the practice weekend.
Paul kept talking - the bike didn't start until Mile 41, we should be eating and resting as much as we could in the miles leading up to that - while we were out on the back half of the course, pedaling through the 30's, we should spend some time with ourselves. One more time he didn't elaborate on a resonant phrase. At this distance, two weeks after the event, I've conflated hearing him say this with the visual I imagined when he said it with the visuals I actually saw on the ride - I'm not sure which is which. But I found, starting in that moment and continuing into the next day and now as I reflect, a new part of me where I can go. There is a room in a house in one of my favorite books - The Man in the Ceiling by Jules Feiffer - where the mother character goes to do her illustrations, and be away from the world - she calls it her Sanctum Sanctorum. The Latin literally means "Holy of Holies", which is a bit...sanctimonious...but when you take that and divide it by the realistic-domestic textures of a den or workroom, I think its a lovely way to describe the rough-hewn place in yourself where you get to know yourself. Now I've wallpapered mine with the countryside going by at bicycle pace.

Got up at 5:15, though I was mostly awake and ready to be so by 4:45, despite sleeping on the ground and getting up in the semi-cold. I heard some of my teammates saying the same, so I'm assuming this is wakefulness cum jitters, or a micro-version of what I'd been going through all week - you're ready or at least want to be doing the damn thing, but the realities of time and calendars don't allow it. Ate some super carby (learning!) cereal and a banana, filled my 5 water bottles - most of the rest of the team did their water bottles the night before, but I NEED something to do in the morning or I'll go crazy. Got worried and ate another banana, then got worried I'd eaten too much. Then got worried I'd get hungry waiting at the start, so I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that I subsequently forgot about for the next four days, at which point I had an anxiety time capsule sandwich rock. Then I went to the bathroom. Then I walked around. Then I touched my bike. Then I walked around. Then I then I then I. Too much time!

We biked down as a team at 6:30 to the transition area, and I went to pick up my packet - with race number + stickers, timing chip / ankle bracelet, and silly schwag. I found my racking position, among the other 2,000 riders - here's a good shot of the scope. I set up my little transition area: towel on the ground, backpack holding everything I didn't or would only occasionally need - the clothes I took off and would put on after, comfy shoes, iPod, bike tools, extra socks, the sandwich. On the towel, in the order I would need them: sunblock; Body Glide + PAM (cooking spray) for my neck, ankles and wrists to help get the wetsuit off easily; goggles and swim cap; bike shoes with socks stuffed in them; bike jersey (my bike shorts were already on under my wet suit); in my helmet were my bike gloves, cycling cap and sunglasses; my running jersey with race number pinned on and my digital watch. What a silly sport that needs so many things. I checked my stuff twice, decided I would go into panic attack if I checked it again, and put my ipod on to take a wander to Body Marking.
Rituals really help me, and I think body marking is the thing that most tickles me about tri. You walk up to a volunteer stranger, tell them your number (1907!), and they write it on your upper left arm, your upper right arm, your lower left thigh, your lower right thigh, your left hand, your right hand. When they write on my hand I think how similar and different the moment is to getting your hand stamped or written on to get into a club, and I reflect on the compartments of my specific existence. They ask your age (25!) and they write it on your left calf. Then they ask my favorite part, favorite like finding a friend's diary: they ask if you are a pro. If you say yes, they are going to mark you accordingly. Something about you, standing there in your shorts and dumb t-shirt with your ipod on and smelling like sunscreen, isn't totally refutable out of hand as a professional triathlete. You have the opportunity to GO FOR IT, and you want to. But you don't. I amble away, and do little hops to my music, and watch the boys start to head to the swim start. It's 8 am, and the only rituals left before I'll be working too hard to note them are zipping up the wet suit and standing in a pack at the shore.