OMG I RAN

In the snow.  With the dog.  Back to the foggy glasses cold face world of winter running.  Both feet hurt, the right knee, the left lung.  Zeke even seemed a little older, less enthusiastic, yet we soldiered on around the park.  I secretly do enjoy winter running, being bundled against the elements.  No one runs particularly fast in the winter.  It's more of a maintenance plan, the effort, the act of not sitting on the couch, facing the cold, the slick spots on the asphalt, and iced puddles, mud, wind.  I like it.  I didn't run 15 miles or anything, as the nuance of winter running fades fast,  but for 2.5 miles it's not so bad.    

change it up

Had to change the name of the old Ironman blog.  You should really be actively training for an Ironman distance triathlon to write a blog named "Ironman".  I did get my latest edition of TRIATHLON magazine.  Wellington won Kona again.  Amazing - a prodigy in our midst.  She's from England.  The guy that won this year is Australian. Craig Alexander I think?  I stood next to him once at Escape from Alcatraz.  He was shorter than I thought. Good for them.  Committed. 

Release the Craken!

I went to the good old YMCA recently - a few days ago - Jorgenson, the nice one.  Wealthy folks.  Nice cars.  Good looking kids.  Little piece of what I consider Carmel, Indiana right here in Fort Wayne.

I did my normal thing - forgot my towel - so I just meandered on out to the water in my mid-length Speedo, with nothing but goggles in my hand.  I wear what I would consider an 'old man' Speedo that goes half way down your leg.  I stood on the deck and did my normal stretching, arm spins, placed my goggles, grabbed a kick board, and jumped in.  I hate entering water.  I jump up and down a few times to adjust to the temp and then hit it.  Maybe it was when I jumped in?  Anyway, I swam a few lengths freestyle, then turned to do backstroke.  It was just like any other day.  The women's aquatic Zumba class was jumping around, the lanes had people gasping for air, novicely.  I was in my element.  Free.  Free as a bird! Free as a........it was then in all my freedom that I noticed the lifeguard was standing at the end of the lane.  And I thought he made some kind of gesture for me to stop, but I couldn't be sure due to my complete blindness. So I swam back, expecting to be told that they needed to shift the lane lines over or something.  I was happy.  Comfortable.  At peace with myself.  Swimming.  I approached the side of the pool and the life guard leaned down, closely, directly to my face and said in a firm yet panicked tone: "DO YOU REALIZE YOUR SUIT IS COMPLETELY SPLIT UP THE BACK!"   

A little piece of me died that second.  The pool was a stage and I was the only actor standing nude before the entire audience.  I don't know what color I turned, but I felt flushed.  All I could do was smile and say "Uh, no.  I didn't know that.  Can you please bring me a towel?".  It felt like an eternity waiting in that pool, buttocks firmly placed against the wall, waiting for anything to cover up and escape.  Finally he returned.  I wrapped tight. And headed for the door - only momentarily pausing to smile and wave to the older women in the hot tub giving me the thumbs-up sign.

I tell my kids about embarrassing moments. Try to teach them a bit of life and it's short comings. Examples of things that happened to me when I was a kid.  Like when my Mom hemmed my pants for a party with masking tape and the most popular girl in the school pointed out that the tape was failing, miserably, in front of a large crowd.  That was pretty bad.  I thought those moments were done.  Finished.  But life just keeps coming at you....all of it!

11.11.11

I've thought a lot about this day for many, many years.  When I was a kid I promised a friend of mine that we would meet again in Indianapolis on November 11, 2011 at 11:11:11 at a hill we used to be cycling repeats on.  The 79th Street bridge east of Indianapolis is not a very exciting place to fulfill some life -long, mid-life check-up, so I flew to California and stood facing the Pacific ocean high above the water, watching the waves smash into Dume Point in Malibu. 

Not many people have friends that hold 25 year old commitments.  Particularly between men.  We went to the Ynez Valley wine country afterward, known for the movie Sideways (see it if you haven't) and drank Pinot Noir's for a few days.  I've never had to defend my heterosexual nature so frequently.

What's next?  Forty is behind me, well I'm in it anyway.  And the whole world is in front of me.  There is only one thing I can answer definitively: swim.   

40

It's nearly here.  The end.  God, what happened - as only you know.  How did the time go by so fast? Particularly the last few years.  I was just 33 yesterday. Oh well. It's coming, and with it comes the justification I've realized pondering my life that I should buy myself something nice.  Although every time I get something nice it usually gets either stolen, broken by the kids, chewed up by the dog, or I inadvertently destroy it myself within a matter of days.  Nonetheless I've been dreaming of a new bike.  A road bike.  A very light, state-of-the-art, technological beauty, all wrapped in carbon fiber and other exotic lightweight metals.  Oh brother, I'm such a sucker for bikes.  The Cervelo R3 has caught my eye.  I mean really, how often do you see seat stays that thin in a frame?  And such a tight bottom bracket?

OK.  I'll stop. It is kind of a sexy two wheeled machine though.  Too bad I barely ride anymore. There is that fact.  Maybe some new wheels though will do the trick.  Snap me out of it.  Like a good old fashioned mid-life crisis without the Corvette.  Or in my case it would be a BMW I suppose. Too cliche for me...the buying a nice car thing.  And expensive.  But buying a nice bike that you rarely ride that sits in the basemenet most of time does have its rewards.  I still occasionally have some passenger in a car yell out to me, in sweet ego building words, "you're going 34 miles an hour!" on a straight away while hammering out an all out sprint. But, there is the kids college to consider.  Surely a nice Cervelo R3 will appreciate over the years? Why, I may just pass it down to the boys in my golden years, or put it in the Will. I need to start thinking about these things as my young thirties are soon to pass.

did it

CrossFit:  a set of Power Cleans and then HSPU.  Power Cleans consist of grabbing an olympic bar and heaving it up, getting under neath it, just below your shoulders.  HSPU's are hand-stand push-ups.  Come on.  Who can do hand-stand pull ups?  I wimped out and did some modified version with a box, upside-down, too dumb looking to even write it out.  Had some weird twitching muscle spasm in my clavical all the way home. 

I swam this morning.  Not a great workout  - but a workout nonetheless.  Nice mix of IM, free, and kicking. 

redirect to center

Water.  I'm going to starting drinking water in addition to coffee and alcohol.

Exercise.  I'm going to turn off Nova. And the Nightly Business Report on PBS. I might even get my aged self up and out of bed in the wee hours of the morning and move again soon.  Too bad the cold is coming. I am starting to long for the water again. That will always be within me - the need to swim.  I can drop it at times, even get kind of tired of it - but it comes back like an old friend; we don't even skip a beat

I went to Dubai recently. Interesting place.  Tall buildings.  Sandy. Hot.  Speeding taxis.  Pictures of Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and John Wayne at the bar where the Americans drank.  I worked out one morning at the hotel fitness room and could hear the call to prayers echoing over the city.  I liked it - good to experience other culture.  I was trying to kip my pull-ups to the rhythm of the Arabic broadcast.  To 'kip' is to swing and attempt to use your body weight to throw yourself up to the bar - a CrossFit thing.  I'm horrible at it.  Good for nothing at pull-ups.  The prayers didn't help me much either. 

The worlds tallest building is in Dubai.  It's a pretty thing, shiny, a true architectural feat I'm sure. But there is something missing - I'm not sure what. I have these two really tall oak trees in my front yard that were planted once precisely on either side of the sidewalk leading to my front door. They drop an enormous amount of acorns every other year. And I spend countless hours toiling away cleaning up after them, as if they're my children.  Their beauty is exceedingly better than that building in the sand.