I'm a Triathlete and I'm Sick in the Head

So I’ve decided.

After my last 70.3 Ironman, I was pumped. This was my event. This was MY race. I wanted more.

So I decided that I wanted to do at least two 70.3s in 2012.

I registered for my first one in March. The second one was going to be in September.

Then in January, the deal-breaker: I was sitting on the prow of a boat, sailing two hours out from Cancun on very choppy water when we flew over a huge wave. Everyone came crashing down with such force that one woman went right through the windshield.

I knew I had scoliosis but that day, the condition had worsened ten fold. I couldn’t sleep on my back. I went to a physical therapist, who told me that it was not muscular and referred me to the chiropractor. I had five sessions to do, one every two weeks.

Adios 70.3 #1.

After I had healed and was reduced to just maintenance sessions every two months, I started training for a full Ironman, taking my 70.3 as a training session in preparation for the full distance. At first, it was all good: I could do the runs and the biking sessions, no problem.

The problem began with the swim.

“Do 4000 meters in 1:00 hr,” the training plan would say.

One hour? Only people like my man-turned-dolphin swim coach could do that with any sort of ease. I’m just a mere mortal and my technique wasn’t all that great. But I went at my pace and didn’t care about times.

And then it started to get worse.

I would run mid-morning so that I could get used to the sun. The beating sun that would choke us all during the marathon.

And it choked the life right out of me and so much so that I became increasingly frustrated. Three Sundays in a row where I was increasing the run time by 10 minutes per session and three times in a row where I was running virtually the same distance.

I was beaten.

But people like me, we can’t just not do anything.

So I got back into the gym. Started working out. Started getting picked up on by married men. You know the drill.

I went to cheer on my friends at 70.3 Ironman in Cozumel. The second 70.3 came and went.

Adios 70.3 #2.

I saw a lot of my friends at the event. I saw a lot of inspiring people. I even saw a lot of people who were inspired by me. And I had a lot of people ask me “why aren’t you doing this event?”

And I knew I had to go back.

So I am.

Tomorrow marks the first event I'll do this year. A sprint triathlon in what could be rainy weather. It'll be fun. It'll be a work out. It'll be going back to me and who I am.

I'm back.

Triathlons: Hitting the Gym

I had mentioned how I had lost my mojo. In the subsequent days since, I realized that I need exercise and physical activity like I need to breathe. I start bouncing off the walls and can’t sit still. But I don’t feel like training. I know I can do the distance: I just don’t feel like I’m excited enough to do so.

But I need to do something so in order to keep active, I’ve decided to get back into the gym. In this day and age, it has become a lot more important to me than before. I still believe in meeting people in the flesh. With social media, you can make tons of online friends in different parts of the world but I value the action of going up to someone and actually talking to them. Seeing their body language, listening to their goofy laugh, reacting to eye contact. And for me, the gym is a place where you can still do that.

The gym crowd can be broken up into a couple of defined categories.

The Gym Rat: usually men, who spend an abnormal amount of time in the gym (and don’t hold a job there) and work on the upper half of their bodies, complete disregard given to their legs.
The Alpha-Female: women who do a variety of things that seem to or does attract the attention of men in the gym. Whether it’s taking off their shirts to reveal a very toned midriff, wearing very low-cut tops to show cleavage or wearing clothing that have ridiculously non-functional bias-cuts in areas that don’t need them: on the side of the legs, over the cleavage area, etc. or doing suggestive poses or movements that are supposed to be toning exercises but are reminiscent of pole dancing done poorly.

I like watching this all go down because it makes me feel like I’m watching an episode of Wild World of Animals.

I’m friends with a guy who happens to be a police commissioner and feels the need to be packing a gun. He leaves it with the gym receptionist while he works out. I’ve asked him if he could take me to the shooting range with him so that he can teach me to shoot. He still laughs it off but I know he’ll take me to the range one day.

T-Bone is 6’5 and is the only gym rat I know who works out everything evenly. He’s got the biggest guns I’ve seen on anyone and leg presses all four racks stacked and loaded with 45 lbs disks. I like the fact that I look his age even though I’m 11 years his senior.
I think the only ones he sees eye to eye with are birds.