Something Money Cannot Buy

Fresh back from a six-day respite in Key West. It was amazing to find out how much money it would take to do anything, from the morning coffee to the evening nightcap. A house that was no larger than my 1,000-something-square foot home, with less than one-tenth the yard space, just up the block from Ernest Hemingway's home, was going for a little over three times what I purchased my place for three years ago. Was it cute? Well, yes, it was a cute little cracker cottage house...enough space between you and your neighbor to hand across a cup of coffee in the morning. So what you're paying for is the privilege of not having a yard to mow. In a neighborhood where the wealthy and the poor live cheek-by-jowl. In a place where you have a big, honking bullseye on you from June 1 to December 1, just daring the tropical storm activity to come.

Since I talked at length about the hefty, hoary, hirsute herd spending $50 a whack, contending for the right to be called Hemingway's nickname, I won't go much further there.

It's pretty simple to understand why, during vacation, tourists wallets become slimmer as their waistlines expand. Especially in a place like KW, where the daytime and evening temperatures fluctuate by only a couple of degrees, and both just this side of infernal. All you want to do is nothing. And even nothing can make you hunger and thirst, which leaves you little choice but to take care of the need. I stepped on the scale this morning after my spinning class and nearly shrieked in horror; I'm the heaviest I've been in nearly 18 months, save for a time right after my first half-marathon when I took a week off and ate like a horse.

In spite of the horror, I realize this is a temporary situation. Consistent training, and not a small amount of dietary wisdom, over the next months, will get me back closer to the weight I was when I was racing well in the spring. Much like Mark Allen's advice to Chris McCormack: 'you need to be fat in July (read: early season), you need to be lean in October, when it really counts (read: Ironman world championship).'

You cannot buy thin. All you can do is be thin when it counts - race day.