Making It Through

"If you're going through hell, keep going." - Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965)

I talk a great deal about New Orleans in this blog. My friends who grew up or spent a portion of their life there marvel at the unabashed affection my wife and I have for the city. My affair began in mid-February 1998, during the last years of my college studies. My significant other at the time was asked to attend a technical writing conference in NOLA. She thought it would be neat to spend the weekend together; she'd do her conference during the week, I'd fly back to Tampa in time to make it to classes.

After the initial shock I believe most out-of-town (conservative) visitors have once "airdropped" into the French Quarter, I found the area's attitude to be a refreshing change from other places I'd visited. There is nothing like a town - outside of the fact you can walk down the street with an open container in hand - with so much tolerance for the quirky, off-beat, and sometimes just plain unique. It grows on a person...kind of like a fungus. And I've never felt the need to look for "fungicide" in the 13 years since that weekend. When things became a little too wound around the axle, we would look at our respective bank accounts and reserve travel and lodging for the next three-day weekend. Time in New Orleans became (for us) the litmus test for the health of our relationship.

Suzanne and I were married the week before the 2004 Crescent City Classic; we had our wedding reception with a guest list numbering over 15 thousand - I'm still waiting for the donations from the "money dance." We both visited for the 2005 RRCA Convention; she went on a girls' weekend the week before the storm turned everything upside down. A.K. (After Katrina), I heard snippets of stories from friends, and marveled, slack-jawed, at the destruction as I drove through southern Mississippi, Slidell and New Orleans East. The piles of destroyed building materials in the neutral grounds near City Park, the "bathtub ring" on the houses which still stood - my closest NOLA friends were good to point them out to me. As a history guy, though, I wanted to know as much of the story as I could stand. My loving wife gave me a gift card for a national bookstore chain, with which I immediately purchased two texts which caught my eye during my last visit: Chris Rose's "1 Dead In Attic," and Douglas Brinkley's "The Great Deluge." I chose to read Rose first, because - like the young person was asked why she chose C. S. Lewis' "The Screwtape Letters" - it was shorter. Well, and Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" episode made him more familiar to me.

I leisurely strolled through 300 pages or so of "1 Dead In Attic," when I was suddenly struck: what I originally considered an eyewitness history of the first days of NOLA A.K. was also a travelogue of Rose's Orpheus-like descent into the dark underworld of depression. Only three other books have forced me to struggle for equilibrium by its end: Hemingway's "For Whom The Bell Tolls," Josten Gaarder's "Sophie's World," and Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum." At the end of the book, I was thankful Rose is a journalist, and that he is not Umberto Eco.

A training cycle or plan, especially for an endurance event, can leave an athlete in the same predicament. When written in macro form, it's clean, neat and readily achievable. Arrive at the mid-point, when the training miles seem endless and conditions team up with mileage to make even the simplest workouts daunting... The athlete suddenly realizes that making it to the starting line healthy is an accomplishment in and of itself. Getting up (some mornings) to do the tasks for which we earn our keep, maintaining open and mutually-satisfying relationships with the people closest to us, and meeting the other commitments (religious, civic, athletic, business, and so on) which round out our lives; these are things which should be the most important. Especially since the vast majority of athletes are not making a living by running, swimming or bicycling.

The previous day's Wall Street Journal on-line (which I passed on to a coaching friend of mine) had an article about the strains endured by families who have a family member training for an endurance event, like marathons or a long-distance triathlons. Some are able to communicate during the struggle to make it to the start line; others can never get a message through. And something as daunting as endurance sport is never accomplished alone. Not if it's going to be satisfying at the finish line.

Because when you feel like you're going through hell you have little choice but to keep going. And it's always more tolerable when you're not going it alone.

Sidelined. Not Benched, But Sidelined.

"I don’t question his toughness, he’s tough as hell. He’s one of the toughest....He doesn’t complain....He goes out there and plays...he practices every single day, so no we don’t question his toughness....Yeah, I love jealous people when they are watching our game on TV while their season is over." - Brian Urlacher, Bears linebacker, during post-game press conference, January 23, 2011

I had a sneaking suspicion something was not "really" right when we started the second of three planned seven-mile loops yesterday afternoon. My right heel and achilles tendon had behaved well through the first loop and we were gliding at a relaxed low-to-mid eight minute-per-mile pace. For Deena, one of my athletes in training for the Rock n' Roll/Mardi Gras Marathon, this pace was right where she needed to be, give or take a few seconds. However, this pace would not do me on the day; I'd need another fifteen to twenty seconds each mile. But pace was the least of my concerns.

My mind and my legs were having one of those James T. Kirk and Montgomery Scott moments which played out in every Star Trek episode or movie I've ever watched. Unfortunately for me the legs were Patrick Doohan, the mind was William Shatner: I'm giving 'er all I got, Kept'n...

About two miles left in the loop, I was deep in the Elisabeth Kubler-Ross stages of dealing with death and dying: Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. Two of three poor half marathon performances in three months were a clear message something was biomechanically amiss, and getting angry about it would not fix the problem.

I figured I would make a bargain with my body and try to finish fourteen miles; if I could do fourteen then tacking on an easy two miles to make the run twenty-six kilometers would be an acceptable compromise.

We stopped briefly at a Circle K. I grabbed a bottle of fluid; Deena took a quick stretch break. As we started again I broke the news. I decided, rather than to back down from the full marathon and run the half in three weeks, repeating the "ten miles of decent running, followed by three miles of character-building" insanity - and insanity, according to Einstein, is doing the same thing over and over with the hope of different results - I would back down immediately to rehabilitation. This vicious cycle of train, injure, recover and reinjure has to stop. And this cycle had to be broken before I repeated the same ten kilometer walk-of-shame I did in Jacksonville...followed by recovering from a high-grade achilles tendon problem.

When you find yourself in a hole, the smartest thing to do is stop digging.

After a hot shower and a cold beer, in front of the television watching the NFC Championship with my greyhound Rubin, I saw Jake Cutler come off the field with a slight limp. Most quarterbacks in his position would have been selfish and said: 'I'm fine, I'm staying in the game,' and continued down the (painful) path of self-destruction. It may seem suicidal for a team who wants to make it to a championship game to put in their third-string quarterback, but I think it was wise of Cutler to know he would only do more damage to himself and to his team's slender chance to win by trying to earn ego points.

Sure, from the outside looking in it seems weak. But Cutler's teammates, the guys who know him best, seem to be in support.

We always look at the "manly-man" approach to training, racing, and endurance sport, but we rarely remember one of the best lines ever spoken by a "manly-man" in the movies:

"A man's got to know his limitations." - Clint Eastwood, as "Harry Callahan," "Magnum Force" (1973)

So, I'll watch from the sidelines for now. Much better than watching on the TV while my season (s a runner) is over.

Following Your Bliss

It's definitely "beer o'clock" here in the P'handle. Been up since four a.m. & in a state (fairly much) of "on-the-go" since five-ish. Not much difference between the wake-up time for participants of a triathlon & the workers & volunteers who make it possible.

There's always (so it seems) some sort of crisis, some kind of "oops, we gotta get this issue worked through" moment...and we had a little bit of it this morning, but it was all right...once we got the solution. While it's tiring, maddening, frustrating, and sometimes even boring, it's also rewarding. I think every race participant should work with a race promoter at least once a year, & I'm not talking about one of those 'two-hour, packet pick-up' cushy, beer-in-one-hand, marker-in-the-other jobs. Ride the back of a rental truck setting up & picking up cones. Hand out water at an aid station of a marathon, or a 70.3. Tear down & put away speakers, tables, & various/sundry supplies.

It makes the thank you of the back-of-the-packer that much more sweet...if you hear it. It definitely warms the heart of the race director, just in case you hadn't figured.

FOLLOW-UP, Monday, Oct 26:

The need - or my need to rant - about volunteerism is as much aimed at myself as the next person. More often than not, people are in the throes of training for a long-distance triathlon are predisposed toward selfishness & self-centeredness. I used to have a t-shirt that summed it up precisely: 'as a matter of fact, the world does revolve around me.' It might still be tucked away in one of my dresser drawers.

I guess last week was either National Volunteer Week, Make A Difference Day, or one of those marketing ploys to get people off their behinds to do something they probably should be doing anyway...helping their fellow man. You'd have thought I'd have caught the message through the weeks' comics. It took until some time around Thursday for me to figure it.

To follow on to the 'marathoning' post from a few days back, someone posted a comment about how much different the triathlon community is from the running community. In many ways I cannot help but agree. Many tri-geeks are personable and approachable...a couple are grade-A type-A...ain't going there right now... But, some are tightly focused on their own training, & can't/won't take time to teach newer tri-geeks some of the tips & tricks which make racing less painful and more fun. In the back of my mind, I think it would solve some of the 'on your left, on your left, oh, $#!+...' moments you hear about, especially on the bike course.

(I can't help but feel grateful to a number of local tri-geeks who I've managed to corner at local shops...they've provided great advice/counsel and helped me get past the intimidation factor of the long-distance event up to this time. Thanks again, dudes & dude-ettes...you know who you are!)