And we'll all float on okay

As I run down the chute, grinning, I slap the hands of all the cheering spectators who are still out there for some reason, and then, wouldn’t you know, YET AGAIN I don’t hear Mike Reilly do his whole “You are an Ironman!” schtick. I swear, that man really has to learn how to not mumble. After getting my pine cone-shaped medal and my $550 hat and t-shirt, I head off to the food/beverage tent, where I find Sean from the Tri Club and a woman who finished just ahead of me (I kept seeing her on the run course) huddled around an electric fire pit. We chat for a bit, hang out, and then limp off to get our stuff – where I find that D! has picked up my bike and transition bags for me. Sweet!! Definite IronSherpa status for that girl.

I get back to the hotel for a race recap with D!, whose other friends finished hours ago, at about noon or so, and I tell her about my various woes, including my POS watch that decided to stop working on me.

Me: Look, see! It just says gobbledyd....oh. That’s weird. It’s working now.

Yep, at some point – likely the moment I finished - it started working normally again. That night, as opposed to post-Madison where I was so amped up that I could barely fall asleep, I sleep like a baby.

Monday, June 22nd

D! has gone to IHOP with Marit and her family for pancakes, but I decide to pack up my stuff, all the while making a mental note to myself to not forget my finisher’s medal, which I had draped over the bedside lamp. I’m a little stiff, but feel pretty good – and, what to me is the key indicator as to whether one did enough training – NO blisters. Ha, so there! After loading up the car, I go to the race site to find my Special Needs Bags, and to marvel at how ugly the IMCDA finishers’ gear is. Too bad, since this race has a nice green/black color scheme, which is really the most important criterion for picking a race.

As I’m walking back to the car, I see someone walking along and wearing their medal, which is odd, but I’m thankful for it. Because it makes me realize –

I forgot my medal in the hotel room.

Thankfully, D! is still there, so I swing back to pick it up, and then hit the road. And here, another word to the wise – just as it’s completely asinine to spend 3 days pre-Ironman driving across the country to the race.....it’s equally asinine to finish said race, and then start the drive back. Not that I was sore, but I was exhausted – so after 4 hours of driving, I stop for the night, go into my hotel room, fall asleep immediately for several hours. At which point it’s all of about 8PM, so I watch some news, where I learn about a study that shows that women who get their stomachs stapled are less likely to get cancer (hmm), and go back to sleep. The next day, major caffeine and sugar are the only things that keep me semi-awake on the road. Still alert as to fun places to check out, I almost stop at the “Southern Cooking Emporium” for lunch, but decide against it when I see that it’s attached to the “Happy Endings Casino.” Scary.

I’ve decided to try I-94 this time rather than I-90, hoping there’s less construction, which there is, so while I miss the Wall Drug donuts, I’m making better time. I drive through W. Fargo (slogan: “A city on the grow!”) and Fargo, but still feel the need to see some kind of classic North Dakota town, so I go off the interstate and wind up in one that has a very nice coffee shop, some cool buildings, and general amazement that I've stumbled across their little town.

In the absence of RAs like the Corn Palace, I have no choice but to stop to see some natural wonders, like North Dakota’s own set of Badlands, which are indeed gorgeous. Soon enough I’m in Minnesota, where I find myself forced to take back the slightly harsh things I said on the way out here about how boring MN is. To clarify, SW MN is boring as hell – the central part is beautiful. Maybe I’ll move here? Except the drivers suck – I thought WI was bad, with the “oh, I’ll just mosey along at 50 mph in the lefthand lane, what’s the rush, the cheese will wait” mentality, but apparently it’s a MN affliction as well. Damn, so much for that.

As I’m driving, I finally have a chance to think about something other than numbers. And to think about why this was important to me, because there were a lot of reasons. One, the most obvious, is so that now when people google the words “dumbass people attempting Ironman shortly after cancer treatment” – well, they’ll actually find something. So there’s that. Then there’s the fact that I decided to do this.......because I can. At least right now I can. Because I look at all the amazing women that I’ve gotten to know through message boards or through friends, who’re now dying a slow, painful death. Because that’s what cancer is – there’s no Terms-of-Endearment-esque gentle expiration on one last sigh, with some words of wisdom, or any of that crap. No, it’s breast cancer metastasizing to your bones, so that they break if you so much as move, or moving to your liver, so that your stomach swells up painfully with fluid and then so do your lungs. It’s horrible. And if you’re a young woman with breast cancer, you pretty much know....it’ll be back. It always comes back. So I can’t take it for granted that there’ll be any more Ironman races in my future. And I know that those women in the hospital stuck fighting this fucking disease would trade places with me any day, crappy weather and all, as would I if the situation were reversed, which it may very well be some day. For now, I just wanted some part of my old life back, which I got. Sure, it was the fat, schlumpy version, but at least it was something. And it was great getting there – okay, so I still believe that wind is Satan’s emissary here on earth, and cycling when it’s 32 degrees out is painful....but other than that? Starting my long ride as the sun is rising, feeling like the daily running is finally starting to pay off, and yes, even the exhilarating-but-crazy feeling of a really cold open water swim (it’s true, Deanna!), that’s all pretty cool. So if you don’t like the long-course, early morning stuff or think it’s a chore, why bother? Life is too short to not enjoy what you’re doing, especially for this.

* * * * * * *

You know, with things like this, people talk about the “journey”, about what they learned along the way, about themselves and others, and it’s all very profound and meaningful and all that. Which is great.

But, umm, yeah – that is so not me. Me, I just got pissed off. “Fuck you, cancer,” I thought. “You’re not taking Spud away from me.” And so it was. If I did learn anything along the way, it was this:

- Cancer takes away a lot; don’t let it take away your right to be a total dumbass.
- When driving through South Dakota, never assume that there has to be another gas station “within the next 40 miles.”
- No man is a failure who has friends.

Okay, so I stole that last one from It’s a Wonderful Life, so sue me. But it’s true. Not only all those friends who showed up at my doorstep to take Kona out when I was recovering from cancer/collarbone surgeries, but all the great people I’ve met along the way, some of whom I haven’t even met yet in person, but who I consider true friends. Whose support and encouragement has been just.........unforgettable. I don’t know what word I can use to encapsulate the concept of “without which I couldn’t have done it, wouldn’t have bothered, wouldn’t have had as much fun along the way” – but there it is.

As for the day itself, sometimes you look back at your races and lament what could have been, how things could have worked out differently, the race you could have had, should have had. For me, I’ve realized that a perfect weather day, well, that would have been kind of....boring. Instead of a ho-hum isn’t-that-pretty day, we got one that was almost epic in its absurdity, the kind where the world dares you to cower from it, and asks you if you can hack it. And tells you to prove it. As far as I’m concerned, I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

In the end, I can only say this: life is good.


And........it was a perfect day to be an Ironman.

These small hours

I set off for the run in the wind and pouring rain, though at least this first part of the run is along the lake, so it’s somewhat protected. It’s an out-and-back along a section where people are partying it up, and then we go through town, through a seemingly endless gauntlet of spectators. It’s amazing how much 2,100 people can be spread out over a course like this, and so there’s plenty of opportunity for spectators to read my name on my bib and shout encouragement – “Great job, Tasha!” “Tasha, looking good!” I can’t stand it. For some reason, it sounds odd to have total strangers saying my name CONSTANTLY…….so as soon as I turn a corner to a quieter section, I turn my bib around.

After town, we wind our way through the CDA neighborhoods, and then, lo and behold, a turn and suddenly we’re back on TFR! Imagine! And since I’m not quite sure how many miles we do on this road, it seems endless. It IS endless. (Note to self: study the course maps a little better next time.) The one bright spot is an older woman standing at the end of her driveway, right before a hill – though it’s redundant to say this, since this section is either uphill or downhill, nothing as silly as a flat section – and shortly before the turnaround, in spite of the fact that she’s standing in the cold and rain, she has a big smile on her face and is applauding all of us. She reminds me of my grandmother, though my grandmother is too practical to do anything like what this lady is doing. So I stop to thank her for her support.

Me: I just have to tell you, you’re a total rockstar, being out here like this, in this weather. Thank you so much.
Her: No, YOU’RE all my heroes, I’m just in awe, you’re so inspiring.
Me: No really, you have no idea how much we appreciate your support. YOU’RE so awesome.
Her: Oh no, I’m happy to be out here, you all just amaze me!

This could get a bit ridiculous. All this time we’ve been shaking hands, so with one last heartfelt shake, I bid her so long, and get moving again.

After I’ve passed the turnaround and am heading back up TFR, I hear someone from behind me – “Way to go, Tasha, good job! But your bib is on backwards.” Now that I have my bib on backwards, I get words of encouragement from other racers, which is fine, as I do the same, and somehow this doesn’t bother me. My response though, to the cute guy in the red shirt who’s just made that comment and is passing me? “Oh, I turned it around because I couldn’t stand anymore to hear people calling my name.” Him, with a laugh: “Well, just don’t forget to turn it back around when you finish for the picture!”

It’s only after he passes me that I realize – shit, that came out kind of rude, and totally not how I intended. So I break into my fastest run yet that day so that I can catch up with him.

Me: Hey, I just realized how rude that sounded – I meant the spectators were driving me crazy, not the racers. Umm, even though I know the spectators mean well.

(Note: could I sound like any more of a dumbass? A churlish, sniveling, ungrateful one at that.)

CGiRS: No worries! I didn’t take it the wrong way at all. Have a great race!

Whew. It’s the little things like that that stick in my head, and it would have bugged me to no end if I hadn’t caught up with him. Now I can rest easy. As I slog through the rest of this 20 or so miles of rain, that is. With nothing to amuse me except....grunting? What the hell is that SOUND? I look back, and coming up is Gastric Bypass Woman – one of the ones on the news, and who was honored at the Athlete’s Dinner for being among those who lost the most weight.

(As an aside, what is it about these gastric bypass people that renders them unable to understand English? The point of the question at the dinner is to see who’s lost the most weight in the LAST YEAR while training for Ironman. Last YEAR, folks, not SINCE THE SURGERY. Which in her case, she implied was last year, so we all wondered how she could train for this. Turns out that the surgery was 6 years ago, as I found out when I looked up her name afterwards, to see how she did and found the articles about her.)

Anyway, she’s grunting like a champ as she runs near me, telling me about her surgery and weight loss and how hard it’s all been – and she’s very nice, so I tell her she’ll be fine, at this pace she’ll definitely finish, etc. But the grunting is going to drive me mad. What is this, tennis??

The second loop brings us back to where transition is, and so those of us out here on the path are dodging those who’ve already finished. Normally this might be a little disheartening, when you still have hours to go and there are people who’re already done, had their pizza, made some origami pine cones just for yucks, picked up their transition bags and are heading home. Today it doesn’t bother me though – they’ve had their race, and I have mine. Besides, they’re still cheering on the people who’re still on the course, offering yet another data point to show that most triathletes, the vast majority, are nice, genuine people –the few assholes definitely do NOT define us as a group, and we shouldn’t let them.

Here is also where Run Special Needs is, so I get the warmer rain jacket that I put in there just in case – which’ll help prevent me from looking like a foil-wrapped baked potato, like most other people still on the course at this point (and I leave GBW behind, with a few words of encouragement) – and I contemplate grabbing the Timbits, but....okay, that’s a lie. I don’t even think seriously about taking them with me – it’s too much to lug along, the weight of my little bag of donuts. The Timbits are there with me in spirit, however – and I’ll note that the one real regret that I have about IronSpud is that the crappy weather prevented me from showing off my special race shirt:















As I’ve been running, I’ve been calculating over and over in my head how much time I have to finish, how fast each mile has to be, how many times I can stop to go to the bathroom, etc. As I’m about to start the second loop, I look at my watch to confirm that it’s about 9PM, and lo, what’s this? “Battery low” is what it says. O…kay. I push a random button to get rid of that display and get back to the time, and now it tells me to push the button to unlock the keys. Which I do. And now my watch reads “Battun lottonss tlock.” In other words, total gibberish. I keep pushing buttons, and pushing buttons – I can NOT have my watch flake on me now – and the damn thing won’t do a damn thing other than show me this garbage. AARGH!! I move on, but now in addition to doing calculations in my head, I keep asking people what time it is, and panic when I hear that it’s later than I thought, rejoice when it’s the opposite, eventually realize that few people understand the need to give me that EXACT time. Some do – “It’s 10:06 on the dot” – and I love those people. The others, well, they tried, and it’s not their fault I now want to take my stupid traitor Polar watch and smash it against a tree.

In spite of the later hour, or perhaps because of it, there’s still a good bit of camaraderie out here. I see a guy puking, offer him some of my medicine (Tums, people, just Tums), ask if he’s okay, and we’re all kind of looking out for each other, which is nice. And necessary, because as we’re on TFR for the second time (4th time overall), it’s pitch black - I seriously can’t see a damn thing, not even the path, so I try to step carefully so that I don’t go tumbling into Lake Coeur D’Alene. At times this seems like a distinct possibility. There’s hoopla and light at each aid station, where I’m unable to pick up anything like pretzels because my hands are frozen (Note to self: next time, even if the triathlon is in late June, BRING GLOVES!), and then we’re plunged into darkness again. However, there *is* just enough light for me to see that the elderly lady is *still* in her driveway, cheering people on. Really, could she possibly be any more awesome?

And while I’m trying to pick up my pace so that I can actually finish this thing – and I have no idea what time it really is, since I keep getting conflicting answers, I’m looking at my compatriots, also bumbling along in the dark. And I think – you know, it’s easy in the abstract to scoff at people who sign up for an Ironman as their first race, or who seem to have no idea what they’re doing, or who we think haven’t trained enough, blah blah blah…..but when you’re out there and you actually see the determination on those faces, it’s a different story. I obviously don’t know the stories of most of the people out there, what their motivations were, how much they did or didn’t train, etc., and it doesn’t really matter. For whatever reason, there they were, trudging along or in some cases limping along, some very iffy in terms of making the cutoff, but obviously determined to try. And how can you not admire and respect that? Even if they never do another triathlon, maybe at some time in their life they’ll be facing some tough times and will think hell, I did a fricking Ironman, I can deal with this, dammit. And that’s never a bad thing.

As I’m within a few miles of the end, I become aware of the 2 guys behind me, or at least one of them, the one doing all the talking. And as I listen to him, I realize that he’s just been walking with his friend, encouraging him, keeping him upbeat, getting on the cell phone to other friends and family members to let them know where they are: “Okay, we’re 1 ½ miles out, he’s gonna make it, get everyone together to watch for him!” For some reason I find this very touching, this group effort to get someone through the tough times in the darkest hours.

As for me, I feel okay, just tired. Like, needing a nap, yawning tired. If I stop, my feet start to hurt, so I try to avoid stopping. Duh. The sensation of the bones in the bottom of my left foot crunching as I’m running, that at least has stopped. Yes, I know, it’s weird – it started happening during my last few runs before the IM, and I of course ignored it, because what else is there to do? So it started up again, the painful bone-crunching, at the beginning of the run, but then either stopped or I just ignored it.

Finally (!), I’m rounding the corner, going down the main street, and before the long finisher’s chute, there’s a cluster of people standing around cheering on the last finishers. One of the people standing there is one of the male pros, who finished HOURS earlier yet is out here at the end, congratulating all of us. That, I think to myself, is true class. And then I’m squinting ahead, looking for the finish - and quite frankly, I’m not even quite sure where the finish is – it’s all just a blur, and it’s hard to see the light after you’ve been running in the darkness for so long. And while I wasn’t at all emotional when I finished my first IM – I thought I would be, but I was just happy – now I am, thinking about just what a long fucking year it’s been, and how hard it was to get to this point, not just to the point of finishing an Ironman, but to the point of saying “Fuck you, cancer, I’m STILL AROUND, and I’m DOING FINE, so FUCK OFF.” Or something almost exactly like that.

Who I really am

As I’m trotting towards transition, I’m facing a gauntlet of wetsuit strippers who look determined to get my wetsuit off of me. The only problem is that last time they did this, the tore the back apart so I had to get it repaired, and I didn’t want that to happen again. Alas, my feeble little entreaties of “But....bu.....ripped.....last.......carefu........please....” get lost in the shuffle, though they do strip it off with a touch less gleeful abandon, resulting in an intact wetsuit. Whew!

Then of course it’s time to change, and here’s where my propensity towards bundling up like a Russian babushka in Siberia whenever I go riding looks like sheer brilliance. Which it is, of course. In addition to cycling shorts, I put on a base layer, a long-sleeved jersey, a rain jacket, long-sleeved gloves, and I’m pretty much set. I briefly debate the toe covers, but decide to tough it out, because that’s just how I am, the very definition of hardcore. Thus outfitted in my 10 pounds of fresh clothing, I get my bike, turn on my bike computer.......I said TURN ON my bike computer......shit, it won’t turn on. I keep trying, then realize I need to get going regardless, so I set off. Right into the wind, which has been picking up hourly. So that means that my first sojourn down TFR (That Fucking Road) is, yes, right into the wind. As if I’m not slow enough as it is when I first start out on the bike.

So this first part of the course, on TFR, is all hills – long down, long up, long down, etc. Then you turn around at the bottom and reverse your route. Long, not extremely steep, but steep enough, and it looks to me like the cyclists on their way back are struggling a bit. However, I have to say that apparently the tailwind gods were smiling on me for the only time that day, since going back up was a breeze. And as I’m cruising, a car with lights flashing goes past me, and I think, FINALLY, they recognize they have a celebrity in their midst and they’re giving me the escort I deserve! It’s about time! And then I hear the disc wheel as the first pro goes flying past me. Oh. I’m THAT slow?? It takes me many hours until I remember that the pros actually started about 45 minutes before we did, and I had The Longest Swim Known to Man, so that makes a bit more sense.

Then through town, down the main commercial strip, and the start of the part of the loop that goes along Lake Hayden. Or, as the guy biking next to me briefly put it, “where the fun begins.” He said that just after we had scaled one very steep hill, so of course I asked him – “Wait, way more fun than that?” Him: “Oh yeah, there are a lot more, worse than that one.” Shit. I think I blocked the finer details of the bike course drive from my memory, other than remembering that it was a bitch of a course.

I’m not sure there’s a way to sum up the bike course at IMCDA other than to say that if you know the Madison course, and the 3 hills that everyone refers to as the Three Sisters, or somewhat less charitably, the 3 Bitches, then this is those hills, over and over and over again. There is exactly one true roller – and trust me, my non-sveltened self picks up enough speed on downhills such that if anyone could get up the subsequent uphill, it would be me. One. Roller.

And did I mention that my left knee, which has not bothered me AT ALL during training, decided that it was going to be extremely painful during my bike? Yes, the knee. At one point I felt a twanging kind of pain, as if something were ready to pop, but luckily that didn’t happen. But really, what the hell? Again, not once have I had any knee pain, not even on my longest rides, and here I am 12 miles in and it’s killing me.

I’ve finally gotten my bike computer to work, and as I go over the mat on the first turnaround, I have a profound revelation: holy shit, I need to pick it up, or I won’t make the bike cutoff. So whereas before I was cursing my knee pain, now my only thoughts are about the time, my speed, the speed I need to be going at, etc. I guess this is good, because during my ride instead of thinking about anything else – dark, weighty thoughts, for example – I’m just calculating, running the numbers. Over and over. And in the meantime, having points at which I wonder if I’m even on the course, since there are that few people about. Which, again, I see as a positive – at least I don’t have to worry about congestion on some of the narrow, curvy hills. I also start singing to myself – “The days are better, the night are still so lonely.......sometimes I think I’m the only cab on the road....” This is what happens when you train with an iPod – songs enter unbidden in your head, appropriate to every occasion.

The only thought that does pop up once, before I quash it down, is this: “Why exactly did I spend so much of my precious time training for this?” In retrospect, I think that was more a function of the early season training, crammed into an already hectic time where I was (and still am) trying to get my life back together, and the fact that the training seemed to culminate in this one day, this one race, whereas with a later-season Ironman, you have incremental steps along the way where you can see the benefit of your training. In any case, that thought was banished as I finished loop 1, started loop 2, and had a blast flying down Main St. that 2nd time, the only cyclist zipping through a street lined with people, the cops holding back traffic. Very rockstar-esque – which is only appropriate, of course, for someone of my stature.

The hills on loop 2 are, well, the same hills, but now I’ve caught up to more people so there’s a bit more traffic in both directions. I wind up doing a lot of yelling of “on your left” to the slower people who are weaving all over the road on the hills, and later “cheaters!” to the huge packs of guys clearly drafting as they’re going the other way down the main business stretch of road. And yes, they had a choice, since they had plenty of room to spread out. But there’s a decent amount of camaraderie here at the BOP – I ask people if they’re okay if I see them at the side of the road, we chat briefly when passing each other, a female pro (# 13 or 14) gives me a “good job” as she passes me – clearly on her second loop to my first.

Yes, this wasn’t exactly how I envisioned my second IM when I signed up for it, but considering the circumstances, I’m just happy to be out here, shit weather and all. And the thing is – I’m planning on finishing, I’m determined to finish, they’d have to drag me off the course for me to NOT finish, and this race is very important to me for a number of reasons.....but I’m also okay if I don’t, for some reason. If something happened and I couldn’t actually finish, I wouldn’t be crushed or feel like I had failed. For IMMOO, based on the comments I got when people found out I had signed up for it – “you do have to train for that, you know” – I knew they thought I couldn’t hack it, and I felt like I had something to prove. For IronSpud, I knew my friends cared only as much as I did. So if I felt I had to drop out for whatever reason, but had given it my all and was okay with that, that I could count on D! joking that at least I had gotten my Timbits out of it, and other friends guessing that I probably stopped at Starbucks for a latte and decided to stay there. I guess I realized at some point that if you have true friends around you, everything else fades away, and that while Ironman – and all these other huge goals we set for ourselves – is important, it isn’t everything.

One of my last stops is at an aid station to go to the bathroom, and as I emerge, the young girl holding my bike has an encouraging word, after I tell her they must be chilly standing out in the cold: “Well, at least it’s not raining!” I laugh and tell her she’s now jinxed us. Her: “I said the same thing to someone an hour ago and it didn’t start raining then.”

10 minutes later, it starts pouring.

It’s getting colder now too, somewhere in the 40s, and the wind is now at, what, 35 mph? Strong enough so that I actually have to work at not being blown off the road. So I yell up at the sky: “Oh, of course, RAIN! Thanks! Why don’t you send the locusts down now, huh?” Luckily there’s no response to that. Note to self: bike canopy next time?

* * * * * * *

I have to make a couple of points here – the first is that I’m not complaining about the crap weather per se. Yes, it sucked, but we all had to deal with it – at least those of us out there long enough, since it kept getting worse as the day went on. But it’s not as if I was racing in a bubble of crap weather all my own. And while I was used to training in cold, rain, wind, etc., I just didn’t want that on race day, since it detracts from the fun of the race, at least for me. And as far the aches and pains – again, not complaining. Par for the course. After your first IM, you fully realize that that’s why it’s so hard – because stuff like that crops up, for no apparent reason. My last one, I had a terrible backache from the beginning of the bike, which was equally inexplicable. Again, it’s the nature of Ironman, which is why it’s not as “easy” as some people claim it to be. “Oh, anyone can swim at a slow pace, bike at a slow average pace, walk the run, and finish an Ironman with no training. Big deal.” Yes, people do say things like this. If any of you ever meet the random person who can just go off and swim for 2+ hours, then bike for 8 hours, then walk/run for 6+, please let me know, as I’d like to meet this marvel.

Second, the reasons I picked this race to do were because I had heard that it was a beautiful course, had great crowd support, fantastic volunteers, etc. And all that is true, in spades. When I would poke my head up from dying over those hills or trying to stay on the road, the pine-tree forests and lake roads were indeed gorgeous and tranquil. The volunteers were amazing, staying out there all day in the cold and rain, giving us whatever we wanted, with a smile. And the spectators – well, they deserve all the praise one can heap on them. Even though they had to haul out their sleeping bags, blankets, stoves for hot beverages, etc., they were still out there, cheering even us laggards on. Saying thank you then and now just never seems like enough.

* * * * * *
As if sensing that I’m going to make the bike cutoff, the wind picks up even more. Every time I turn, there it is, even stronger. That soul-crushing wind. But hey, at least I’m still pretty toasty, thanks to my now 20 pounds of rain-soaked clothing. Okay, so my face is frozen and so are my ears, but for whatever reason I haven’t gotten a headache from the fierce crosswind whistling through my ears, as I usually do, so who can complain? Believe it or not, not even me.

I swoop to the Bike In, and the bike catchers take Salome efficiently from me, to my comment of “I never want to see that bike again, it’s all yours.” Blasphemy at any other time but then. I then head back to the changing tent clutching my T2 bag, feeling a bit shell-shocked and windblown, contemplating the thought of spending the next 6 hours on my feet. And not liking the idea – but who am I to argue with those older ladies in the changing tent? I have a feeling there are many people who want to quit after a long bike like that one.....but like me, they look at the volunteers who have enough determination for all of us, and not a peep emerges. You just let them get you dressed, and then send you off on your way.....

Did I ask too much?

After my token 2 hours of sleep, the alarm sounds and I get up to immediately go to the window to check out the day’s weather. It looks like a perf....no, wait, it’s not a perfect day to be an Ironman. In fact, it looks like shit out there: grey, windy, cold. I believe this is when the temperature peaks for the day, at a high of 50. Well, as the saying goes, you go to a race with the weather you have, not the weather you want. I have breakfast with Marit and D!, with Marit trying to choke down some vile-looking concoction of yogurt and bran flakes, D! having a waffle, and me trying to figure out what the hell to eat, since my usual pre-race breakfast of a cheese stick and a Pepsi seems a little....inadequate. Marit looks a bit haunted, and I’m quite sure I look the same.

Off to the race site, where we easily find parking on a side street, and D! helps me schlep my Special Needs bags to the transition area. After sending her off to find her other friends, I get my stuff together, realize I need to go to the bathroom (again!), so I stroll over to the porta-potties outside of the transition zone where the lines are shorter. I stand there chatting with the other people in line, and.....wait. Where are my goggles? Where the HELL are my goggles??!

Yes indeed, I have dropped and lost my goggles approximately 15 minutes before the swim start. However, dear reader, this is where being Schleprock comes in handy, because while I’m supremely annoyed, I’m not panic-stricken, due to the fact that.....I have an identical 2nd pair of goggles in my Morning Clothes Bag, just in case. Yep. Just because I'm so used to my typical bad luck that I wind up being prepared for the worst. So I go over there – do in fact have a moment of panic when they can’t find said bag – but then breathe a sigh of relief when I get my 2nd pair of goggles and go wait in the closest porta-potty line this time. Whew.

I get to the beach and start asking people around me what they anticipate their swim time to be so that I can seed myself properly. Apparently I’m in NewbieVille, however, since my question (“What’s your planned swim time?”) elicits the most random of responses (“7” - “What do you mean?” - “Under the cutoff?”). I wind up talking to a guy named Chuck, doing his first IM, and determine that this is the 1:30 crowd, so it should be fine. I reassure him that he’ll be fine on the swim, and then he gives me a big bearhug before going off to find a clear spot. Nice guy, that Chuck. And then....we’re off. I barely hear the cannon since I’m so far off to the right, but I head into the water along with everyone else, and.....holy shit, these waves are terrible. Worse than Friday’s. I discover much after the fact that I lined up at the worst possible spot, according to numerous bloggers, one of whom provides this handy-dandy illustration:


That’s exactly where I start, where it says “do not start here.” Why that was a bad idea, I don’t know exactly, except that it seems the chop was worse there, as was the current, and you lose all draft benefit. All I know is that it’s early in the swim when I think, shit, I don’t know if I can deal with this all day, this crap weather and the frustration of moving so slowly. To compound things, I keep stopping to look at my watch, to remind myself EVEN MORE how slowly I was going, thanks to the 4-foot waves. And then once I hit the part where you swim parallel to shore but at the far end of the rectangle, which is basically in the middle of the lake, well, all hell breaks loose. And even before that, as I’m sucking down water and trying to figure out how to breathe, I almost start hyperventilating, so I stop to tug at the neck of my wetsuit, and.....

Well, you know how things go. Once you realize that something might be taken away from you, you stop thinking about giving it up voluntarily and fight like hell to hang onto it. So it was with IronSpud, and especially the swim. When I do the math and realize that I’ll be close to not making the swim cutoff – something that had NEVER even remotely entered my mind – I take some deep breaths, tell myself to stop being a dumbass, and I begin to hustle for all I’m worth, thinking, I’ll be damned if I came all this way just to not make it through the fucking swim. This would be the theme of the day, in fact: chasing the clock. Thinking, fuck you. To what, I’m not exactly sure, though I’d say there was a lot of variation on a theme: fuck you clock, fuck you wind, fuck you waves, fuck you hills, and of course the classic, fuck you cancer. You get the idea.

Besides, I had given up a lot to even get to this damn race, and while just toeing the line was important, just as important was my need to make it to the run, so that I could wear the special running shirt I had had made up. I wasn’t about to give that up so easily. Not to mention that fact that I have no friends left since I’ve had to ignore them all for the last 2.5 months to train for this. That was a lot to give up for 2 hours of swimming.

So I finish loop 1 of the swim, and at that point you have to get out of the water, go over the timing mat, then get back in. Whereby I make the mistake of going back in immediately and swimming diagonally, instead of doing the smart thing, i.e. running along the shore and THEN getting back in. Oops. No matter – this was going to be my fast loop – no looking at my watch, just swimming. Great, except for one thing – the waves and chop have gotten worse, so it’s even slower going, if such a thing is possible. I know, hard to believe it is. Even I marvel at how slow I was swimming, but then I recall how every time I looked up to sight, I’d see no buoys, just a huge wall of water, which made just swimming straight a challenge. But finally, finally (!) I make it out the water.....14 minutes to spare. Sheesh. Not how I planned to start the day. And those clouds. Why the hell does it look like it’s going to snow??

Save me, I'm lost

Thursday

Almost as soon as I arrive in CDA, I start panicking. I honestly don’t remember doing any training, am positive I’ve only biked or ran a handful of times. And while Coeur D’Alene is beautiful, the crappy weather of our Chicago spring has followed me like a lost lamb, with the wind and rain blowing in as soon as I hit town. Shit. On an amusing note, I check into my room and see that in the bathroom there’s a little chair for one to sit on in the shower – I wonder if they put that in ALL the athlete’s rooms? Then I notice that no, I’m actually in a handicapped room, with safety rails in the bathroom and everything. Odd. I wonder if they know something I don’t know.

After picking up my packet, Deirdre calls me, she’s made it here as well, and it turns out that the friend she’s staying with tonight and tomorrow is....in the same hotel. Sweet! Right down the hallway, in fact. And best of all, D! has my Timbits in hand – though we’re lucky they made it here at all.

(Scene: Deirdre is crossing into the U.S. from Canada, and on the passenger seat next to her are 2 extra-large boxes of Timbits and a huge box of donuts, all from Tim Horton’s.)

U.S. Border guard: Purpose of your visit?
D!: Heading to an Ironman. IronSpud, to be exact.
USBG: An Ironman?
D!: Yes, you know, like a really fricking long triathlon? That’s my tri bike I have with me (points at her Cervelo in the back seat).
USBG: Yes, but......(looks at donuts skeptically).....that doesn’t exactly look like race nutrition. (Hesitates only briefly.) Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to pop your trunk open so that I can search it. No sudden moves please.

Yes, not only are airport security personnel protecting citizens everywhere from chamois cream, but our brave border guards are also keeping the U.S. safe from Canadians bearing Timbits. Whew! We can all sleep easier at night now.

But arrive she does, and after the precious Timbits are stashed in the freezer for essential race fueling (what the hell does that border guard know anyway? Duh!), we go to dinner at IHOP, meeting up with two of D!’s other blogger friends, who she’s also never met. And as D! and I discuss all the ways I can use cancer as an excuse in case I have a poor race, and I lament the fact that I didn’t think to have a cycling jersey made up that says “I’m not slow, I just have cancer,” the Ohioans look like deer caught in headlights, looking back and forth at us as if WE have issues. What? Cancer can be pretty damn amusing at times – so I always say, if you can’t laugh at cancer, what CAN you laugh at??

That night, after watching the first of many stories on the news about all the “special” people doing IronSpud (tonight it’s 2 women who had gastric bypass surgery), I find myself even more stressed out, and I haven’t even seen the bike course yet.

Thoughts in my head

What am I doing here? Why did I drive all the way out here for this? I’m so not ready, so not in shape. My training, it’s all a blur. Maybe it’s the brain injury, that’s why I don’t remember any of it. Okay dumbass, look at your training log. See, hours of training! Many bike rides over 100 miles! Daily runs! Swims that.....okay, so maybe I could have swam more. But my swims in the 48 and 53-degree Lake Michigan water were hardcore, dammit, and I swam long enough to know that I can swim for hours, so at least I’ll be fine on the swim. And how hard can the bike be? Everyone says it’s not as hard as Madison, and you’ve ridden that plenty. It’ll be fine. Shit. Why didn’t I do any training for this?

Repeat in an endless loop, ad nauseum. It’s going to be a long few days....

Friday

The weather is getting progressively worse, but surely that means that race day itself will be perfect, yes? Yes, even though they’re now saying there might be hail. Ha, as if! D! and I head off for a morning swim – or rather, I suit up for the swim, she bundles up in a parka, along with every other non-fool out there. It seriously looks like it’s going to snow. I head out and am greeted by 4-foot waves that make swimming verrry slow going. Excellent, just excellent. Though on the bright side, after my swim as I’m attempting to rinse the sand from my wetsuit without getting submerged by the waves, a cute guy offers to rinse it out for me. Hmm. Note to self: stop heading out for workouts looking like a scalded cat or something equally frightful.

D! later updates her blog, reiterating her happiness that she wasn’t dumb enough to sign up for this race, and “calling (me) out”, as she puts it, that she doesn’t see a Thighmaster anywhere in evidence. Sigh. No matter how much I explain my strict training regimen to people, somehow the nuances are always lost. One more time: I’ve already done the heavy lifting, the strenuous workouts, etc. with the Thighmaster. Now that I’m in taper mode, that means I stick to the easier sports, that whole swim/bike/run thing. As if I would jeopardize things by pulling out the Thighmaster NOW! Oy.

That afternoon, D!, Marit and I decide to drive the bike course. First we do the out-and-back along Lake Coeur D’Alene, on what I will come to refer to solely as That Fucking Road. Because not only do we see it twice on the bike, but twice on the run as well. TFR will haunt me in my dreams.

Then we get to the “fun” part, and as we start to drive the main loop, a stunned silence settles over the car. Until we all start muttering our own respective thoughts:

Marit: Okay, so it’s an uphill, but not too bad, kind of levels off, then a bit more uphill, but not too bad....
Deirdre: I am SO glad I’m not doing this race.
Tasha: What. The. Hell. The people who said this wasn’t as bad as Madison are all on CRACK! Crackheads, all of them! What the HELL??!

We continue on in this vein for the rest of the drive: Marit cautiously optimistic and chipper, Deirdre thanking her lucky stars, and me bitterly shocked. Then we debate the definition of “rolling hills,” pretty much unanimously agreeing that there are very few if any on this course. Shit. We drop off our bags and bikes at the race site, with Dino already having his race number on and ready to go. Such a trooper, my little co-pilot. Note to self: don’t forget to take Timbits out of the freezer, to put into Run Special Needs Bag. This is critical.

That night on tv they have cancer man, who “beat cancer” 2 years ago and is now doing IronSpud. I can’t even be too upset about this, about the total lack of MY day in the sun, so to speak, since I’m obsessively fretting about that insane bike course. That in addition to the hills has some screaming downhills around blind curves, on narrow roads, and many of them ending with sharp turns at the bottom. If it rains, that’s going to be a total disaster. But I’ve been tracking 4 different weather sites, and all indicate little if any rain on Sunday, so that’s a relief. Four sites couldn’t all be wrong, right?

Saturday

Almost there, which is good, because the stress is a bit much. I go for a final ride today, an easy 15 miles or so on the main loop, and it’s not too heinous on the part I ride. One thing I notice – why is it that male cyclists will wave back or say hi to me, but the female cyclists never do? Seriously, are we that psycho competitive? Lighten up, kids.

In addition to the race, the stress of figuring out what to eat is killing me. I know I’m supposed to eat lots of carbs, but after staying away from them for so long, it just feels wrong. A waffle for breakfast seems like blasphemy. Then I’m looking at my different pre-race guides and info, and Rich Strauss says to eat a big lunch while Mark Allen recommends a big but early dinner, or something like that. So I figure I’ll just combine all the advice and follow it all – big lunch, big early dinner, salt tabs, sipping Gatorade, etc. That should work.

1AM

Can’t sleep, so I’m up checking email, snacking on fresh kettle corn that I picked up from a roadside stand earlier today. All I want for tomorrow is NO WIND – that’s not too much to ask for, is it? I’ve been asking that for months now, so surely the Powers That Be will throw this tiny bone my way? Because I’m sure not getting much else these days from them. Wind is by far #1 on my Hierarchy of Cycling Suckiness. Hills you at least know what you’re dealing with – wind, it’s shifty, devious, sneaky, arbitrary. Hate it. No wind, please. But a final check of our 4 sites has given us a general consensus of sorts: between 63 and 67 degrees, light wind of up to 8 mph, rain for literally an hour or two. Okay, not perfect, but doable. Whew. I think it’ll be a great day – I’m so ready, I’ve put in the time, now this’ll be a piece of cake. Looking at a definite PR, maybe even a Kona slot? Okay, maybe not Kona, but at least sub-13. Okay, maybe not sub-13, but at least better than my IMMOO time, so sub-15. Yeah, that’s it. Totally doable. Crushing dreams, that’s what it’s all about. Rock on, baby, rock on....

Trouble in the heartland

Tuesday, June 16th

Okay, so who the hell thought this driving thing was a good idea? This road is endless. Just a vast stretch of bumpy pavement and construction as far as the eye can eye. Fine, so it is beautiful here, with the massive storm clouds on the horizon hovering over the endless plains dotted with cattle and haystacks, but in a stark and unforgiving way. I feel a kinship with Tom Joad and his own epic journey, because that’s what this is about after all, the journey, the striving for one’s dreams and….no, wait, what the hell am I talking about? That’s bullshit. It’s about the fucking race, dammit. And the Timbits. And not necessarily in that order. I don’t even know what day it is. Days on the road, I can’t even remember the last time I worked out – not sure I even remember how. It’s been weeks, hasn’t it? Oh, wait, I rode this morning. Never mind. It just feels like weeks.

I also understand the suffering the pioneers and pilgrims and other settlers went through on their way out here, because I’m feeling it too, the same despair they must have felt as they searched in vain for just one – ONE – station on the radio. Anything, anything at all! Instead, I push the scan button, and it keeps scrolling through, on and on....and on.....

And I now know everything there is to know about protecting yourself in case of a tornado, because there are some out there, very close, so that’s all they’re talking about on the radio:

In a house – go to basement, or shelter yourself with a heavy object like a table or door, or go to an inner room
In a car – don’t think you can outrun the storm. Get to shelter, or lie down in a ditch.
Trailer home – leave or die.

Feel free to thank me the next time you’re caught in a tornado.

* * * * * *

You know you’re in the middle of nowhere when the billboards say things like “Days Inn – 128 miles ahead!” 128 miles to the next sign of civilization? Apparently so.

* * * * * *
Suddenly, however, none of that matters, as I’m in the Badlands. I have no idea what Badlands are, technically, but they sound hardcore. And appropriate. Okay, even if they’re just really cool rock formations, they still make me feel like I’m one with The Boss. Good place to hunker down for the night.

In the morning, I have a difficult decision to make – I only have time for one attraction, so I have to make a choice: Mt. Rushmore or Wall Drug. Hmm. Okay, so that’s not really a tough decision after all. I’ll make it quick though – Spud awaits!

(2 hours later)

Well, so much for my quick stop at Wall Drug – that place is fascinating! I expected the extreme shlock, and there it didn’t disappoint, but instead of the monolithic sterile drugstore I envisioned, WD was pretty interesting, especially the picture and photo galleries with old black and white photos of Indians and settlers. Very cool. And EVEN BETTER – when this place says “Homemade Donuts” – they’re actually made right there in front of you. Wow, will wonders never cease? This helps me keep up with my strict tapering regimen, being able to feast on donuts. Well, with difficulty, naturally, seeing as how I normally embrace All Things Healthy. I think I’ve gotten cynical because of the disappointment of Midwestern attractions, that promise innumerable charms and kitsch galore, and always wind up offering far less. Not out here, no sirree. I wonder if that’s because they realize a simple truth, that they don’t want to be stuck with the angry mob that might ensue if they don’t deliver to people who’ve just spent hours upon hours driving through barren lands with nothing to do but look at hundreds of billboards promising really cool stuff?

* * * * * *
Wednesday, June 17th

Another day of driving, another day of near-insanity. Wyoming – flat and dusty. Montana – same. Though once I get closer to Idaho, still on 90 as I approach Missoula, the scenery changes and becomes, well, rather breathtaking. Mountains, hills covered with pine trees, a river running alongside the highway.....it’s absolutely gorgeous. Almost makes driving out here worth it, though I still think this is one of the most asinine things I’ve ever done. Not sure if I’m talking about Ironman or the drive, but take your pick. I stop in Missoula for the night, find a hotel that’s actually along the river, and I have a little balcony with a view of said river. Ah, so peaceful and quiet, I’ll finally get a good night’s sleep before I head into Idaho tomorrow. Perfect.

(half an hour later)

BRRRAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPPP! BBBRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!

What the hell? That was the loudest, longest train horn I’ve ever heard in my life. Okay, so apparently I’m now living out a scene from My Cousin Vinnie, where they wind up in a hotel that’s 15 feet from a train track, that VERY LOUDLY sounds its horn at frequent intervals. This, I have to laugh at. It figures. I better make sure I don’t stop at any convenience stores tomorrow, and then wind up in bizarre conversations with small-town police officers. “I shot the clerk!?” Because then IronSpud could be the least of my problems.

Thursday, June 18th

Finally, (!), Idaho! Of course, as soon as you enter the state of Idaho, it tries to kill you. Yep, there’s the “IDAHO” state sign, and immediately you find yourself on a steep, twisty road hurtling down a mountainside, blind curves and “runaway truck” strips galore. I’m so mentally exhausted by this that as I’m later driving past the town of Wallace, which purports to be some kind of historic town, I decide what the hell, I’ll stop there. So I do, and discover 2 things:

- Forgot about that next time change – packet pickup has barely begun. Oops. Or more likely, I didn’t notice the sign for the time change when I had the death grip on my steering wheel.

- Surprise surprise – this is a cool little old mining town. And lo and behold, they’re all set up for a fun fair/carnival they’re having this weekend. I pick up some pamphlets and a local paper, and read about both the Coeur D’Alene Bike Trail – 72 miles of paved trails through the area – AND about the merry band of Shriners from the local Elks Lodge who lead a parade “from tavern to tavern”, to kick off the carnival. Hmm again. IronSpud who??

I eventually make it to the town of CDA, pick up my packet, and suddenly realize this: why oh why the hell didn’t I do any training for this? I am so screwed.....

What a long, strange trip it's been.....

Tuesday

Minnesota sucks you in as soon as you cross the state line from WI, with a stunning drive along a winding road with water on the right, a gorgeous rockface on the left, and greenery everywhere. That of course is all shot to hell once you drive on a certain distance and come to endless miles of flatness and cornfields, or whatever it is they grow in Minnesota. Turnips maybe.

Of course, as I drive I’m continually on the lookout for Roadside Attractions, the heart and soul of America, as it were. Nothing yet, though I do start seeing signs for something called the Corn Palace, which might have promise though I’m skeptical.

In short order, I’m in South Dakota, having found no appropriate RAs at which to wile away some time. There’s a moment of excitement when I see a sign for Laura Ingalls’ home in DeSmet, so I take the exit to check that out. And then see the sign – “DeSmet – 55 miles.” Sorry, Laura, even for you I’m not going 110 miles out of my way. Honestly, just what does one have to DO around here to see a Roadside Attraction, dammit??

After about the 100th sign, I think, FINE, I’ll stop at the damn Corn Palace. I picture it as a tacky, schlocky, new-age homage to All Things Corn, and as soon as I get off the interstate, start looking for large corn stalks rising from the sky. What I come across is, well, it’s something. In recounting this later to friends, it was suggested that I revisit my thrill over the Corn Palace when I’m not quite so sleep-deprived…but no, I still think it was kind of cool. Instead of the modern monolith I imagined, the Corn Palace is a large building of interesting architecture, with domes and all, painted every year with a different theme and artwork that’s designed by local artists. Even better is the history of the Corn Palace, which I discover when I stroll around inside and look at the pictures/photos everywhere. The first CP was built in 1892 as a showcase for South Dakota, was rebuilt in 1905 to expand it, and then upon the realization that large wooden structures into which thousands of people were crammed at once for various events wasn’t such a good idea, the current CP was built, in 1921.

What impresses me is that every sign in and just outside of town gives directions and proximity based on closeness to the Corn Palace. “Antique mall, 2 blocks south of Corn Palace.” “Indian Village, ½ mile north of Corn Palace.” Needless to say, these people take their corn seriously.

* * * * *
As I drive – and as a side note, why the hell does ALL of I-90 have construction going on? Seriously, through every state, miles of one-lane roads – I take note of some of the billboards. There are the many for Wall Drug, naturally, and as soon as I entered South Dakota there were (in rapid succession) billboards that were anti-abortion, with religious sayings, and for gun shops. But what really made me wonder about our educational system were the ones for some garage/auto repair service, that boasted about the shop’s skills in car repair, and then had this in large print: “24-HOUR TOE SERVICE.” At first I thought, what, they do pedicures too? And then realized that the actuality was far, far worse, that that's how they think you spell "tow"…….


* * * * * * *

It is while in South Dakota (still) that I hear the most odd and disturbing radio commercial I’ve ever heard in my life. It starts with a voiceover talking about John, who left the house that morning never to return, as he was killed in a car crash on his way to work. And yet, before he walked out the door, never to see his family or kids again and leaving his kids without a father (they emphasize this part), he took the time to leave a screensaver message on his son’s computer, telling him how proud he was of him for playing a great basketball game the night before, and that he loved him. Going on, the ad then stated that most people don’t take the time to do those things, “not because they’re too busy, but because they’re neglectful.” Yet John did the uncommon thing, and therefore left an uncommon legacy for his family, and we should all strive to do the uncommon. “This message was brought to you by the uncommon…”

(and here I’m thinking that it’s going to be from the Church of Latter-Day Saints, or some other religious or non-profit group)

“……folks at Gary Marshall’s Chevy Dodge dealer! With uncommon deals, so come in NOW to get yours!”

I kid you not. What. The. Hell. How exactly did THAT meeting go over at the ol’ Dodge dealership?

Bob: “So boss, I was thinking, for our new ad we could parallel this guy’s death in a car accident and how unexpected that is, with OUR dealership and how we have these great unexpected deals! Or something like that.”
Boss: “Bob, I like the way you think.” Barking at another poor sales lackey who doesn’t have the brilliance of Bob, “Mike, get our ad people on this. And why the hell don’t the rest of you come up with these great ideas, like Bob here?”

(to be continued)

Observations

• Good god, there are a LOT of awful radio stations out there.
• Do THAT many people really like country? It’s all basically the same stuff, isn’t it? Your old lady left, the hound dog is sick, the beer is flat, blah blah blah.
• Ditto for heavy metal.
• Ditto for the Christian stuff.
• The cutesy/fancy hotel/motel names, like the Doodrop Inn or the Bel Aire, do not inspire confidence. And adding “extra clean rooms” to your signs doesn’t help either.
• Oh come on now, really – a gas station/store called the “Kum ‘n Go”? Are you serious?

An ode to Sparta

Monday night

After driving for what seems like an eternity, I decide it’s time to stop, and suddenly I see a sign for Sparta. Sparta, as in Home of the Butterfest? Sweet! Unfortunately, the Best Western I stop at has no rooms, but the nice woman calls the Country Inn down the road and they’ll hold a room for me. Before I leave the Best Western, I ask the woman just to make sure: “Is this the Sparta that’s the Home of the Butterfest?” It is! How exciting! But apparently I just missed it. Damn. Well, at least there’s that Sparta bike trail that I’ve heard so much about from Joe, who’s from Sparta and who’s made us all aware of its charms. I need to do some light riding this week, so tomorrow I’ll check out the bike trail. I decide to watch the forecast on the Weather Channel, to get confirmation of what I’m sure will be the sunny days ahead. What’s this? Tuesday – showers. Wednesday – showers. Thursday – t’storms. Friday – t’storms. Are you fucking kidding me???

Tuesday morning

I get up at 5AM as usual and peek out the window – no rain yet, though the clouds on the horizon look threatening. Better head out now. Somehow, I manage to find the trail – shocking, I know. And proceed to have a nice, tranquil bike ride on a gravel path, which is good since it prevents me from going as fast as I normally would, speed demon that I am. Once in a while it’s good to slow down to a lazy 24 mph or so, see how the little people toodling along on their bikes view the world.

As I’m returning, after seeing not one other person on the bike path, up ahead I see an older man and his dog, right at the point at which I start speeding up in order to end my workout on a high note, as I usually do. I always say, if you don’t end your workout gasping and out of breath, what’s the point? So as I’m getting closer to the Old Man and the Dog, I start yelling: “On your left! COMING THROUGH! Come ON!!!” But to no avail – I approach and they’re still scrambling to get out of the way, so I have to come to a screeching halt, kicking up gravel and getting dust particles on Salome’s frame. Oh, the humanity! Naturally, I start giving this guy a piece of my mind, telling him in no uncertain terms how selfish and inconsiderate he is, because this is obviously a BIKE TRAIL, got it? So people like him have to MOVE FAST to get out of the way of people like me, serious athletes doing a critical workout. I wind up my harangue with the words “….and your little dog too!”, just to make it understood that Harry, as he was calling the dog, wasn’t exempt from my wrath. That’ll teach them. Hmph.

Oh wait, never mind, I was pretending to channel my inner Swimfan. What actually happened was that the guy heard my wheels on the gravel path as I was coming towards them, and tried to move aside, but Harry was having none of it. In fact, he stood there in the middle of the path, paws firmly rooted to the ground, giving me a truculent look that said he wasn’t budging. So I coasted to a gentle stop and chatted with the guy for a while, about how nice the trail is and about yet another successful Butterfest in Sparta and so on. And tried to make friends with Harry by scratching his head, though as I bid farewell and tried to ride off, Harry still wasn’t moving. Oh well. I tried.

Then after calling Joe to tell him about the “situation” we were having in Sparta – i.e. the coffee at the hotel was horrible, so I needed to find a Starbucks stat (Joe basically laughed at that one), I drove on. Idaho or bust! How much fun is this going to be?!

Eye of the tiger, baby

Monday

Once I had made up my mind to do IronSpud, I was willing to dig deep and do whatever it takes to succeed. No matter how tough or seemingly impossible the task, you just do what you have to do, knowing that it’ll pay off later. That’s just how it is for those of us who try to set an example for the little people.

Of course, I’m talking about buying speed, or as Triathlete magazine put it in an article, “How to buy speed when you don’t have time to train.” Naturally I do the training as well, but a little bit of assistance never hurts. And finding that assistance can be tough, those little hidden gems of speed and power. But again, that’s the kind of person I am: doing what needs to be done.

So the checklist that I’m going by, and that I’m providing here as a service to all of you, is as follows: compression tights, check; Optygen HP, check, though I have no idea what this stuff is supposed to do – it’s expensive, however, so it must work; aero helmet, ech, just how dorky am I supposed to look out there?; caffeinated GU/Infinit/etc., check; tight clothing to reduce wind drag, umm, yeah, not a problem; the flip-flop exerciser shoes, of course. These are my secret weapon – shoes that give you the equivalent of a strenuous workout just by virtue of wearing them. Between those and the compression tights, which essentially do the same thing, I’m now on a 24-hr workout schedule. Don’t try this at home, please - remember that I’m a professional.

One other iron-clad rule of triathlon is that one should never change anything before a race. I live by this rule, since it’s so easy to change one seemingly tiny thing and then watch everything fall apart on race day. That’s why this past Sunday, when I went out for another 100+ mile bike ride, the only thing I changed was my aerodrink straw. Oh, and my wheels and cassette. And shoes and inserts (brand new!). That was all – except that when I stopped at the WI convenience store for the requisite beef stick, I did adjust my saddle, raising it a tad. But other than that, I stuck to that rule absolutely. Another one of my pearls of wisdom there for others to emulate.

My ride to and from Wisconsin was not only part of the final Ramping Up phase of my training plan, but it also had a purpose: to find that damn fiberglass ear of corn wonder that I stumbled across on a ride last year, but haven’t been able to find since because I haven’t gotten lost in just that particular way. Sunday, I decided to retrace my steps. So I went to the gas station/convenience store in Darien, wandered up and down a couple of streets and decided they didn’t look right, turned down one street that had promise, went over a highway which made no sense, and suddenly, voila, there it was! Victory!



From there I decided to go for the dufecta, and swung by the ostrich farm for a few pictures. So even though I had to ride on about 20 miles of chipseal, which is what County Road K now is, sad to say, it was worth it.

Now that I’ve totally depleted any glycogen stores I might have had and have ensured that my legs are completely fried and sore as hell, it’s time to taper. For the uninitiated, “tapering” consists of a careful regimen of conserving movement and eating studiously and carefully. At its purest, that means sitting on one’s ass all week and eating nothing but donuts – at least that’s the traditional definition, and far be it from me to tinker with the tried-and-true.

I have also taken the time to perfect my race plan for IronSpud, or the culmination of all my hard work and deep breathing and striding briskly, and that plan can be boiled down into one word thusly: hammer. I intend to go full-out from beginning to end, leave everything I have out there, no holds barred. This will surely be a race against time - not that I haven’t done the work, as there’ve been hundreds of miles of cycling, hours upon hours of running, and, umm, I’ve swam a couple of times. And I’ve managed to cram this all into the last couple of weeks…..

Scene: Dropping off Kona at daycare last Friday, mentioning that we won’t be in for a couple of weeks since it’s Ironman time. Nancy, the lovely woman that works there, knows about this since I had changed up my schedule 2-3 weeks ago to get up super-early in my Ramping Up phase.

Me: So, you won’t see us for a couple of weeks. I’m leaving Monday for Idaho, for the race, and Kona is going to his girlfriend’s.
Nancy: Wow, already! You’ve been working really hard for 2 weeks now!
Me: Well, I’ve been training a bit longer than that….
Nancy: Oh, I guess, but the last two weeks has been the real training, right?
Me, sighing: Sure. Right.

The point being, all of that “pace yourself” stuff is for people who are not willing to be bold in their race execution. I will of course report back on how my plan works, though I’m sure it’ll be a raging success. How could it not be? Though I may also try my friend George from Canada’s suggestion – to go out with the leaders, then surge the last 5 miles. Though I might change that to the last 10, just to give myself a bit more cushion.

And with that, I’m setting off for IronSpud. See you on the road….

Desperate times

The water couldn’t really be THAT cold, could it??

Yes. The answer to that would be.......yes.

* * * * * * *

It’s clear that it’s never going to be warm in Chicago, and the lake temperature will never warm up enough such that it’s acceptable for swimming for those who aren’t completely insane. That temperature would be somewhere around 80, or where the risk of seeing baby harp seals frolicking and gamboling about is minimal. But enough is enough – I can NOT get into Lake Spud without having done a single open water swim of more than 15 minutes (Tri-Shark).

So off I go, toting along every bit of neoprene I own: wetsuit, cap, booties, gloves. It’s quite possible that water may not even touch my skin. I park my car and start trudging over to the beach, wearing a bathing suit, beach cover-up, and cheap flip-flops, all to minimize what someone would steal if they took off with my stuff, since there’s really no way to lock up my bag. As I’m walking on this windy, grey, misty day more appropriate for March, I notice that everyone passing me is wearing.......parkas. No, seriously. Winter wear. One person has a scarf on, but there is also actual down being worn. In comparison, I look like a total idiot. Or triathlon goddess, take your pick.

The beach is deserted, of course, as I start the process of getting the Damn Wetsuit on. Really, is there anyone who doesn’t curse when putting these things on? But I did learn something from last year, where I put on the wetsuit and then the gloves and booties: this will lead to a situation whereby the booties obtain a windsock effect, dragging behind you as they fill up with water, and the gloves will also fill up with water and puff up to look like Hamburger Helper mitts. Not that great in terms of reducing drag.

Of course, I get everything on and then realize I forgot to tuck my plastic bag with my car key somewhere on my person. Shit. Well, stuffing it down the front of the suit will have to do. Onward!

“Hmm, the water doesn’t seem TOO bad...yeah, it’s really not that ba..oh my god ohmygodohmygodohmygod.”

That was when I put my face in the water – and sure, the rest of me was all cozy and warm, but my face? Insta-freeze. Holy jesus, that’s painful.

However, once I start swimming, my face goes numb and thus no longer hurts. This means that when I stop to adjust my goggles and a parka-clad passerby asks me how the water is and I attempt to say “insanely cold!” – it comes out as “hwebahna hahd.” Yet he seems to understand me, and says that he’s waiting until next week to get into the water. You know, for the miraculous warming up that’ll occur due to the consistent 55-degree air temperatures we’ve been having in Chicago.

I swim for about an hour, just me and the harp seals, as I realize how insanely slow I am and have the fervent hope that 2200 people in the water will create a nice draft that’ll just suck me along in its wake. Either that or I’ll have to create some kind of protocol for smuggling fins into the water with me. I’m sure that’s never been tried before, so it’s not like they’d even be looking for it, right?

When I get out and strip off the gloves and booties, my hands and feet look rather blue and are in fact numb. But I have to say, that really wasn’t too bad. Okay, it was actually kind of.....fun? Yes, it’s true. Once my face went into can’t-feel-it mode, it was kind of nice to be in an actual body of water rather than in a pool, which I hate. Which is why I, umm, rarely get in a pool. Oh, and I’m pretty sure the water was AT LEAST 48 degrees. Practically balmy.

By the way, I’d like to apologize to everyone in Chicago – or perhaps the world, since the weather seems to suck everywhere – for being so foolish as to sign up for an early-season Ironman. Which by definition would normally dictate lots of outdoor riding, swimming, etc. Which means that Chicago has had not only the rainiest spring in history, but also the coldest one in 50 years. A coincidence? I think not. My bad....

The sound of madness

Saturday was the annual Tri-Shark triathlon, which also marked my triumphant return to triathloning. I was going to go for the age group win, as usual, but then I decided it would be more fun to wear my pink birthday sash during the race – and the drag from that was obviously what cost me those 8 or 15 places. C’est la vie.

That night we go out for my birthday dinner, and I have my pre-race fuel of 2 amaretto stone sours. Read and learn, folks, read and learn. Of course, Sunday is the Udder Century, not a race per se, but if you’re not going to be in peak form and crushing others at ALL such events, then why bother?

After spending the night at my mom’s, Deanna and I wake up at some ridiculously early hour to get ready for the Udder. We step outside and.....what ho? It’s warm and muggy and NOT windy? Hmm – a sign of the apocalypse perhaps? Not to fear – by the time we get to Wild West Town, where the Udder starts, it’s about 20 degrees colder and windy. And then it starts raining. Of course. As we set out, I have a vision of IronSpud......

* * * * *
(cue Wayne’s World dootooloo music.....)

Scene: Ironman Coeur D’Alene has begun. Tasha has finished the swim, changed into her cycling clothes, and is sitting on a chair in transition, tapping her foot impatiently, looking at the sky.

Volunteer: Is something wrong, dear?
Tasha: I’m just waiting for the weather to improve a bit. I’m just not used to this, where I come from.
Volunteer, after a pause: Umm, this is the nicest weather we’ve had in a long time. Warm, not a cloud in the sky....
Tasha: Exactly! You see what I mean then! And then there’s the problem with the wind!
Volunteer: Wind? But......but there IS no wind today. It’s amazingly calm.
Tasha: Exactly! How can I be expected to race under these kinds of conditions?

* * * *

At the second aid station, I’m about to have my standard pb&j half, when out of the corner of my eye I spot.....donuts? Nestled in their box so invitingly? Now, normally my finely honed athletic self wouldn’t even think of fueling with such low-grade carbs, but since I’m planning on proving my theory that an ironman can be completed with only Timbits as sustenance, this bears further investigation. After ascertaining that they are indeed for riders, I pick out a jelly donut, which I eat only under duress, pillowy donuty marvel that it is. Yes, I know, the sacrifices I make for my sport – there’s no end to them. I’m happy to note no ill effects – and in fact, I ride pretty well for the next hour - so Timbits at IronSpud – it’s on.

Of course, as the ride continues, the wind continues to pick up. Deanna has long since decamped, having planned for a much shorter ride, so it’s just me and the elements. And the barking dogs, like the large black Doberman who comes running at my bike. A Doberman? Surely you jest. I admit, I laugh at him – “Come on, I rescue you guys for god’s sake!” – and like a typical ADD Dobe, he bounds off to chase a butterfly or something.

Now, at this point in the ride is where my mind comes totally unhinged - because I had planned to do an approximately 120 mile ride, and in spite of the crappy weather, I’m still planning that. To which I now say, what the hell? So I spend a lot of time looking at the maps and talking to the volunteers, trying to figure out the best place to tack on 20 miles, which is why after I add on my detour, I’m one of the last riders on the road, and the wind is really sucky now. So sucky, in fact, that while talking to other riders at the last aid station, I actually utter the following words: “Hills are great, just the greatest thing ever. I would take hills ANY DAY over this.” Clearly, madness this way lies.

And while I’m pleased that I got in another 110+ mile ride, I still have one pressing concern: the fact that I have yet to do a single lake swim, the short swim at Tri-Shark notwithstanding. Thus, this past Monday, even though it was yet another windy, blustery day, just 59 degrees, and according to the coastwatch site the Lake Michigan water temperature was 46 degrees......I decided I was going in. Fish or cut bait time. The water couldn’t really be THAT cold, could it??

Everything is wonderful now....

I decide to break from my usual tradition and actually be helpful to someone on our Tri Club message board, who was asking whether the Udder Century was a hilly ride. Now, we all know how much I suck at hills, so if I say something’s basically flat, it’s flat. Period. Flatlined. And the routes for the Udder follow all the country roads that I always ride, so this at least I know about.

Imagine my surprise, then, when in response to my uber-helpful, reassuring post, I get the following reply: “I read your blog post about the recent ride from your mother's house. Sounds like such a sunny, positive, life affirming ride. “

My first thought is of course “Wait, what exactly is she reading? Has someone hijacked my blog??” Then it slowly dawned on me that there was some sarcasm at work here, some dissing of the Triathlon Goddess (ahem, me). WTH? I thought it was pretty clear to everyone that my bike rides out in the country with Sàlome are one of the top things that make me happy, that if I could become a professional amateur cyclist, just cycling across the country and raising money for, umm, Doberman awareness, I would. Toting little Kona behind me as I toodle along on my bike.

Plus, I recall my last post about riding as being particularly positive. Hmm.

Then I went back and looked at my last Huntley ride post, and sure, it was a bit realistic, in the sense that having to start a ride when it’s 32 degrees outside is ridiculous and painful. What, like I’m supposed to be chipper about THAT part? But it went uphill from there, right? Except for my fingers and thumbs freezing and falling off. And my nose. But otherwise, wasn’t I just Miss Susie Sunshine?? Hmm.

While I’ve long held the belief that writing in a positive, uplifting manner would be boring as shit, I decide that it’s really not fair of me to pooh-pooh that notion until I’ve at least given it a shot. After all, there could be gems of true wisdom to be found in phrases like “It was another great ride today – boy, do I rock! 200 watts, baby!” and so on. Right? I mean really, would it kill me to be a bit more chipper? So, onward.

- -
Friday night

I go out to my mom’s to spend the night so that I can get an early start on Saturday. I have to do a longer ride than Deanna, so I’ll get up early, do an out-and-back, then meet her back at my mom’s for the rest of the ride. I’m sure it’ll be a glorious day.

Saturday morning, 4:45AM

The alarm, already? But hey, the sun is coming up, the birds are chirping, it’s a gorgeous start to the day already!

Well, no, scratch that, not quite. It’s actually still dark out....and cold. But the sun is supposed to come out, and the forecasters are never wrong, so I’m confident it’ll be a warm, sunny, perfect day.

6AM

Still cloudy and cold.......but really, sun is overrated. Have had my delicious oatmeal and robust coffee, so off I go!

Later

Hey look, chicken statues! No, wait, they’re actual chickens! Black chickens! How neato is that? Boy, do they look cool. I don’t have pictures of them, but here’s one I found on cuteoverload.com. Enjoy!

Errr, let’s see, think positive.......hey, at least it’s not raining!

Great, it’s raining. Cold fat raindrops. Or, umm, as I like to put it......god’s healing tears cleansing the earth and washing away the sins and transgressions of his chosen people. Yeah, that’s it.

(Though given that we’ve had a veritable deluge of rain this spring and the farmers haven’t been able to get all their crops in, do ya think you might be able to shut the waterworks off for a while there Big Guy? I’m just sayin’.) (Hallelujah!)

A huge jet-black Great Dane comes bounding towards me, looking for all the world like Cerberus unleashed from the gates of Hell. Or.....a pony. Yes, just like a pony. Good doggy...

My feet are numb, as usual. Ugh. Soon they’ll hurt like hell, I’m sure. But that’s okay! Because as we all know, pain is just weakness leaving the body. Hup hup!

There’s a cyclist going in the other direction, so as usual I give him a friendly wave. He just looks at me and keeps going. Normally this would piss me off – I mean really, how rude! – but now, I just think, he must be retarded. Because he’s riding along on his road bike, sans helmet....and said helmet is in his hand. I guess he didn’t want to mess up his shellacked blond coif. But we shouldn’t make fun of the mentally unable among us, blessed they be.

I circle back, pick up Deanna, and we set off again. We decide that instead of riding together, we’ll select meeting points up ahead, so that we can each go at our own pace. Pretty soon, Deanna is totally kicking my ass, a mere speck on the horizon. In the next county, in fact. (Okay, so this is because we’re riding on County Line Road, and she turns left before me and thus into the next county, but still.) And I did ride that extra 30 miles before she was even up, but who’s counting? But this is all okay by me, yes, sirree! After all, what are friends for if not to encourage each other in all things? Go Deanna!

Ah, the wind, how I love the wind, constantly blowing on the prairie, bringing to mind the days of yore with those intrepid pioneers and their daily burdens! Burdens that none of US have, for which we can be ever thankful. The wind is just Mother Nature whispering in my ear – at 30mph no less – to remind me of her presence. As if I could forget. A test of fortitude, a building of character is that continual, never-ending, omnipresent headwind. Hallelujah!

We get to the road we’re supposed to turn on, and....it’s a gravel road. What the hell? It’s bad enough you people can’t be bothered with road signs, but to not even slap down some concre........I mean.........I meant to say that I think of gravel roads as an opportunity, to seek out adventures on roads not traveled, to partake in the joie de vivre that comes from.....oh, fuck it. You know what? There’s a reason there are some roads not traveled – that’s because they’re GRAVEL, and they suck. You know what else? If you’re looking for sunshiny and chipper, go to happyshinypablum.blogspot.com, not here, not with your sarcastic comments. Because that shit IS boring. And I for one would rather not ride in the cold and rain and on gravel, m’kay? And do you think it might EVER be possible for me to go riding out here once and not have the gale force winds slowing me down to 13 mph? That headwind the whole way back was real pleasant, let me tell you. I mean, I know this is good practice should a hurricane suddenly blow into Coeur D’Alene, but seriously.

And one other thing – cursed iPod, ENOUGH with the fucking Dancing Queen already! Yes, it just won’t disappear. I had double-checked my iPod library, synced (again), and that should have done the trick, but nooooo, of course not. And don’t anyone give me this crap about Shuffle being random. If that’s the case, why does it keep playing the same damn songs, namely every song I have on there from the 70s or 80s, yet not ONCE has it played any Soundgarden, for example? Could someone please explain that to me? Oh, and as for Dancing Queen - today, when it came on AGAIN, I yelled “Come ON!!!!”, stopped my bike in its tracks, and soon found that while the song doesn’t show up when I look under “artists” – if I look under “songs” – there it is. Not once, but TWICE!! So it’s true, my iPod IS evil – it’s spawning hated songs! I believe an exorcism is in store.

Whew. Okay then. Heh heh, that seemed to work out well, didn’t it? However, lest anyone be under the mistaken impression that I didn’t enjoy my ride, I also got to marvel at a border collie that was practicing herding sheep, admire some gorgeous bearded irises growing on one of those country roads, exchange greetings with the farmers out trying to get their crops planted, sing along cheerfully with every song on my iPod that was NOT ABBA-related, and finally, finish up my 105-mile ride with enough energy to then take Kona for a run. Right before sitting down with my mom and Deanna for a late lunch of steak hot off the grill. In my book at least, I’d say that’s a pretty damn fine version of life-affirming.

Swimfan makes the funny pages!

The day Tasha decides to be less of a total dumbass

So Monday I woke up with a bad cold. Tuesday, still there, but I also noticed that I had some kind of rash on my right eyelid, and my eyes are itchy. Odd. Wednesday, I wake up, and my right eye is swollen halfway shut and my whole face is itchy. Huh? What fresh hell is THIS? Hives, poison ivy, scorpion bite?? I decide to see the doctor, to be on the safe side.

Doctor answering service: Hello, may I help you?
Me: I need to make an appointment to see Dr. Boholst, as soon as possible.
DAS: What is your problem?

I pause. This could be a long conversation. To spare us all, I decide to go with the short answer.

Me: Umm, poison ivy?
DAS: Why do you think it’s poison ivy?
Me, thinking, if I KNEW all this stuff, why would I need to see a doctor?: I have a rash on my eyelid, and I was camping, so.....
DAS, undoubtedly marveling at how astute I am at putting this all together: We have Thursday at 6PM.
Me: I’ll take it.

Thursday morning my eye is even more puffy and swollen, almost all the way shut, so I do the only logical thing and wear my sunglasses all day. Even indoors. Finally, my appointment. Dr. Boholst randomly guesses that it’s some kind of “irritation” and prescribes anthistamine eyedrops and pills. But since I’m here, they’re also going to do some blood tests, to make sure nothing else is wrong. A simple blood draw, how easy is that?

As I follow the nurse down the hallway, I explain to her that they usually have a hard time getting blood from me, but that the left arm is better and lately they’ve been finding a vein in the back of my hand. And that we should avoid using the right arm, to lesson the risk of lymphedema developing – lymphedema being one of those nasty little cancer secrets that you don’t hear much about, whereby if you’ve had any at all lymph nodes removed, at any later point your arm can suddenly swell up and basically stay that way forever due to a damaged lymph/drainage system. Fun stuff. So clearly that’s something I’m hoping to avoid. This nurse is very nice, and chatty, so she reassures me.

Nice Nurse: Oh, I’m sure there won’t be a problem. I’m pretty good at this. Let’s give it a shot.

Half an hour later

I’m sitting there with 3 bandaids on, sipping a cup of water as NN hopes that’ll “plump up” my veins. She’s been very apologetic as she keeps poking around and getting absolutely nothing, though I don’t really care since I’m used to this. The apologizing, on the other hand? Enough.

NN: Oh, I don’t want to hurt you, I’m so sorry, so sorry. (poking another vein on the back of my hand) Now tell me if this hurts. I'm right near the bones.
Me: I’m fine, really.
NN: Are you okay? I’m so sorry, I don’t want this to hurt. I’m really really sorry.
Me, gritting my teeth: It’s FINE. I broke my collarbone last year; pain is relative.
NN: I just can’t find a vein, they disappear. Maybe you’re dehydrated.
Me: How about this vein? They usually have luck with that one.
NN: That's an artery, and we're not allowed to use those.

Now I'm thinking, just who do they have trying to draw blood here??

NN adds: And I don’t want to hurt you. I'm so sorry about this.
Me: It’s better than having to come back - so here, why don’t you look at the right arm? AyeeEEE, I think you just stabbed a bone...

Another half hour later

I now have FIVE bandaids on me – no, wait, it’s actually 4, since we took one off to poke at the same spot, then put a fresh bandaid on the same spot. And still no luck. This nurse is sweet, but she really has no idea what she’s doing, and now I have to come back here tomorrow so that their “technician” can make the attempt. Great. Though I have to chuckle at the dehydration idea. What are they going to tell me next, that I have scurvy? Please.

On the drive home, I see the irony in the fact that my veins are the only part of me that are unplump, and I start to laugh. It figures.

The next morning, I go at the designated time, and finally I get called by the technician, a woman I christen BloodZilla. This woman could crush stone with her flinty gaze alone, and there’s no idle chit-chat with her. She calls my name, I follow her down the hall, and the only words she says are “Roll up your sleeve.” Alrighty then.

But that’s okay, because after poking at my arm for about 4 seconds, she expertly puts the needle in and voila, gets blood on the first try. Though there seems to be a problem.

BloodZilla: Are you dehydrated? Your blood’s flowing very slowly.
Me: Umm, I don’t think so? By the way, that was amazing, how quickly you found that vein. Bravo!
Bloodzilla, thawing slightly: Thank you.

Might as well get on the good side of the person poking at you with sharp needles. We sit there and watch as the bloodflow stops entirely. Hmm. Luckily, BloodZilla finds a vein in my other arm just as easily, and I don’t say a peep about the possibility of lymphedema. I’d rather risk that than face her wrath.

Me: You really are a master at this! Seriously – you know about yesterday’s fiasco, right?
BloodZilla: Thank you. Yes, I heard about it. Even though you’re dehydrated, they should have known where to look. This is what I do – they do other things and sometimes draw blood as well. Me, I just draw blood. So I’m pretty good at it.
Me: That you are. Wow!

Even though I’m partially trying to see what it’ll take to get her to thaw out a bit, I really am impressed, as that was the quickest and most efficient blood draw I’ve ever experienced. Though as I toddle out, I’m thinking more about the fact that while deciding not to eat, I apparently also forgot to drink anything, especially water. Oops.

That night I think about the fact that I can continue on my crazy diet and have horrible workouts, feel like crap, be lurching around in an apparent state of dehydration, oh, and STILL not be losing a single fucking pound. Or I can eat a more “normal” amount, like a whopping 1200 calories, and perhaps have a tiny bit of energy, a decent workout once in a while, and still not lose a single fucking pound. Hmm, tough call. I think...I’ll go with Option B, at least until after IronSpud. Then I’ll go with total fasting and kidney removal, or something. I’ll think of something. In the meantime......Munchkins, anyone?

Back where we started

Last Saturday

I set off for the wilds of Wisconsin, for that elusive “Wisconsin fun” that they promise us on the billboards on the way up there. But before I relay my WI adventures, I must first address something that Alert Reader Todd wondered – about whether Pollyanna wound up paralyzed, bed-stricken, whored out to one and all, etc. Ha, no, of course not! That would be silly!

Pollyanna’s story was worse, actually. Yes, Pollyanna was none other than.......a....a spawn of Satan! Yes, it’s true – well, at least according to conspiracy theorists on the internet, who as we all know are the harbingers of rational thought. You see, while looking for a picture of Pollyanna, I found info on what started it all – not the cleaned-up Disney movie, where everyone lived happily ever after from the start - but rather the book, which came out in 1912 and was a veritable fount of charm and wisdom, using words like “ejaculate” in ways you’d never have thought possible. The following, for example, was a response to Pollyanna as she was trying to cheer up some old curmudgeon: ‘“Well, of all the—" ejaculated the man, with an oddly impotent gesture.’

You see the possibilities here.

But the Satanism – our faithful bloggers make a decent case for that. After all, how would Pollyanna have the power to be able to cheer EVERYONE up, to see the good in all, to enchant all those who meet her? Why, it must be a pact with the devil, clearly. And when she’s mysteriously hit by a car towards the end of the book, does she miraculously recover even though doctors say she’ll never walk again? Of course! You’re telling me Beelzebub didn’t orchestrate THAT one? Puh.

Oh, and Alert Reader Todd also notes the primary reason why it’s so critical that I do IronSpud, and that of course is for the potential goldmine of blog fodder. Duh! How could I overlook this? Not only do we have the race itself, but also the road trip out there, just me toodling across the Badlands and states that have more cattle than people – by far – and then, when I get to CDA, I’m going to have D! sharing my hotel room with me. Now if THAT isn’t a recipe for complete and total madness, I don’t know what is.

And finally, a note to all: when you’re having a shitty day, week, month, life, etc., I highly recommend trying a bit of “Fuck” Therapy before you try any pricy therapists or anti-depressants. Because you know, now that I’ve gotten all that stuff off my chest, I feel a whole hell of a lot better. Imagine that.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Wisconsin. Saturday I got up there just as everyone was leaving for the group ride, so I went off by myself. The best part of the ride was that the road from Blue Mounds to Mt. Horeb is newly paved with a beautiful bike lane, which, between that and cheese curds, made me decide to move to Wisconsin right away. After that, it was pretty much all downhill. The IMWI loop seemed much hillier than I remembered, riding it was tortuous, I wound up in tears at how much I sucked. Sunday I decided to do a 2-hr run instead, my legs were fatigued from Saturday, I was again in tears at my own suckiness. And after about an hour, even though I had brought with me a bottle of Infinit (okay, enough for a 1-hr run), I started exuding ammonia as if I had bathed in it, getting a headache to boot. I know this is a sign of insufficient carbs, but then Annette tells me that it also means you’re putting your body in a catabolic state, which isn’t good. Yay me.

Monday, did I go for the Trifecta of Suckdom? No, because I wake up with a wicked cold, it’s cold and insanely windy, and I decide to head home rather than sit in holiday traffic. Sometimes...you just have to know when to cut your losses.

Shouldn't be so complicated

Last Friday, May 22nd

I’m out for my daily run, and it’s a sucky run, and I know why that is – because the day before was a VLCD day. You know, of the standard 600 calories of fish and some fruit. And that morning, I had blueberries for breakfast. Before going out on my daily 5-mile run – except for long run days, which are, well, longer.

So I’m running on empty, so to speak, and I know I should be eating more, training-wise, but I just can’t make myself do it, because I have to lose some fucking weight, because not only are the extra pounds making running and riding harder, they’re also making me miserable. And yet, the VLCD isn’t working, since I’ve lost about one single fucking pound in 4 months of very stringent dieting. And I hate it, hate myself, hate how I look, hate how much this sucks, and as I think about this more, I get more and more upset and pissed off and frustrated. And since today is the 22nd, yesterday was the 21st, or, a month from IronSpud, when I said I’d decide if I was going to do the damn race or not. And if I do the race, I’ll be one of those “fatties doing Ironman” that idiot triathletes look down on, kind of like this guy posting on Slowtwitch, on yes, a thread on how fat people who do Ironman somehow cheapen it: “Considering you had an entire f*&ing year to prepare, showing up to an IM out of shape is downright disrespectful and there's really no excuse.......To me, showing up out of shape and overweight to an IM is no different than showing up to work unprepared or hungover......The message I hear is "I don't really care enough to try my very best.“

You get the idea. Well, you know what? Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, pal. And while we’re at it, fuck cancer, fuck how it’s made me not like myself, fuck how it’s made me fat/surly/bitter/tired, fuck all that fundraising that goes on to the tune of billions of dollars for breast cancer research – yet they still don’t know jack shit about BC in young women and only very recently figured out that BC in younger women is different. Gee, you think? What was the tipoff, the MUCH HIGHER death rate??

And fuck that death rate, the 17% for my kind of cancer, or the 37% recurrence rate, both in the next 10 years. Fuck that I’d love to be all out and carpe-dieming every day, as most people probably think I should be, but I’m too damn tired all the time. Fuck that bad luck has followed me around most of my life like a lost puppy, and fuck that the best I seem to get is the perpetual “Well, I’m not dead yet.” I mean, what the hell is that?

And as for the fatness thing, well, all you people who have the elitist attitudes that we shouldn’t be cluttering up your IM courses, you can just bite me. And that especially goes for you, Swimfan, aka Ali Engin. You know, Ali, for all your trash-talking, and given your $9K fully tricked-out bike and your Zipp disc wheel, your 12:16 time at Ironman Arizona (the flattest IM course there is, mind you) didn’t exactly set the world on fire, now did it?

For the record, a 12:16 is a great time....for anyone else, but NOT for someone who spent months on end on a triathlon message board anonymously expounding on who he deemed unworthy to even think about doing an Ironman. And let’s note that there are a LOT of triathletes out there who are the nicest, most generous people who’d never think mean thoughts about anyone else. In fact, the majority are like that. It’s just that the bleating of the asshats like Ali – oops, “Swimfan” – come through the loudest.

Oh, and fuck you Roch Frey and NAS/WTC, for your fakeout “rollover,” where sure, you’d roll over my IMWI slot.....as long as I ponied up another $550. Sure, I’ll get right on that, right after I finish paying for my radiation treatment.


And if any of you think those are a lot of “fucks” – you should see the 18-page “Fuck....(fill in the blanks)” thread we have going on at the Young Survival message board. We are an angry bunch of Cancerchicks; I couldn’t be prouder.


So those were my thoughts during my run, as I was getting more and more pissed off, with my final one being – fuck it, I’m doing IronSpud. No matter if I fail spectacularly, no matter if I need to take a nap during the run (always a possibility these days).....I’m in. And if I don’t finish, that’s fine. After all, it’s not a matter of life or death, now is it?

(That ends this particular rant - actually, this entire topic for the foreseeable future. I hate the phrase "it is what it is" (what, like you're going to tell me what it isn't?), but in this case......railing against a weight that won't budge no matter what I do, it's just kind of pointless. Anyway, not to worry, by the next posting I’ll be back to my usual chipper, Pollyannaish self...)

Hasta la vista

So, the problem with my iPod, that it wouldn’t sync, was the impetus to get me into the Apple store with my computer - which turned out to be a good thing, since my hard drive was failing and could have died at any moment. Which would have been supremely bad. But really, the key thing was the IPOD – so when I picked up my repaired computer and brought it home, of course the first thing I checked was whether the iPod would sync. Wha..?? Nada?? NOT a good day in TashaWorld when I realized this.

Today I had an appointment with the Apple store people yet again, then, this time for them to check out the iPod. Because in the meantime, I had tried everything known to man to see if I could get it to be recognized by my computer, from resetting it, to this to that to talking to the Apple support person for about 2 hours the other day. And while she did get my camera to show up on my computer, no luck with the iPod. I thus concluded it was the iPod, not the computer.

I go in and have my appointment with “Paul,” as he claimed to be, who took my iPod and trotted off to test it out. And returned to tell me that it was working fine, popped up on his computer, no problem. But, but......

Me, wailing: “I’ve tried everything!”
“Paul”: You should try re-installing the operating syst....
Me: NO! I can’t reinstall everything! I won’t! It was just put on there, anyway, the operating system.
“Paul”: When was that?
Me: Just a WEEK ago.
“Paul”: Well, quite honestly then, I’m at a loss – not sure what else you can try. It’s a mystery to me – though it’s probably not the cord – 95% of the time that doesn’t have a problem.
Me: I don’t think you understand the gravity of this situation. Let me explain: if I have to listen to Dancing Queen one more time on shuffle, I will LOSE MY MIND.
“Paul”: Well, I don....
Me, firmly: Really.
“Paul”, helplessly: I’m sorry...
Me, dejected: Will you at least maybe try out my cord? I brought it with me.
“Paul”: Sure. Hmm, it’s a third party cord.
Me: Yeah, I know. I couldn’t find mine so I got this one.

He plugs it in, and we stare at his computer, which does....nothing. Absolutely nothing. No iPod finding. So after all that, all those hours, all that torturous music....it’s the damn cord. I should be upset that the BRAND NEW CORD I bought was a complete POS, but I’m so happy that we’ve figured this out that I’m practically dancing with glee. New music on my 7-hour rides, whee!!

“Paul”: At least this is an easy problem to solve!
Me, grinning with delight, thinking happy thoughts toward Apple and maybe the world: Absolutely! You have no idea how happy I am. If I had to listen to the same damn songs one more time, I was going to shoot myself.

The guy standing next to us chuckles at that. Can probably relate. And to top off this cup brimming over with joy, they also have the doodads that cover the end of my earbuds (or as I put it when I asked “Paul”: “For my earphones, do you sell those fluffy things?” – luckily, this man of great wisdom knew exactly what I was talking about) so my delicate inner ears don’t get crushed. If this wasn’t the definition of a perfect day, I just don’t know what is.

I get home and trot over to my computer, new goodies in hand. Plug the iPod in, wait in anticipation......SCORE!! It works! Next item on the agenda: goodbye Dancing Queen, we hardly knew ye. No, actually, we knew you too damn much, so good riddance. I wonder how my iPod will try to torture me now? I guess I’ll find out this weekend. Camping and biking in the hills of southwestern Wisconsin. In the rain. Another recipe for success for Miss Tasha, yes indeed....

Closer to fine

Last Saturday

Okay, so you know how on SNL, back when it was funny, there was Gilda Radner (also afflicted with The Cancer) and her different characters, one of whom was Emily Litella? Who’d go off on some rant about, say, whirled peas, screeching about why the HELL would anyone want to whirl their peas, wouldn’t they then get all MUSHY and so on.....until someone would point out that no, the issue is actually WORLD PEACE. At which point Emily aka Gilda would ever-so-sweetly say – “never mind!”

So picture me kind of doing an Emily Litella. Because after all my ranting in my last post, the wailing and gnashing of teeth at my level of suckitude, I decided to forge on ahead and do my long-ish run. And you know what? It wasn’t half-bad. It’s kind of odd, but I’ve found that if I stick to a diet by which I might actually lose a pound or two over a month (aka the 600-calorie one), my workout the next day pretty much sucks. And if I foolishly throw caution to the wind and eat more (aka the 1000-calorie diet), my workout isn’t as torturous. Imagine. I know, I know, I don’t quite get it either, but it’s true, that’s what happens.

So our run. Yes, ours, because I go with Kona. Which means that a) I have to run faster, and b) I also have to take enforced breaks, since he has to stop and greet everyone, get petted and told how handsome he is, etc. I guess those two things even out somehow. I also take a water bottle for Kone, and once I realize that the water fountains aren’t turned on yet, I start scouting around for a convenience store. Which I eventually find, but will they let me go in there with a big dog? This is another bit of serendipity, as the owner not only lets us come in, but just chuckles when Kona closely investigates the loaves of bread and candy bars. (Note: to anyone who bought that bread and found dog drool on the plastic sleeve, so sorry. My bad.)

All in all, for a 2-hour run, it felt pretty good. And then I got home and did a lot of sleuthing, and found a video that someone had shot of the IronSpud bike course. Now granted, it’s on fast-forward, and I have crappy depth perception to begin with, but to my untrained eye, it didn’t look too heinous. At least I didn’t see any cobblestone streets going straight up into tiny Spanish villages – something that I hear is quite common in Idaho. So that’s something. In any case, I decide that the course is doable – as long as it’s a sunny, warm day, with zero wind. Hey, a girl can dream.

And then I got an email from my dear friend George from Canada, which reminded me of why I’m here, relaying my exploits and passing on fitness tips to my tens of readers. Yes, George the cyclist has decided to venture into triathloning. He’s taken the first step and purchased a swimsuit and googles – yet, heeding my advice, he’s put them aside for now, following my advice of (as he put it) “not going overboard with needless miles.” Ah, it’s enough to practically make me weep with pride – especially since I presume his next step will involve ramping up with abandon, in the remaining weeks (or days) before any race.

Finally, the comments or emails from my last post really honed in on why I have the friends I do, and why I love them dearly. George again had lots of sage advice and wisdom, recommending a protein formula I might want to try and other helpful hints. Deirdre was also true to form – I believe her comment was “yeah, cancer, blah blah, I WANT A DINO TOO! ME TOO!” Leave it to Deirdre to get to the heart of the matter. And while this recalls the epic quest that it was to find my little co-pilot, I will do my best, Deirdre, to get you his Canadian doppelganger. No promises though.

Tomorrow, my plan is to ride in solidarity with Stacey, who’s doing some System of a Downs ride in the U.K., which is apparently 100 miles of abject torture, as she’s been describing it. Accordingly, I too plan to ride 100, though in the bucolic countryside. I’ve been studying meteorological charts and phases of the moon, and have determined that tomorrow there should be no wind whatsoever. I’m going out to my mom’s tonight so that I can get up early and just hit the road right away. It’s going to be a perfect day for riding – I can feel it.

Sunday – 5AM

The alarm goes off at this godawful hour, and I go to the window to look outside at the temperature gauge. 33 degrees? Surely you must be joking? Kona, who’s all snuggled under the bedcovers, barely lifts his head. I hop back into bed to wait for it to warm up at least a few degrees.

5:45AM

Okay, it seems to have gotten up to a balmy 34. I get up, get dressed, have my coffee/oatmeal/banana. So now I have to go riding – not that I was thinking of skipping it – because I can only have carbs if I’m actually going to work out, so we’re at the point of no return. I take Kona out for a walk, and upon our return, he goes and jumps back into bed. Hmm. I think that says something, not sure what. Best to not contemplate it too much.

6:15AM

Still waiting.......

6:45

Dun da dum dum (drumming fingers on table).....guess I’ll check my email......

7AM

Okay, enough of this happy horseshit – this is defeating the purpose of staying out here so that I could head out early. I set off......and fuck, it’s cold. I briefly contemplate turning back and layering on more clothes....I slow down.....nah, I’ll warm up eventually, right?

45 minutes later

Cold cold cold coldcoldcold.....I think my hands and feet are frozen. At least I took care of the wind-generated headache, with my Craft thermal cap on underneath my helmet. One problem down. Damn, why don’t I have warmer gloves? I’ll make myself wait until the hour mark to stop and try to warm up.

5 minutes after that

Forget it, my hands are killing me. I stop, pull off the gloves, rub my hands and do what I can to dethaw them. Start up again.

5 minutes later

Note to readers: My frozen thumbs snapped off somewhere on Harmony Road near Huntley, IL. If you come across them, would you mind sending them to me? Thanks.

1 hour in

I have to say, even cold as it is, at this insane hour it’s a nice feeling to be one of the few people out on the road, zipping along in the country. Haven’t even seen any other cyclists yet. Gee, I wonder why – could it be because none of THEM signed up for an early season Ironman, so they all looked at the temps this morning and thought......ech, forget it. Maybe? Yeah, I think so.

The rest of the ride – idle musings

Note to self: Get new music for iPod – or at least figure out why iPod won’t sync with computer. Remove Dancing Queen permanently from iPod library.

I figured out one reason why it’s so damn cold out here compared to everywhere else – it’s because it’s the fucking PRAIRIE! Duh! And there’s no corn growing yet, not even sprouts, so I don’t even have the cornfields as a windbreak, not that they’d be that tall yet. Plus where am I supposed to pee? Farmers, could you please get on this? Thanks.

Hmm, as I’m biking north, i.e into Wisconsin, it’s getting noticeably colder. And windier. Note to self: Next time, bike south.

Ugh, this road really sucks. I really need to start writing on my maps which roads are unrideable. This one is just one big patchwork of seams and bumps. It’s even worse than the roads earlier, which had gravel and huge craters – at least those I could go around, albeit slowly, though that road really was just one step above a cowpath.

I stop to adjust my saddle, and lo, there’s a cyclist coming up behind me! A cute guy, who slows down to see if I need any assistance. Dumbass me, I tell the truth, that I don’t need help. Damn. Note to self: Next time, make up some faux-helpless thing, something completely asinine, like my tire is leaking air, complete with sad doe eyes. Oh, and try to go riding looking a touch less like Jabba the Hut. I mean really, could I possibly be any more bundled up? Sheesh.

Note to readers: My nose froze and fell off somewhere on State Line Rd. in WI – if you happen across it, could you please send it to me? Thanks.

Why the hell do I have to pee for about the 5th time? I never have to go during my bike rides, no matter how long they are. I’m always an efficient, finely-honed machine, using exactly what I take in. The only thing I’m doing differently is that I didn’t put Nuun into my water bottle, so I’m just drinking water with my GU. Hmm. And when I have the constantly-having-to-pee problem during the run portion of my triathlons.....I’m getting water from the aid stations. Hmm. I think I’m having an epiphany here. Note to self: do NOT drink water only during rides/runs/races!

I wonder how my mom is handling Kona – he can be quite a handful. I hope he hasn’t torn up the house yet...

I make my usual stop in the town of Capron, to refill my bottles, stopping at the usual pizza place. Rosa’s Pizza – I really need to get pizza there sometime, because it smells pretty damn good. The town consists of 3 bars, an antique/junk shop, and the pizza place. A veritable bustling metropolis. I start heading back, might add some roads to my route, but there’s no way I can get lost. I know this map practically by heart.

I’m hopelessly lost – going north when I need to be going south. Maybe if these roads didn’t wind around aimlessly, and maybe if they had, oh, shall we say, STREET SIGNS on them on occasion?? I know, crazy talk. As I’m riding about aimlessly, I sometimes glance down and see how battered and scratched up my bar-end shifters are....on TOP. What the hell did that crash look like, that the top of my shifters got so beaten up?

Barking, running dog starts chasing me down the road and startles me slightly, and I’m totally unprepared. Luckily, firmly saying “shoo! Shoo you!” seems to work. The dog stops, and looks confused.

I finally get around to trying the Black Currant Powergel that I got in Mallorca – figured I’d see if a new flavor was any better than the tripe they’re trying to push off on us now. I used to love Powergels – that is, until they turned it into a watery salt lick. Yuck. This one.....good GOD, how did they make it even more heinous? Did their product development really think to themselves, hey, let’s make this taste like salty rotten fruit bundled into an old undershirt! That’ll definitely be a winner!

One last stop to pee – right in some brambles, which cut up my legs. Figures. Hey, that reminds me, the blackberries should be in season soon. Sweet! And the lilacs are in full bloom – I can even smell them as I ride by. Beautiful.

I pass a turkey vulture hunched over road kill. I hope that’s not symbolic of my Ironman efforts....

Am I the only one who looks at the Harley riders as they go by and thinks: “Lazyass!!” Okay, I only think that of the surly Harley riders, which is most of them. The middle-aged or older couples on their motorbikes, they generally wave. As do the farmers on their tractors. Fat chain-wearing grizzled Harley riders do not, and neither do the yuppie wannabees on their McMansion property out on the prairie. I’m glad they’re stuck out on the windy plains - contemplating the futility of their fiefdom-building efforts now that housing prices have tanked and oh yeah, people have realized they don’t want to live out on the TUNDRA - since people who don’t wave annoy me. The wind has picked up even more now – I barely notice. Okay, I do, but also realize the pointlessness of noticing something that will ALWAYS be there.

I come around the corner onto my mom’s street....and there she is, talking to her neighbor, with Kona on a leash and just sitting there patiently. My mom then tells me how well-behaved Kona has been, calm, not jumping, and I realize.....my dog is a master strategist. First he conned me into keeping him, and now he’s following yet another principle of Sun Tzu in the Art of War: “appear ill-behaved and wild, so as to make all later better behavior a cause for celebration and praise. You will be rewarded handsomely for your cunning.” Clearly, I need to be taking lessons from him.

I go inside and take stock. My face is sunburnt and yet at the same time frozen, as if it’s been Botoxed into submission. Legs, a bit stiff. Feet, can’t feel them. 100 miles, done. Other cyclists spotted, just one. WTH? Don’t they realize, it was a perfect day for riding?

Making friends with shadows

I finally got the chance last Sunday to go for my first bike ride since Mallorca – and of course I knew it would be a breeze, what with my newfound fitness and all. Flying along at top speeds, no problem. She’s back, kids!

Ha. As soon as I get out to Huntley and see the trees bending over, I know it’s going to be another day of shitty wind. But you know what? No whining. Time to suck it up. Deal with it. So I head out – that is, after having the valve somehow snap off as I’m pumping up one of my tires, so I get some practice in tire changing – and my legs feel....tired. Heavy. Like I ran 20 miles the day before, which I assure you I did not. Shit. I keep riding, still feeling like crap, into a crosswind so stiff that it’s blowing me into the road, which fortunately isn’t very well-traveled. Still. Headwind, crosswind. I’m determined to just suck it up, ignore it. And so I do, until the wind blowing in my ear gives me a massive headache. Which is morphing into a migraine. And it’s at this point that I start thinking, maybe I won’t be ready for IronSpud. And......I’m not sure how much I really care.

I mean, I DO care, especially since it would bug me to pay the NAS/WTC fucktards my $550 and then not race. (And for the record, what I find distasteful about them is not that they don’t do rollovers, though that does suck, but that they told me that they’d roll over my spot BUT that I had to pay their $550 AGAIN. Gee, thanks. Either roll it over or don’t – but don’t pretend you’re being all magnanimous when you’re just being a bunch of vultures.) But do I care enough to try to overcome how crappy I feel on a daily basis so that I can train enough? Because I do. Feel crappy, I mean. And I’m not looking for sympathy or anything, I’m just being matter-of-fact. I’m always tired – what saved me in Mallorca was that Stacey considers getting up at 8AM “really early” – so I could get some extra rest in. I go running almost every day, and every day my lungs feel like they’re on fire and I can’t get enough air. Lately I’ve been dizzy and off-balance; not sure what’s up with that. I get constant migraines. Not to mention that I seem to have no brain anymore. Seriously. I can’t remember things I did yesterday, or last weekend – it’s all just a big blank.

Anyway – whaa whaa whaa. Yeah, I know, I sound like a broken record. Did I mention that I’m also even MORE pissed off, now that I’ve read studies (including recent ones) that say that hey, guess what, all you parents smoking like chimneys your entire child’s life! You’ve increased by 68% the chances of your pre-menopausal daughter getting breast cancer! My dad, the 2-3 pack-a-day smoker, he died a few years ago, so I don’t get to tell him that I was kind of right when I kept telling him that he should quit because he was probably giving me lung cancer. I just had the type of cancer wrong.

So here I am, a fat, surly bundle of rage, attempting to train for an Ironman. Of course, in order to figure out what I should do and to find inspiration, I decide to turn to that most sage and wise of advice-givers: the internet. I first check out a book that I was made aware of through some newsletter email list that I’m on – a book written by a woman who proclaims it as the “triathlete’s guide to getting through your first year after breast cancer”, or something along those lines. I figure, aha, there must be inspiration there! If anyone would have attempted to do an Ironman, it’s someone who wrote a book about it, right?

After much research, I discern that a couple years after treatment, she ran (walked) the run leg of a sprint triathlon. And her “training” in that first year consisted of slow walks up and down her block. But her book was chock-full of pithy sayings, such as “Life is like constantly being in transition – just make sure you don’t forget your running shoes in T2!” And “When you get kicked in the head during the swim, just remember, the waves are there to build character!”

Now, don’t get me wrong, anyone who even bothers to get out of bed and leave the house in the months after cancer treatment deserves credit – I just didn’t find the inspiration I was looking for. So in continuing my quest, I googled “dumbass people attempting Ironman shortly after cancer”. Hmm, nada, though I did find some odd blog called the “Happy Hospitalist” – and after perusing it for a bit, I still have no clue what that’s all about. The other points of reference that I manage to collect are twofold: one, a correspondence with a pro triathlete who had treatment for testicular cancer, but he readily admitted that he had minor, outpatient surgery and just 3 days of radiation, so it basically didn’t affect him at all. I’m happy for him, truly, but again, not very helpful. Then there was the example of Mario Lemiuex, who also underwent 6 weeks of radiation treatment for cancer, and then went on to play in the Stanley Cup finals. And then had to take the entire next year off, in part due to fatigue. Okay, so at least that makes me feel like I’m not completely batshit crazy. At least not when it comes to feeling like crap.

After all this, I can only conclude that this whole Ironman thing is probably one of the stupider things I’ve done, or attempted to do. Again, not looking for any kudos or medals here – just stating the facts. Facts we already knew: I’m an idiot. A stubborn one at that, who won’t just say hey, you know what? Never mind. Bad idea. No, god forbid I should do anything that sensible.

So, back to the training I go – and if you happen to be driving around the Midwest and catch a glimpse off the side of the road of what appears to be a surly-looking, discontented lump, close to a black Felt bicycle and little Dino looking all ferocious.....yeah, that would be me and my compatriots. Nothing to see there, folks, just what’ll be my usual state of being for the next 5 weeks or so.

One last thing – we all know how fucking ANNOYING it is when people hear about your cancer diagnosis and respond with the “well, I could be hit by a bus tomorrow, so you never know!” type of comment. Right. Because there are all these rogue, kamikaze, killer buses teeming around every city and burg, attempting to mow down innocent citizens. MY chances of a recurrence or death in the next 10 years, with my kind of cancer? 37% and 17% respectively. I don’t think there’s an equal chance that any of you will be hit by that rogue bus.

So last night on Grey’s Anatomy, they seemed to kill off Izzy, who had the metastatic brain tumors. And George? Yes, good old George, the original McShlumpy..........he got hit by a bus. A fricking bus. Now, are we supposed to view that as supreme irony, or are all the tv scripts in Hollywood written by 3rd graders or stoners, giggling madly now as we speak? "I know, we'll have him....hit by a bus! Yeah, that's it! Like, an inside joke, 'cause no one else will get it." Just wondering.