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...)