Exactly two months ago today I was in the shape of my life when, poof!, it all disappeared and my life instead took on a completely different type of “Ironman” adventure, one that included having seven titanium pins inserted into my left hand. Not exactly the beginning, or end for that matter, of the 2017 triathlon season that I was hoping for (click HERE for a reminder).
These last two months have certainly not been easy and I have to contend with and endure some very difficult low points but I’m coming through it now; I can begin to see the light at the other end of the tunnel. I figure then that having been exactly two months, it was time to post some sort of follow up on the healing process overall and shed some light on where I currently stand in regards to getting back on the ‘ol proverbial horse as it were.
The first four weeks were certainly the hardest as I struggled to simply deal with the situation (click HERE for that reminder). Thankfully, I have more or less come through that now and am beginning to look to what the future holds for me in regards to the next challenge.
(Insert image of a mythological bird taking flight over smoldering ruins here)
The first issue needing addressing is the weight issue. This was inevitably going to be the case as sitting around in an EZ-Boy unable to do anything isn’t exactly the key to maintaining a healthy and active lifestyle. You know what you don’t want when you’re forced to sit around bored and incapacitated? Salad. Well, not unless you substitute all the lettuce and spinach for, oh I don’t know, Cheetohs. And then swap the tomatoes, onion, and cucumbers for, say, Skittles, Gummy Bears and, peanut butter cups while you’re at it. There.
That makes me feel superb.
So, yeah, I’ve put on a few pounds.
This was always in the cards of course as part of the post-Ironman recovery process, but at least I would have had one momentous accomplishment to look back on and be proud of in order to justify my laziness.
Without that, I’ve just gotten fat.
Period.
This change towards a healthier diet now that I’m beginning to be more active again will begin immediately. Coupled with that, I am going to begin my regular (if not daily) core regimen to begin building back lean muscle and prepare my body to once again (three times the charm!) handle the rigors of all my off-season training. This was likely the smartest thing I did all year in preparation for Ironman so I aim to reinitiate that program. The upshot to all this, is that I also need to regenerate the muscles in my left hand and forearm, so this is also an excellent add-on to my regular physio treatments.
Speaking of building muscle, the biggest challenge at the moment is dealing with the severely atrophied muscles in my legs. When this whole shit storm erupted, I was cycling stronger than I ever have before with a strength and endurance that I had previously never imagined and was on track with being able to accomplish a sub 5 hour 30 minute Ironman bike pace. Now that power is gone. Rather, I have the power, but I can’t maintain it for any significant length of time.
I just don’t have the wherewithal to do the long distances at the moment.
But that’s okay seeing as how my “riding season” was already aimed at being “fun” anyway, in just being able to get out and ride with Hailey and Kelly and I can do that once more. I still have The Big Move to look forward to where I will once again be serving for the 10th time in the capacity as a “sweep” rider, then Hailey and I will attempt our second annual “Daddy-Daughter Bike Adventure” (click HERE for last years’ account) come October. This year the plan is to ride out to Dunnville for brunch (approx. 65k). I still slip in the odd ride on my own however when time and schedule allow and I’m confident that the legs will return in time.
The major challenge right now is swimming where, essentially, I am back to square one.
For anyone who swims (like, really swims) they will understand that swimming is all about form and having an immediate “feel” for the water. The current lack of mobility and muscle in my left hand in part with the severed and regenerating nerve endings after the surgery mean that I’ve now lost this instinctual feel for the water.
however, now that I’m back in the water, the goal is to reacquire this feel and regain my form ASAP so that means drills, drills, paddles and more drills. Getting in the pool 3-4 times a week, even for short distances (1500m-2500m) is a big priority for me right now, having once prided myself on being an accomplished swimmer.
I really want to regain that confidence in the water once again.
Running.
Gah!
I was just getting to a place where I was beginning to feel like a runner after years of trying to make peace with it. Running for me has never been easy. Having said that, by mid-June I was running off-the-bike comfortably and strongly with no adversity, or what’s commonly called among triathletes as “cement legs”. That was definitely huge progress after nearly a decade in the sport. While I might not have been the fastest runner in the field, I was consistent and running with decent form.
Now, with the added weight of two meaty man tits to contend with, that form and consistency have all but evaporated. As with cycling, it’s back to the beginning and as with swimming, that means drills, drills, and more ABC drills. Fortunately, the intense heat and humidity of summer has more or less passed so getting out now for easy(ish) short runs around the surrounding area – even it’s just to visit the neighborhood cat (click HERE) – isn’t the most challenging thing I need to get geared up to accomplish. Once my legs muscle begin to return I will amp up these weekly runs to once again include regular fartleks, hill, speed, tempo and even long distance workouts through the week.
So, physically, I’m coming along nicely and have taken my first few tentative steps (and strokes) along the comeback trail, so to speak.
Mentally?
That’s a bit more daunting.
While I believe that I am on the right path, I’m still impatient and often find myself feeling angry or jealous of others around me who all still in their peak fitness and accomplishing great things. I mean, it’s not them that I am angry with, but the circumstances if that makes sense. I have done all the hard work already – twice – and still have nothing to show for it. And now here I am again dealing with another (more major) setback.
It’s a hard thing to swallow regardless of how well things are going at the moment.
But as my chiropractic guru at Legacy Health & Fitness (also HERE), Dr. Kristin Burr who, I might add, has put this battered and sometimes broken body back together again more times than I can count, mentioned to me last week:
“You’re a real athlete now that you’ve had to deal with this type of serious injury and your ability to get past this is what’s going to define you as an athlete going forward.”
Huh.
I never thought of it quite like that.
Wise person this Dr. Burr.
But it’s true. Everyone loves a comeback. If I can manage to remain patient and not get too weighed down by the incredible psychological mire of doubt, regret and frustration and somehow successfully accomplish all the things I’ve mentioned above (not to mention finding a job) to reacquire my prior “Iron fitness” and – fingers crossed – once and for all complete this Ironman goal, that will be friggin’ huge.
HUGE.
I am very fortunate in that I already have the right team and the successful plan to follow (click HERE), I just need to be able to follow through and pull the trigger once the stars manage to correctly align themselves…whenever that happens to be.
THAT will be something truly epic.
And so that’s my motivation and mental state at the moment:
Be patient. Be smart. All good things to those who persevere.
You might remember me as the “Bike Mount Guy” from posts in previous years (click HERE). This is what I usually love to do except that this year, I haven’t been doing it so much because, well:
What this means then is that I have been doing a lot of other stuff with the SunRype Tri-Kids instead. I have done what’s known as “looping”, “crowd control” (aka dealing with over gregarious parents) and, well, everything really. Today, seeing as how I’m beginning to heal a bit I was actually the “bike captain” helping to escort 400 plus kids around, roughly, a 1.5k course up and down Elizabeth Street in Port Colborne, Ontario.
Sounds like fun, right?
It is.
Sure you’re pedaling for 5+ hours at a time in hot, humid weather, dealing with skipped chains, flat tires, the odd collision and/or accident, the odd gregarious parent (funny how that comes up again), and everything in between but, man, what a rush!
Kids are awesome and say the most amazing things. Never underestimate a child’s ability to break something down in the heat of the moment to the absolute essential component to what’s really important.
Take Dylan for example.
I cycled up behind Dylan (8 years old) noticing he was really laboring and having some difficulty getting his pedals to go around smoothly (ie. His bike had about 30-40 years’ worth of rust on it so that the chain had actually fused itself to the cogs on the wheel set). In this case, I typically open the conversation with something along the lines of “hey buddy, how’s it going?” trying to ascertain if the athlete is in fact okay, frustrated, tired, maybe needs a little encouragement, or just an “easy out”.
Dylan’s response?
“My dog’s name is Sammy”.
Umm. Okay?
So I probed a little deeper.
“Are you having fun?”
“Yup.”
Who am I to argue?
Then there’s 5 year old Elizabeth, who seemed to have a rather exasperated look on her face.
“Everything okay, Lizzy?”
The response:
“Yeah. The colors on your shirt are the same color as my nanny’s hair.”
Okay then.
And so it goes.
Questions of “How many more loops do you still have to do, buddy?” will inevitably be met with “my cat eats Fruit Loops”, and inquiries of “’is this your first triathlon?” are responded to with “my favorite color is blue”.
The randomness is absolutely delicious and totally made my day.
Who has time to worry about being tired, hot, hungry, your sore butt, or God only knows what kind of chafing is going on that you’re not yet even aware of yet, when you have these conversational tidbits to keep you entertained?
Other conversational gems over the course of 85k of bike marshaling include:
“Did you know that warts come from frogs?”
“My daddy’s growing a beard too. Mommy says it’s itchy.”
“When I’m done I’m going to be a veterinarian.”
“I’m pretty good at math you know.”
Remember, this is during the triathlon.
It all might make about as much sense as that past trend of wearing flannel and a toque during the hottest part of the summer but, man, it really does pass the time rather well. Sure there are times when the conversations were a bit more comforting and direct if the athlete is struggling for whatever reason or has just fallen and ended up with skinned knee or a boo-boo of some sort but, in most cases, kids compartmentalize things really well.
As of yesterday, the bones in my left hand have officially healed and the process to restore mobility and strength continues in earnest. There have been some definite improvements overall but, well, let’s just say that I am resigning myself to the notion that my baby finger might be permanently locked in a position where if I ever find myself sipping tea with the Queen, I will be perfectly suited for the occasion.
What this really means then is that I can now begin to return to my usual physical routine albeit, it’ll be some time yet before I can acquire any normal purpose and, therefore, results (ie. fitness).
But, hey, at least I can do stuff.
In fact, I have been doing stuff already, namely running.
I have forgone the normal weekend long distance marches and hard interval routines to simply getting out and getting my legs back accustomed to moving again. Getting to burn off all the excess calories that I’ve started to amass over the last month and a half of sedentary lifestyle is certainly a plus as well as man tits are not an attractive feature in my humble opinion – “Dad bods” be damned. So, really, I’ve retired myself to running short distances for the time being around the neighborhood and just trying to get accustomed to regular activity.
Baby steps, right?
Short as these runs may be, Crystal Beach is not without it’s perks. It’s actually a quaint lakeside town crammed with cottage style houses and beach homes and where all the roads are tightly interlaced haphazardly in a way that it’s relatively easy to get lost and explore; something I don’t really do much of on my long distance hauls out into the surrounding countryside. Here it’s pretty much guaranteed that there will be something interesting to see given that it is now in it’s now full bore into it’s tourist season. that means with every beleaguered step I am greeted with beach goers and the smells of sand, surf, BBQ, suntan lotion and copious amounts of wafting pot.
It is what it is and I’m not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing.
Anyway, on one of my regular routes through Crystal Beach I pass by (at exactly the 1.85k or 4.35k mark, depending on which direction I set out from home in) the residence of a local friend and one of my biggest fans lately: Ally the Cat.
She’s always there.
Here she is on her usual window sill perch whenever I pass by:
Cute, right?
Typically, I have been running lately in the afternoons when there’s more “people-watching” to be had but, unfortunately, this also means that it’s frickin’ hot and by the time I see Ally in her window I’m pretty desperate for a drink.
But does Ally care?
Of course not.
Any requests for a liquid refresher are always met with the same response:
Nada.
Even when I beg (oh, I beg!).
Not. A. Damned. Thing.
I think she may even enjoy seeing me suffering just a little bit.
And by this time, I am usually suffering with the midday heat and humidity and leaking fluids like an over-saturated sponge.
Not that Ally cares mind you.
I can even read it in her deadpan kitten face:
“Uh-uh fat boy. You ain’t getting any of my water!”
And, believe me, the thought has occurred me in times of utter desperation to try and crawl through that window in order to get to her water bowl but that’s likely going to be a hard sell to the responding police officers who will inevitably be called to the scene by the neighbors…
…so I usually just keep running.
And so it goes day after day after day; me passing by a window, begging for water and being mocked by a kitten. At least that’s what’s going on in my heat-frazzled brain anyway.
Maybe I really do need to consider running more in the evenings when it’s cooler.
It has been almost four weeks since my big Iron Disaster and three weeks post op after having seven pins and screws inserted into my left hand at the same time I should have been crossing the finish line; becoming a 7x Titanium man instead of a 2x Ironman. So, yeah, once again this has not exactly been a stellar year competition-wise and I’m still struggling to make sense of it all.
As it with the whole Grief Cycle, first comes the Denial and Isolation Stage. And, believe me, there was lots of that in the Emergency Room and in the days following the accident as I remained hopeful that I would somehow still be miraculously able to pull the race off. I remember begging – pleading – the responding EMR’s to give me some sort of reassurance that it wasn’t so bad despite the blood fountaining from my elbow and my baby finger which was sticking out at an odd right angle away from the rest of my hand.
Of course, it wasn’t meant to be.
Shortly afterwards, I entered into the Anger Stage and here is where I really excelled; especially after realizing that had I been able to to compete there was a very good chance I would have won my age group and perhaps even podium-ed over all in potentially 3rd place.
And that’s some hard shit to swallow let me tell you!
If there was some sort of lesson to be learned here, I wasn’t seeing it yet.
Likewise, during this period most peoples’ attempt to have me see either the good or the positive in the situation pretty much fell on deaf ears – I simply was not to be consoled.
Among the worst of the standard adages offered to me was “Well, it could have been worse”.
Well, yes, I could have ended up with a more severe break or perhaps ended up sliding under an an oncoming truck and being dragged for another kilometer or so before being deposited by the roadside for vultures and crows to pick at so, sure, I suppose it’s true that it could have been worse but I didn’t want to hear it at that point.
The other common sentiment was “this is your bodies way of telling you something?”
Pardon?
Tell me whatexactly?
That it hates me?
Couldn’t it have chosen a different and less painful way of telling me the same thing or, better yet, waiting another eight days to tell me which – if you remember – was the plan all along? Or was it trying to tell it me that it felt that I needed more hassles going through the metal detectors at airports? Whatever it was, my response to my body at that point would inevitably have been the same: “Gee, thanks body. Fuck you too!”
The problem with this sentiment was that this disaster was more of an environmental and mechanical issue than it ever was my body creating some sort of resistance. My bike slipped on a slick metal surface so if anything, my body was the victim here but, again, thanks.
And then there’s the people who tried to console me with “hey, at least you can have a relaxing summer now”.
These people in particular I wanted to judo chop in the throat. Clearly these people have never had metal pins inserted into a major appendage so that can’t shower unless they have a plastic Subway bag wrapped around it and can’t even do up their own pants in the morning without assistance. Similarly, they have never had to squeeze out a stool as stiff and dry as a mason block thanks to the amount of Percocets they’ve had to ingest in order to keep the pain at a manageable level so that they didn’t try to chew off their own arm in the middle of the night.
Sure, real relaxing…but cheers for that.
Thanks.
The other thing I heard quite often at the time was “everything happens for a reason”.
The fuck?
What possible reason could there be for my having to blow two years of hard work and perseverance for Fate to totally screw me (pun intended) seven days before the big event unless it was just trying to fuck with me?
I wanted to donkey punch these people.
“That’s Fate’s way of telling you that you’re a dick.”
Remember this was all during the Anger Stage.
But I’ve had the benefit of time now while being firmly wedged in the Depression Stage to mull it over and attempt to look at the situation a little more objectively.
What is there to be learned?
What can I take away from this whole epic shit show to make me a better person and, hopefully, a triathlete?
Then I had a very humbling experience during my first rehab appointment at the Shaver Hospital.
At first, I was firmly focused on my own pathetic circumstance as I tried to wiggle my baby piggy and feeling very low considering that I was at my peak fitness just a few days previous. Let’s just say I was feeling very, very low at this point. But then I looked around at some of the other patients in the room in the middle of their own rehab. Around me there were people learning to walk with a new prosthetic and unfortunate souls with their arms stuck inside cell regeneration machines after having acquired horrific burns.
And here I was worried about being able to bend my pinky finger and riding my bike by the end of summer.
Really.
What an asshole.
It kind of put a new perspective on things in that, yeah, maybe I did get off pretty lightly and things could definitely have been worse…a lot worse. I guess that’s what those people were trying to tell me when I wasn’t willing to listen. Sure I might still struggle to put my pants on, but at least I still have legs to put in them. Maybe I can’t wiggle my little finger right now but I still have it and it will heal.
I will ride again.
Maybe what I was supposed to learn was how fragile my body is and that perhaps I should appreciate it a little more when it is able to do the things that I was able to do just one week ago. Maybe this was supposed to teach me to enjoy the experience leading up to the event a bit more than I have, rather than stressing about what my body was not able to accomplish in the moment.
Let me explain.
While I am confident in my over all training plan and that it did ultimately help me acquire a fitness that I have not enjoyed in the past few years (in fact, I was both cycling and swimming better than I ever have before), I spent a stupid amount of time worrying about either what I wasn’t doing enough of, or fast enough, or hard enough, or whatever.
I was more often than not focused on the negative rather than the positive.
I mean, give yourself some credit dude.
You’re doing it!
Period.
Full stop.
Maybe this whole situation was intended to be a lesson in humility and will serve to help me grow into a better appreciation for the whole training process and ultimately become the Ironman I believe I can still be and want to be. After all, the kind of athlete I admire is the one who takes setbacks in stride and rises above them only to return better than ever (not unlike Paula Findley who is finally getting back to a winning form after a disappointing turn of events at the 2012 Olympics – click HERE).
This is far from the end for me in this sport; it’s just a minor setback that happened to come at an inopportune time.
Hopefully, this is just the start of better, brighter and more successful things to come.
This morning I began my taper; sweet, sweet taper.
Well, technically, I suppose that my taper began with that second helping of pecan pie last night, but I digress…
However, prior to this morning this weekend was full of challenges including a full 180k Ironman simulation ride with a 60 minute brick afterwards (click HERE) and then another half marathon early yesterday morning (click HERE). So that’s nearly 10 hours (220k) of either pedaling or running which, believe me, gives one lots of time to contemplate life and their place in it. Well, that’s when I’m not either focused on the increasing numbness in my ass, the stiffness in my legs, the stupid crosswind, the heat and humidity (not to my well-defined cyclists burn), worrying about whether or not my Snickers bar is being reduced to a liquid puddle on my crossbar, or the developing chafing going on in places you don’t even want to hear about.
So. Much. Chafing.
Anyway, for a significant amount of time when I was otherwise distracted by the above, I contemplated what is going to occur in two short weeks: namely, my second full Ironman distance race which also happens to be my first triathlon in nearly two years.
Because, hey, when you make a comeback it may as well be BIG, right?
I thought about what a crazy situation this is, including the original setback last year (click HERE), and then again this year (click HERE), and then the injury to kick off 2017 (click HERE) and then, well, let’s just say the entire past two years has been one crazy rollercoaster of emotion.
And in less than two weeks the entire journey finally comes to fruition.
And even though I haven’t even toed the starting line yet (July 8th), just to get to this point I owe a metric shit ton of gratitude to a lot of people who have either supported me, guided me or just plain put up with my whiny bullshit.
First and foremost, I need to acknowledge the huge and vitally important roll my wife and partner Kelly, as well as my step-daughter Hailey has played in this entire process. Essentially, they have allowed me to be non-present for the past 3 months in order to swim, bike and run a stupid amount of time through the week and then again on the weekends. And there’s the feeding me, keeping my never-ending “stinkies” clean, and putting up with my (as of late) deep-rooted grouchiness. None of what I have accomplished through this training process would have been possible without either of their support and dedication to the goal at hand.
Love you girls!
I also need to acknowledge the coach, Nicole van Beurden for not only laying out the master plan but also allowing me to grow and develop through this entire process through failing time and time again and not allowing me to become too discouraged with myself and reinforcing the positive (click HERE). In other words, it’s not always about the “Suck it up buttercup and get ‘er done you sissy!” philosophy of long distance that many of us are no doubt conditioned to accept as part of “The Plan”. Making the decision to go rogue and become a lone wolf in this whole “Ironman: Part 2” quest, without the immediate support and social comradery of other like-minded athletes as part of a local triathlon club, also meant that I had to endure lots and lots and lots of alone time. So what this also inevitable meant is that Nicole also became a part-time on-call psychiatrist able to receive lots of last minute “cry baby” calls from yours truly when things either went wrong, or I was just feeling sorry for myself.
If anyone is looking for an awesome coach and mentor, look no further.
Thank you, Nicole.
And, of course, I need to acknowledge my three incredible sponsors who were both kind enough to support and believe in the little guy (figuratively only). Jason Pizzicarola and Nadine Foerstenberg (and the whole staff) at Brimstone Brewing, Matt MacGregor at Crave Local Fresh, and Brandon George McGuire at in.cep.tion cyclery and head guru for the UnRoyal Ride Ambassadors -URRA, of which I am thrilled to be a part. Between these three amazing local enterprises, not only have I an amazing new race suit to sport (seriously, it’s pretty bad ass: click HERE) but a cause to race for. They have kept me hydrated (beer is a hydrator, right?), fueled with delicious local fare, my bike tuned and ready to go and, often, just the inspiration to get out the door and train!
Basically, I am one lucky son of a bitch to have such amazing team to support me and there’s not a day that goes by when I am not grateful for these folks taking the ultimate risk on me.
Thank you.
I will not let you down.
Also, when this whole Ironman craziness is done, I’m looking forward to continuing representing you during my planned fun group rides in and out The Sanctuary beginning in July.
Beer and pretzel bites for everybody!
(stay tuned friends)
I also want to acknowledge Dr. Kristen Burr at Legacy Health & Performance in St. Catharines, Ontario for dealing with all my ouchies and owies which are inevitably part of the Ironman process. When cooler heads needed to prevail after I had gone and got myself all worked after consulting “Dr. Google” and come to the conclusion that immediate amputation was necessary, Dr. Burr was there to get me back on the healing path quickly and painlessly. Sometimes, I also walk out with a good book suggestion to boot.
And then there’s Cori Dodds, and Ben McDermot and the entire amazing staff at the YMCA located at the Vale Health and Wellness Center in Port Colborne YMCA for not only being friendly and supportive, but also for allowing me some flexibility through the off-season to both train as well as keeping Hailey occupied and productive whilst I train. I realize that I can be a right difficult SOB sometimes (Hailey too I am guessing), so I appreciate you all for not having suspended my membership by now.
There’s my friend Stephen Apps who also took on the daunting challenge this year of training and participating in this year’s Frank & Friends 10k Swim for Strong Kidswith me. They say that “misery loves company” and when it comes to doing ridiculous amounts of laps, Steve was all aboard.
Thank you, my friend.
There’s Lucio Gismondi and the whole gang that participates early every Tuesday and Thursday morning as part of the RONA ride for pushing me hard over 40k worth of headwind and relentless pace work up and down the Niagara Parkway. Every day I don’t get dropped is a good day and as a result I haven’t cycled this strong in, well, ever really.
It’s an honor to share the road with you beasts.
Essentially, as the old say goes: “Ittakes a village to raise a child”.
Well, so too does an Ironman triathlete and, really, my villagers are pretty fucking incredible. Without them it is doubtful that I would have even made it this far, much less be as prepared and ready as I am.
Likewise, I am going to be doing my absolute best come July 8th in order to make sure that all your support and dedication to my Ironman journey go fully realized and, rest assured, I will acknowledging you all at some point in spirit over those long 226.1 kilometers.
I appreciate you all and I am humbled just to be representing this incredible community of people.
I’m pretty fortune to live and train where I do (click HERE). While I wouldn’t necessarily classify it as “the country”, there is certainly enough of it around. And while it may be true that there are certain risks that one has to assume when training in a, well, let’s call it “rural” area as I do. I have learned to deal with coywolves, dogs and dog shit, chipmunks, asshole drivers, moron pedestrians, tourists and rutting goats.
That’s pretty much the full gamut of what this area has to offer hazard-wise.
However, there is one potential danger in particular that has surfaced recently and has me a bit flummoxed by the reaction it’s been getting.
Coyotes.
No, not the coywolves as I mentioned up above – them bitches are scary – just your ordinary, average, disinterested urban coyote.
I’ve never mentioned them before as a “threat” because I just don’t see them that way.
I mean, were you ever stressed or threatened by this guy in the past:
Hell, no!
I figured that if I ever did run into a coyote I’d just wait for it to strap on a rocket pack and roller-skates and then just stop short on a cliff edge so that he overshoots me before stalling over open air and then falling to the ground with a puff of dust.
Easy.
However, on the rare occasion I do see them they are usually heading in the opposite direction in order to avoid me – and quickly, I might add. I guess I can strike a rather menacing image when wrapped in a Lycra cycling kit and wheezing like an asthmatic gorilla.
So I keep telling myself anyways.
Anyhow, lately with all the construction in the area lately sighting a coyote isn’t the rare thing it used to be. Sure, we hear them almost every night prowling the fields behind our house but we never actually saw them very often as they are typically nocturnal. Now, well, we see them a bit more often as they are no doubt becoming a bit displaced with this ever-changing environment.
Just last week, upon completing an evening run a coyote popped out of the underbrush just ahead of me and, seeing this fat, spandex-clad train wreck heading right for it – beat it off back into the bush again.
I will say, however, I’d be lying if I said that my heart didn’t skip a beat.
Regardless, beat it I did in true Michael Jackson form, so I kept going and never thought another thing about it. After all, the coyotes have always been here and aside from their middle of the night howling, they’ve never posed me any real serious threat.
Unfortunately, all the tourists coming back into town now that the summer cottage season is upon us don’t exactly feel the same way.
Suddenly coyotes are a HUGE threat.
So much so that they have recently posted a memo, warning dog walkers about coyotes in the area as well as discussing what they should do if they encounter one.
And me being the sarcastic dick I am, find this a bit funny.
I understand that coyotes are more or less disinterested in humans but dogs on the other hand, well, add a dog to the mix and their interest could surely be piqued. Especially given all the fluffy little frou-frou lap dogs that the tourists like to tout around on their fake-diamond studded leashes.
In that case, Fifi is essentially a harnessed appetizer prior to the evening’s regular meal.
Common sense might suggest to normal people that one probably should not walk their little mutt after dark, especially in poorly lit areas or along out-of-the-way places – but tourists are seldom normal nor do they occupy anything resembling common sense.
No, instead they issues memos about what to do when you do exactly that and then run into the proscribed issue.
Smart, right?
Told you I was a sarcastic dick, didn’t I?
Anyway, I’m making the correlation here that if a coyote were brazen enough to go after Fifi with its owner around in close proximity – stupid as they may be – perhaps I should heed more notice seeing as how in my running tights, I might also be mistaken for a moveable feast. Maybe there would be some token takeaways – weak as they may be – for me to better educate and prepare myself for future encounters of the canid kind.
Among these brain nuggets are the following:
Stand tall and be assertive. Coyotes are wary of humans and your presence enough be enough to ward it off. Maintain eye contact. Do not turn your back on the coyote and do not run. Running away can trigger a coyote’s prey drive and cause him or her (nice that they’re not perpetrating any gender stereotypes here) to chase you.
Yeah, as a runner – that helps me not.
Anyone who’s ever seen me at any significant distance into a run knows that “tall and assertive” is not my jam. At best, I look like Frankenstein with a bad case of scoliosis lumbering through the street. It’s all I can do to remain upright, much less assertive about it.
And running away? Ha!
As long as I don’t fall over and freely give up my soft mushy underbelly I’d be doing well.
Haze the coyote until it leaves the area.
Haze?
You mean like dress it in drag and make it chug a tallboy through a funnel? I’m figuring that in doing this there is a significant risk that the coyote might enjoy this too much and never leave the area.
Just sayin’…
If what they mean to say is to make a ruckus as to deter the coyote coming any closer, believe you me, I will be emitting a full range of cries, grunts, wails, screams and screeches. I will be a literal cacophony of despair. I will make a racket that would have any Einstürzende Neubauten fan handing out ear plugs and it will come naturally, I assure you.
So, if anything, what did I learn?
Absolutely buckus.
However, I now definitely know beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if a coyote should ever make his presence known and decide that I should represent some sort of tasty victual, I’m more or less screwed.
At best, I can scream my ass off and try to stand fully erect but, honestly…why bother? At that point in the workout the chances are good I’ll be more content to just roll over and accept my fate as the main course at the coyote buffet.
Thankfully, the chances of any of this actually happening are slim to none so I’m not really worried about it. Unless of course, for what forever reason, I decide to strap on a pink leash and harness and crawl around the Friendship Trail in a pair of furry underwear.
In that event though, the tourists might want to include on their next memo about what to do should they encounter me.
“Won’t you step into the freezer
Tease her with a tweezer
It’s gonna be cold, cold, cold, cold, cold…”
It’s been almost two years since I last stepped back into the Brock University Kinesiology Department headed by Dr. Stephen Cheung. I figured that either they didn’t have anything particularly interesting going on since my last trip into the over (click HERE) or they had simply run out of ideas on how to adequately make my life mentally and physically miserable.
Well, for whatever time it is that I’m spending in the lab anyway.
But as it turns out, they were apparently biding their time in a two year brainstorming session on the next best way to torture me and, boy, did they come up with a doozy this time.
This time around the oven is being converted into a meat locker, so instead of being roasted alive, I’m going to be turned into a human Popsicle in the latest and greatest “Effects of Hyperpoxia on Exercise Performance in the Cold” study.
Sounds like fun right?
The study is aimed at determining whether or not Hyperpoxia can improve exercise performance in the cold. And seeing as how I typically do the bulk of my long distance Ironman training in the winter, hey, this might be a great learning opportunity (as I’m choosing to tell myself anyway). At the very least I figured, “hey, I already run in -stupid° temperatures until I can’t feel my feet, face, or hands, so how bad could this really be?” Not that it ever takes me any time at all to decide whether or not to volunteer for these crazy experiments but, honestly, in this case, I actually begged to be a part of it.
Once again, my lunacy knows no bounds.
Anyway, to begin with, let’s first review what in the sweet Sam Hell this “Hyperpoxia” beast is.
Hyperoxia occurs when the body’s tissues and organs are exposed to an excess supply of oxygen (O2) or higher than normal partial pressure of oxygen. In medicine, it refers to excess oxygen in the lungs or other body tissues, which can be caused by breathing air or oxygen at pressures greater than normal atmospheric pressure. This kind of hyperoxia can lead to oxygen toxicity, caused from the harmful effects of breathing molecular oxygen at elevated partial pressures. Hyperoxia differs from hypoxia in that hyperoxia refers to a state in which oxygen supply is too much, whereas hypoxia refers to the state in which oxygen supply is insufficient (a feeling of which I am very familiar with from swimming endless laps in the pool). In a properly regulated doses however, that extra oxygen in the blood can give the body that extra ‘umpf’ in performance (ie. blood doping in cycling).
Now, in the extreme cold it has been proved that the body’s blood flow is significantly decelerated in its ability to feed oxygen rich blood to the muscles to sustain performance; hence the overall performance declines. Makes sense right? Anyone who’s ever tried to run in polar vortex temperatures, such as I have, will already know that it’s a significantly harder effort. But what would happen if you “super-oxygenate” that blood beforehand? In other words, what if what little blood – decelerated in delivery as it is – was enhanced with above normal oxygen levels to fuel the muscles once it got there. Would that then counter-effect that decrease in performance? While this super-oxygenating blood to improve performance has been widely known in the sporting world already resulting in some pretty clever scandals to cheat the odds, no one has thus far attempted this same principle in an extremely cold environment where the blood flow has also been slowed down.
Enter yours truly (along with a few other willing “suffer bunnies”); let the chips fall where they may.
Session 1: VO2-Max and Familiarization
As I have come to learn and understand, before I can look at the bike I have to first run the gauntlet of having my fatness measured, scrutinized, and recorded. It’s not a very dignified process, believe me.
Here’s how the consent form describes the process:
“Body fat testing will be performed using skinfold calipers, which might cause a slight pinching sensation.”
Slight?
Ha!
It was like being goosed over and over again by a giant mechanical lobster.
Let it be known now that Steve, the new Principle Student Investigator (PSI), has absolutely no caliper skills whatsoever. Sorry, buddy, I still love you and all but you definitely need some practice; not that grabbing ahold of and pinching another man’s body fat ranks up there on your resume of skills, I get it, but still…
Ouch!
Maybe there is something to say about having a few cute female undergrads girls do it like a few years ago. Whatever the case, if I had any misgivings about it before, I’m definitely not cut out for the hardcore S&M lifestyle.
Fortunately, after a minutes of poking, pulling and pinching, not to mention not much eye contact, it was all over with and we could hook me up to the censors and move into the chamber to get down to business beginning with the dreaded V02-max test to determine my overall level of aerobic fitness. And considering that I have been spending ample time on the bike doing some tempo and interval workouts, I was hoping for something a bit better than the ‘Good’ status I received last time.
Seriously, it is worthy pausing here to note that had I not fared better this time around with my V02-max, I likely would have thrown the Velotron bike through the wall of the Kinesiology lab in a fit of anger that would have made Bruce Banner cower in the corner like a little nancy girl.
Seriously.
Anyway, on goes the silicon mask to measure my peak oxygen consumption (VO2peak) and immediately I feel like this:
So, you think the bike is your friend?
Of course, I didn’t look quite so badass.
The test began shortly afterwards where I am required to warm up at 100 watts for 5 minutes before 25 watts were added each minute until the point of total burnout. Everything felt pretty good for the first 11 or 12 minutes or so, as I have been training at this 80-85% threshold level for some weeks now. I was feeling strong and confident. But once that over all fatigue begins to set in, boy, it’s a quickly spiraling slope downward into total agony. But by the 13 minute mark (350 watts) I was suffering and this is where I tapped out last time. Damned if I was going to give in at this point this time around, so I synched up the apple sack and made it another minute or so more well into the 375 watt mark and then ‘ol Thunder n’ Lightning imploded in on themselves and I slouch over the handlebars wheezing into the silicon mask like an asthmatic orangutan.
Thank Christ.
Here’s what all this data looks like on the screen:
Of course, this could be the EKG results performed on a rutabaga for all I know, but here is what all those squiggly lines and graphs really boil down to:
So these results can be broken out into the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
The obvious good news – scratch that, make it GREAT news – is that my relative VO2peak improved to 61ml/kg/min, representing a 19 ml/kg/min improvement over my last crack at the bad two years ago. This places me squarely – FINALLY I might add – in the “Superior” classification for my age group. In fact, I tested as “Superior” for a male in the 19-25 age range. So I am extremely happy with this.
The bad news is that I’m only marginally lighter than I was at this time two years ago, weighing in at 96.06kg which is only 0.3kg lighter. It’s not a lot, but I’ll take it. I’m chalking this up to all my newfound core muscles and recent weight training. After all, muscle is heavier than fat but, regardless, that’s what I’m choosing to roll (no pun intended) with.
The ugly news is that my body fat percentage rose to 26.2%, an increase of 4.2% over two years ago meaning I’m lighter, but also flabbier.
The fuck?
Apparently, fat is my new secret weapon as it would seem on paper that the larger I get the fitter I become, so it’s ‘Goodbye kale salads, Hello bacon double cheeseburgers!’
How or why this is beats the living shit out of me as I’ve been working hard on my core (click HERE) daily, and doing lots of tempo and hill intervals on the bike in recent weeks. How I got bigger when I feel that I’ve actually been losing weight absolutely baffles me. I’m counting this up to Steve being a little overly aggressive into digging those calipers into my body fat.
Thanks Steve.
Regardless, the bottom line is that I’m stronger so that’s the ultimate positive here in all this kerfuffle. Maybe all those weekend pints courtesy of my sponsor Brimstone Brewery (click HERE) have given me some kind of super powers?
Who knows.
Onto Phase 2, the familiarization time trial.
After being allowed to spin idly for another few minutes, be began the official 15k time trail that I will have to perform at the end of each protocol in the following weeks, complete with silicon mask just to simulate what it will be like in the actual protocol sessions. This familiarization is more of a formality really as I’ve done this in the lab on numerous occasions already but, hey, how often do you get to time trial on a real Velotron so, yeah, strap me in boys let’s go for it; 13 minutes or so of blocking out all the weeks worth of media bullshit on Lady Gaga’s belly fat and whatever the hell it is that Donald Trump is currently waging a Twitter war against and simply…giv ‘er.
Basically, I’m wired up and hooked into to a computer which displays a virtual me as it tracks my effort and progress through a virtual 15k course. The computer tracks all the important details of my time trial performance including my gear setting, speed, heart rate, average wattage, peak wattage, RPM, average RPM and, apparently, that I am a pink-clad female cyclist.
WTF?
Luckily, I have no gender status issues so I’m terribly bothered as long as I’m still kicking ass and taking names. The only distraction is to provide the PSI with 2.5k with my perceived ‘Rate of Exertion’ (RPE) as represented on a traditional Borg scale, as well as my ‘Thermal Comfort’ (otherwise known as a Bedford Scale) and ‘Thermal Sensation’. So, essentially, there you are wallowing in your self-induced pain cave as you focus on applying power to the pedals at pretty much your 90% threshold until the time trial is complete.
Here’s but a small sample of it:
–
When it was all said and done, I covered the distance in 25:39 with an average wattage of 235 and at an average speed of just over 35kpm.
Not bad for a fat chick, eh?
Of course, this was all completed in a neutral temperature with normal doses of precious oxygen and lots of encouragement.
In other words, this was about as easy as it was ever going to get.
Session 2 – Exercise Protocol
By the time a week had rolled by, I had more or less racked myself into quite a fright about this whole cold thing. I mean, when I first started doing these testing protocols at Brock years ago I had no idea what I was getting into so I really had no expectations about how bad it would suck.
I was ignorant.
But now that I have a reference point or benchmark on how bad things can really get, well, you begin to wonder “will this be as bad as that?” Sure this study is is different in that I’m not begin roasted alive but that doesn’t exactly mean it’s going to be any less tedious. And truthfully, I’d rather shit in my hands and clap than have to ever endure that firefighters protocol again (click HERE for a little reminder on how bad that was).
However, this time around I was to be sitting in a cooler at exactly 0° until my core temperature had dropped exactly 0.5°, or essentially, had gone hypothermic.
Ever been hypothermic before?
Me neither.
Basically, I was going from this:
An oldie but a goodie
To this:
See why I was a bit worried?
Upon arriving in the lab I have to run the gauntlet of getting prepared by having my urine tested for adequate hydration levels and then getting hooked up to a whole battery or wires, sensors, electrodes and, oh yes, let’s not forget:
–
It’s real glamorous business this suffer bunny stuff.
Everything is being 100% monitored, my hear rate, my rectal temperature, my skin temperature/heat flow, the amount of oxygen in my blood and even my brain activity through a near infrared spectroscopy sensor (NIRS), so that by the time I was done having all these instruments successfully fished through my cycle attire and attached to my body you kind of begin to feel a bit like this:
And only marginally less menacing.
See how happy I look?
Just ecstatic I tells ya.
Anyway, from there it’s onto business and you couldn’t help but notice a slight chill in the air as Steve the lab guy begins to describe exactly what’s about to go down.
To begin with, I’m to get cozy in the freezer where they already have a nice, comfy lawn chair already set up for me and it’s a few minutes before all my sensors are then fed through a small hole in the freezer wall to the outside and hooked up to all that fancy shit outside so they can get their accurate reads on my suffering inside.
When they’re finished, they take a blood lactate sample with a lancet device (which, fortunately, looks nothing like the huge ass sword variety) from my ear lobe to get a base read of my lactate concentration prior to the anticipated madness. Immediately after that, I am asked to sit quietly with no stimulus (music, talking, etc.) so they can get another base read on all my internal systems before they officially open the Gates to Hell.
Usually when they begin the actual protocol you begin doing something. Cycling, running, walking, whatever.
But not this time.
Nope.
This time I’m simply sitting in a lawn chair connected to about a thousand wires and seated across from me is a guy (Gary) in a snow suit.
And it begins to get cold.
Very fucking cold.
Almost immediately I began to shiver as the fan in the freezer pumps in air at around -4° to get the temperature to drop to the required 0° as quickly as possible before it stabilizes. It was clear from the get go that this was going to be a completely different kind of suffering. On my previous trips into the “oven” my butt crack more or less turned into Splash Mountain for all the sweat that began to pour, now you couldn’t slide a credit card between my ass cheeks if you had to for all the clenching that was going on thanks to the cold.
Keeping in mind, they were anticipating my having to be in here for anywhere between 45 and 90 minutes in order for my core temperature to drop to the necessary 0.5°, yup, this was going to sure suck.
Prior to beginning this whole freezing thing, I chatted with Gary (the guy in the snow suit) who has had the fortunate – or unfortunate, depending on how you want to look at it – task of keeping all the study volunteers such as myself company through this freezing protocol. He mentioned that what he really found interesting was how each test subject dealt with their suffering. Some plugged into their music on their iPod’s, or played on their cell phones in an effort to forget the fact that their bodies were being frozen into Popcicles, while others simply zoned out and willed themselves through it. Others still spewed out random obscenities and pithy expletives for the entire duration as a way of coping with the stress.
Me?
Figuring that given my 26.2% body fat that I was going to be in this for the long haul, well, let’s just say I came prepared to stay a while. I brought a book, my iPod with a per-established playlist of “hot” themed tracks, a notebook to record my thoughts; everything but a picnic basket, a collection of the New York Times crosswords and the entire 8 seasons worth of Dexter really. So once the shivering began I plugged into my playlist, cracked my book and….
Nope!
That wasn’t going to work.
Apparently, I needed to forget that I was there altogether and reading simply wasn’t going to do it. And, honestly, my body was shivering so badly that even had I wanted to, the book which I had resting in my lap was shaking so bad that it probably could have phased right through my body altogether and into the chair had I allowed it.
Snoop Dogg had nothing on me what he says he’s “chillun'”, believe me.
So, instead, I struck up a conversation with Gary and talked about, geez, everything under the stars really. Anything and everything was on the conversational menu; work, travel; politics and, yes, at times even the current situation. What I can assure you though is that despite my efforts to block out the cold, it absolutely sucked and I was shivering like a chihuahua at the Arctic Circle.
Shivering is your bodies unconscious way of fending off the cold and trying to keep itself warm and, apparently, my body was putting in some serious overtime. In fact, at exactly the 30 minute mark my core temperature had actually risen by 1° as this process was taking place.
Not that I ever felt warm or comfortable mind you. This simply not the case. On the outside you’re fucking cold but, inside, your body is working hard to protect itself by regulating it’s temperature and therefore protecting you from serious harm, despite how you feel on the outside. Gary assured me that this increase in core temperature was normal and that all the other test subjects had experienced the same thing.
At the 60 minute mark my core temperature had rose another 2°, or 3° over in total from my normal body temperature.
Fuck.
It’s a curious thing to actually want your body to fail. Under any other “normal” (and I use that word loosely) circumstances, you want your body to endure, to overcome and to triumph. In all the other research experiments I have been a part of this was certainly the case; how long can I go? Now, here I was in the rather unique situation where I was actually wanted my body to pack it in, throw in the towel and traipse off gaily into the light at the end of the tunnel!
“Go into the light, dammit!”
The quicker my body started to fail, the quicker my core temperature would drop, and the quicker I could get on the bike to begin the time trail and to generate some heat.
But, NOOOOOOOOOOO!
Not my body.
Apparently, my body is extremely good at regulating it’s internal temperature – too good in fact.
So there I sat…shivering…suffering.
Not exactly a relaxing day at the beach is it?
By the 90 minute mark (the longest point at which any other test subjects had taken), my core temperature was back to 0°, or where I had originally started from exactly 1 hour and 30 minutes ago meaning all this suffering and freezing had simply gotten me back to the starting point again.
Do you have any idea how defeating that feels?
A lot.
I was determined to make this work. I mean, after you have suffered for that long why not go whole hog and see it through to the end. Such is the life of a “suffer bunny” after all, right? Gary had also mentioned at some point as well that once the body begins to actually drop it’s core temperature, it’s typically a gradual slide downward so, yeah, maybe I just had to hang on a little longer.
Again, remember, I am actually willing myself to fail here as I am pretty miserable by this point.
The real question now was, how much longer was this whole failing process going to take?
At 100 minutes, my core temperature had only dropped a mere 0.1°.
Big fucking deal.
By 120 minutes (2 hours) it as the same, so the decision was ultimately made to pull the plug altogether and get me out of there. What it really came down to to the lab guys was how long can you ethically let someone suffer, knowing you have no idea what the end point is going to be? What’s an acceptable amount of time you can let somebody sit in a 0° environment? 1 hour? 2 hours? 3 hours? What?
By now, I had endured exactly 30 minutes longer than the next longest sucker test subject in the freezer and, I can assure you, it was awful.
I mean, sure, “Yay me!”, but still, it totally sucked.
Would I have stayed longer? Absolutely. If the last ‘Effects of Mental Skills Training on Endurance Performance and Cognitive Function in the Heat’ (click HERE) study had taught me anything, it’s that I can be one tough bastard when I need to be.
And, yes, I definitely used my mental skills training here as well.
Thanks Phil!
But as a safety precaution, a 2 hour suffering time limit had been predetermined for the study so, yeah, I never even made it to the bike.
Needless to say, I was disappointed; disappointed that I had failed at having successfully failed.
What?
It just is what it is.
Having said all this, when the guys started to help out of the chair, I realized that just about everything had locked up in the cold; my back, my legs, my knees, everything. The chances are that even had I made it to the 15k time trial, I wouldn’t have been able to do little more than simply over the pedals, much less time trial.
Furthermore, the skin on my forearms had freezer burn (which ultimately wouldn’t go away for another three days) and my pecker had done it’s best Punxsutawny Phil impression by burying itself in my abdomen, and considering the size of my abdomen these days, I likely wouldn’t see it again for another six weeks either.
In a picture, I felt like this:
The other thing to consider is, let’s say that my core temperature finally did drop the required 0.5° and I did make to the bike to complete the time trial – shitty as it would likely have been. That means I would then have had to endure that same 2-3 hours once more for the second protocol, and it I was nervous before, I would definitely have not been looking forward to doing it all over again.
Don’t let the smile fool you, inside those mittens I’m really giving Gary the finger.
It was another 20 minutes or so outside the freezer sporting a full winter jacket before the shivering finally subsided. And, truth me, you will never appreciate just how warm room temperature is until you sat in 0° temperatures for two fucking hours.
Finally I was able to remove all the sensors and, yes, the probe which, honestly, made me feel a bit like this:
Oh, and I also had the longest and most enjoyable hot shower I have ever had.
After each of these studies I ultimately try to find the learning lesson in for me. How does this translate to the outside world and, hopefully, provide me with a little added value. The results of the ‘Mental Skills Training on Endurance Performance‘ study taught me how to improve my performance through positive mental conditioning and the firefighter study taught me that’s no way in fucking hell I’d ever want to be a firefighter. But what did this teach me exactly?
After two hours of suffering you’d think there would be some sore of profound “Ah ha!” moment, right?
But here I was at a bit of a loss.
Sure, if I happen to wander out of a bar in the middle of winter with an unseasonably fashionable jacket and end up passing out in a forest somewhere, the chances are good that I will survive for at least 2-3 hours.
But is that what I was meant to learn?
Doubtful.
Maybe there wasn’t a learning lesson here beyond knowing that my body is very good at regulating it’s internal temperature. Maybe this is a result of all my cold weather training and conditioning, or maybe my body is just retarded in that it just doesn’t know when to say “I quit”.
Who knows?
What I do know for sure is that there are definitely better ways to spend a Wednesday evening.
Hopefully though, I will get some sort of honorable mention or maybe a footnote somewhere in the final paper about being the tough bastard (idiot?) who sat for two hours in a freezer with a probe up his ass.
I first started swimming at the Port Colborne YMCA and Aquatic Center about 2-3 years ago.
Now, it’s never easy being the new guy on deck at a new pool. Here the swimmers were typically older (seniors most of them) and had obviously been swimming together in the mornings for quite some time. Before that (I have since learned), they swam at the now closed Centennial Pool in Port Colborne. In other words, they were all very familiar with one another as well as each others swim pace and specific routines, and they already had a predetermined order to the way in which they organized themselves in regard to who swam with whom, and in what lane, so on and so forth.
And this young buck in Speedo’s with the Santa’s sack of fancy swim toys shows up and everything is completely FUBAR-ed. It’s made only worse that he also happens to swim at double the pace of those currently using the Fast Lane.
Needless to say, we didn’t necessarily all get along well in the beginning.
However, over time they grew to know me, and I them, and I have more or less been accepted into the common collective of local swimmers in Port Colborne and we have reorganized ourselves accordingly in that we can all successfully get to the business of swimming without it feeling like Mortal Combat.
It took some time but we eventually did it.
During that initial “getting to know you” phase though it was, well, let’s just say that it was ‘awkward’ at the best of times.
One of the first swimmers to make an effort to get to know me was an English woman named Margaret. One morning, out of the blue, she invited me into her lane which we then proceeded to split down the middle so that we wouldn’t be in each others way. To me, this was kind of like Diane Fossey being accepted into her troop of mountain gorillas on some remote mountainside in Rwanda somewhere. At last I was accepted as one of their own.
Well, with Margaret anyway.
The others? Maybe not so much (at that point anyway).
We continued sharing a lane for some time after that and even started chit-chatting at the wall periodically between sets.
She was curious about the kind of workouts I was doing, the distances, and of course all the weird-looking pool toys (pool buoys, fins, paddles, etc.) I brought with me (click HERE for but a small sample). She even became a little interested in how they worked so I invited her to try using some of them which she did before politely nodding her head that, “yes, that’s definitely different, isn’t it?” in that adorable English accent before going back to doing whatever it was she was doing. However, I did notice sometimes that while I was doing my sets she would occasionally reach into my bag of swim tricks on the wall and help herself to a pair of small paddles, or maybe my fins, do a few lengths, and then replace them again carefully.
I was only too happy to oblige.
Sometimes we would even race each other. I would try to complete a 100m interval in the same time it took her to swim 50m. It was a way of pushing ourselves through a little friendly competition. She usually completed her interval seconds before I could finish mine, but I was getting closer. And of course there was just the proper amount of egging one another on at the all as well.
“You just got beat by an old lady!”, was her favorite.
Funny that my swim partner would turn out to be an 70+ year old lady with penchant for trash talking.
Rather appropriately I think, I nicknamed her “The Shark”.
But then Margaret stopped showing up altogether.
Now it’s not terribly unusual for one of the old timers to go AWOL at some point. Usually, one at a time it seems, they will inevitably head off south on vacation for a few weeks at a time, but they all eventually come back eventually looking like an old boot; such was the ebb and flow when swimming with seniors. So I half expected Margaret to come waltzing back onto the pool deck as some point as well all tanned up.
But she never did.
In fact, months passed and no Margaret.
I figured that maybe she had moved onto something else, or moved away altogether. It happens. By this time though I more or less owned the Fast Lane and the other regulars stayed out of my way (except Bill, who I am sure has been sent here by the gods like some sort of a Classical pool harpy, to interrupt all my workouts by getting in my way as often as possible).
More months passed.
Then this morning, low and behold, there she was.
She looked a little confused and proceeded to plop herself into a completely different lane (not ours), but when she saw me she smiled broadly and announced “I remember you!”
Umm, hey…thanks?
She mentioned to me that she hadn’t swam in two years and, again, there was that confused look. When I congratulated her for being back, she just shrugged her shoulders and started swimming…zig-zagging down the middle of the lane…without her goggles on.
Long story short, Margaret has developed Alzheimer’s and recently lost her driver’s license and therefore, her ability to get to and from the pool every day. This morning, however, her husband must have brought her so that she could finally get back in the pool.
She didn’t immediately recognize everyone else but I am thrilled that she remembered me and our “workouts”. She even started to ask how my swimming was going, what distances I had gotten myself up to and if I was still planning to race again this year.
In other words, it was as if we had just picked up where we left off…trash talk n’ all.
It was a real joy for me to see her swimming again and, clearly, she both loves and misses it judging by the HUGE smile on her face. And while we might not have shared a lane this morning, I will definitely be sure to return the favor and invite her into my lane (whether she remembers me or not) with me if she continues to show up in future mornings, just as she originally did with me.
Welcome back, Margaret.
And for the record, in her absence I’ve only gotten faster.
As she said this morning: “I see I have some work to do”.
My (our) annual charity swim has been planned for April 15th at the Port Colborne YMCA and Aquatic’s Complex and my training has been going well. On the average I am swimming anywhere between 15,000 to 17,000 meters a week with my long consecutive swims on Saturday’s (after riding 20k out to the pool on my mountain bike no less) so far stretching to 5,000 to 6,000 meters without any breaks.
And it feels good.
Also, I have just recently just set a bench mark personal best at the 100m distance by finally getting my time down under a 1:30. Probably not a big deal for other swimmers but for me, this is HUGE progress. My daily core workouts are inevitably helping to make all this possible and all things considered, right now I’m feeling very strong in the water…more so than where I have been in previous years at this point with my 10k program.
In other words, things are going great.
What is different this year, is that I have enlisted some help in a friend who will be joining me in this whole 10k swim madness, Stephen Apps. Steve was one of the first people I met through the TryForce club years ago and was one of the big motivators and inspirations to train for and complete my first Half Ironman distance triathlon in Welland (click HERE), culminating with my competing in Cancun (click HERE) the following year and eventually the full Iron distance Wales (click HERE). So, although he may be surprised to hear it, Steve has been a major influence on my life over the past 8 years or so.
Now, we usually just bond over beers with is significantly more fun.
Anyway, this year Steve has graciously offered to join me for the Frank & Friends swim and has jumped back into the pool and launched into his own training plan for the April 15th event date. However, this week he has been taking a bit of a much-needed break from the program and relaxing somewhere in Costa Rica.
(lucky bastard)
I’m envious.
Of course, I figured the only training he’d be doing this week might be the one arm curls he performs every time he hoists a tequila shot to his lips, but then this video pops up in my Facebook feed suggesting that Steve isn’t actually relaxing at all:
–
I just don’t know what to say.
Here I am up at stupid o’clock every morning suffering through endless intervals and grueling paddle workouts, and here is Steve doing obscene things to a floating crocodile in a tropical paradise.
It all started last Friday, promptly at 3:01pm when I opened my email and saw a message from the Event Director of the Subaru EPiC Dartmouth Triathlon casually stating (as if nothing odd was transpiring):
You are receiving this email because you were registered for the 2016 Subaru EPIC Dartmouth Triathlon, and deferred your entry to the 2017 event.
I am going to attempt to transfer the amount you paid back into your hands electronically, but want to confirm that these are all still good addresses.
So send me a reply, so I will know this address works, and can send your refund.
My heart sunk.
This was me:
Oh shit, here we go again.
If you recall, my planned Ironman was canceled last year due to road closures (click HERE). I chose to take this as a sign, deferred my entry to the next year, and opted to focus on other goals, namely assisting with the SunRype Tri-Kids group for the summer. And I’m glad I did as it’s ultimately a very rewarded experience, one that took my family out west to the Okanagan Valley, Calgary and then all over Ontario making kids triathlon dreams come true. I (we) will be doing it again this summer as well.
However, it was the first year I didn’t compete in a single triathlon all summer and I realized that while the recovery was likely well needed and much enjoyed, I missed the thrill of completion and looked forward to getting back to business in 2017. So, come October of last year it was back to the task at hand of kicking ass and taking names.
The EPiC Triathlon Challenge Facebook page was making semi-regular updates on the improved road conditions which only further whetted my appetite to race. Once again, I was developing high hopes that this race would truly be an epic experience.
Until I received that recent email, that is. Needless to say, it was not a welcome intrusion on the day.
As it turns out, the EPiC Triathlon Challenge had been cancelled uh-gain!
FML.
Here’s the official announcement/rationalization as provided by the Event Director:
Dear 2017 EPIC Triathlon Registrant,
When we lost our cycle route, and had to postpone the Subaru EPIC Dartmouth Triathlon in the Spring of 2016, we were on track for our best year ever (in terms of numbers of competitors). At that time we didn’t know how being forced to take a year off would affect registration for the 2017 race: Would we have even more registrants for 2017 from pent up demand, or would we have less from loss of momentum?
EPIC 2016 continued without the long distance triathlon, and the overall EPIC event had it’s best year ever! We set record numbers in the EPIC Canadian Runs (becoming the 3rd largest Canada Day run in the country, plus adding a new Half and Quarter marathon). We set record numbers in the EPIC Kids triathlon, record numbers in the EPIC Swim, and started a new adult Try-A-Tri. Even without the long distance triathlon, we had the largest total number of participants ever – to the pleasure of the City and our Sponsors.
Immediately following the 2016 event, we opened registration for 2017 EPIC Kids for just one week… 57 kids signed up in the first 48 hours – all for a race 350 days away!
On the run side, excitement for 2017 and Canada 150 means registration for the EPIC Canadian runs will again be strong this year (now 5 race distances over three days, with the EPIC Double, the EPIC Triple and the new 3-day, 4-event, EPIC Marathon – 42.2k over three days).
Unfortunately, that same enthusiasm just has not materialized for the 2017 long distance events. We had more kids register for our 2017 kids event in that first 48 hours registration was open, than new registrants for our 2017 long distance triathlon in the first six months between July and December. Therefore, we have made the not-easy decision to focus 2017 on these growing events, and wrap up the long distance triathlon portion of the EPIC Weekend.
We know this news will be disappointing to those of you who did commit to the 2017 race. Our entire team shares in that disappointment.
We know that the quality of the event has been there – from medals and swag, to meals, to medical services, to photo and video, to support on course. We also know the experiences of the participants, lives changed, goals reached, and a huge amount raised by our participants for charity (over $135,000).
Yet, we never hit critical mass with this event – meaning registration fees never covered the cost of producing the event. Each year we’ve found ways to continue, and to gather funds to subsidize the athletes – hoping that numbers would grow to the point where it could be self supporting. Ironically, the events that are experiencing great growth, and that will continue for 2017 and beyond? Are those events that were initially started to share costs with, and subsidize, the long-distance triathlon.
Perhaps the EPIC Triathlon will be re-imagined in a different format in a few years time, or perhaps we will just have the memories. In either case, it’s been fun, and a LOT of great times. Those of you receiving this email were part of making EPIC happen, and if there were simply more like you eager to join us, the event would have continued for many, many years.
We have shut off registration, and are calculating refunds. It’s a bit of a process, and some shuffling back and forth between us and Events.com (the registration host), but the goal is to have all refunds processed and back in to your hands by the end of January.
We hope that you will still join us for one of the other EPIC events this Canada Day Weekend 2017. Canada150 is the biggest Canada Day that most of us will ever experience, and we’d still love to have you join us on the shores of Lake Banook for Canada Day Weekend 2017.
Now go do something EPIC!
What was my EPIC reaction?
I cried…epically, of course.
It felt like the triathlon gods had forsaken me and maybe this whole Ironman thing just wasn’t meant to be. I was now faced with the same problem as the previous year, I had planned out our entire summer around this event meaning I had made other commitments, namely the SunRype Tri-Kids, and I hate breaking promises.
This well and truly sucked.
EPiCally, even.
So while I had my own epic pity party, Kelly went on line and started looking for other opportunities. However, most of the events she found either had closed their registration (ie. filled up) or were situated on a weekend that I already had a SunRype event planned. Also, I am loathe to do my peak long distance training in the absolute worst (ie. hottest) point of the summer. Fuck, no! And seeing as how I’d already been down this path before last year, I started to give in that my 2017 Ironman simply wasn’t going to happen…maybe never.
I’m going to pause the story here for a moment to tell you that having the carpet yanked out from underneath you after you’ve already put in several months of training (not to mention the money into a proper training schedule provided by a coach) really, really sucks.
But having it happen twice?
FML x 2.
Then I found an event put on the HITS Triathlon Series (click HERE), located in the Hudson Valley of New York state (only a 6 hour drive away) on July 8th, only one week after the anticipated EPiC Challenge was to be held on July 2nd. The website didn’t look very detailed or enticing but, hey, an Iron distance event is an Iron distance event right? The challenge is still there.
So I did a little digging and read this on the event website:
The Hudson Valley is a top 20 destination in the world. A top destination deserves a top race! Introducing HITS Hudson Valley, NY July 9 at Williams Lake.
Less than 90 minutes from NYC lies the perfect setting for a perfect race. You’ll swim is in the pristine spring-fed Williams Lake, bike to the majestic Ashokan Reservoir and run on the historic Wallkill Valley Rail Trail.
That doesn’t sound too bad, right?
I also Googled the area and it does look pretty scenic. So, yeah, maybe this wasn’t such a bad option after all.
And looking at the results from previous years, I also had a real chance of “competing” and placing well. Sure there aren’t two thousand participants to compete against but, really, when can I ever possibly say that I had a real chance to podium in an Iron distance event? Likely never, that’s when. And I know that this is kind of an “ego-licious” thing to think, but I’d really like to be able to say that just once.
The other bonus to this event is that it wouldn’t also mean that I’d have to cancel any of my planned summer SunRype commitments.
And that is truly EPiC.
So after receiving my prompt refund from the canceled Subaru event (kudo’s to them for being so professional) I signed up, and now it’s “So long Dartmouth, and hello Hudson Valley!”
It’s back on for 2017.
I will have another exciting announcement to make shortly in relation to this upcoming season, but for the time being it seems that my future Ironman status has been rejuvenated once again for the summer.
Maybe there is something to say about having a few cute female undergrads girls do it like a few years ago. Whatever the case, if I had any misgivings about it before, I’m definitely not cut out for the hardcore S&M lifestyle.
Apparently, fat is my new secret weapon as it would seem on paper that the larger I get the fitter I become, so it’s ‘Goodbye kale salads, Hello bacon double cheeseburgers!’
By now, I had endured exactly 30 minutes longer than the next longest 
fatandthefurious 