No Excuses

Today I rode 200k (124 miles) on the trainer. It took me 5:37.52, for an average of 22.09mph. I only rode on the trainer because there was a stretch of rain that I didn't want to ride in, and the women's Olympic triathlon was on TV anyway, so even though the rain stopped after I was about 2 hours in, I just stayed on the trainer. The triathlon finished when I was about 3 hours into the ride. Since I was on a roll, I just kept on the trainer.

I have gone this far on the trainer before. I have Ultra (and when I say Ultra I mean farther than Ironman distance) friends who have ridden 7+ hours on a trainer. We do what we need to do to achieve what we want to achieve. And we don't have any excuses for not doing what we need to do.

Over the years, I have had people proclaim the reasons I've achieved what I've achieved athletically, and those reasons are, in turn, their excuses for why they haven't:

1. I'm single. Oh sure--I don't have to answer to anyone, but I also get to do everything at home--from taking out the garbage to grocery shopping to laundry to cooking to cleaning to home maintenance to disaster mitigation. So please don't tell me how easy my life is being single. Anything that goes wrong is 100% on me. 
2. I (used to) work at home. This one I agree with to an extent. If I ever had an 8-hour a day job, I would agree 100%. But I have never had an 8-hour a day job except when I was in high school and college. I've worked ever since I was 15, and I worked about 20 hours a week in college. I was a workaholic in my 20's and 30's, but mostly loved what I was doing. Although I wasn't doing triathlon back then. But it was part of my evil plan to be able to retire as early as I did. Working at home has advantages and disadvantages--the biggest disadvantage being that people expected me to be available ALL THE TIME. I stupidly switched positions back in 2010 that led to a higher stress position that eventually was my undoing. So what I'm saying is that not all work-at-home situations are created equal. Be careful what you wish for! Although I will say the lack of a commute afforded me some extra time to at least decompress. But the reality is that I busted my ass to earn the right to work at home. And then I busted my ass some more. So it wasn't all working in my bathrobe and slippers eating bonbons.
3. I don't have kids. Oh so it's OK to trot out your kids as an excuse for why you aren't doing something? Why don't you try that excuse in front of them? I wonder how it would make them feel? Aside from that, I do know many fine athletes who have kids and manage to make it work, and they aren't all rich with nannies and concierges. Frankly, I wish my own parents had been active. As it was, I made a point to be more active in spite of their laziness. I have tremendous respect for all parents. Raising healthy, productive and kind children is one of the most important jobs in the world. What's funny is I get people playing the kids card whose kids are grown and out of the house. So what is their excuse now? 
4. I don't work (currently). So this one is new, and true for what I am doing right now. But it has nothing to do with my past and how I got to be where I am today.

I am not at all implying that everyone acts this way. But plenty of fellow athletes do. What do any of the above have to do with someone having a poor diet and being overweight? Nothing. What do any of the above have to do with someone overreaching either at race distance or fantasy race times? Nothing. A person should race at a distance for which they have the appropriate amount of time available to train (and recover from). Why bother doing long course triathlon if all you are going to do is complain about how you can't train enough or have crappy race times? I have never understood this mentality. I try my best to just smile and keep my mouth shut when these things come up, although the older I get the harder it is. The fact is I've worked my ass off for many years. It has been at my own choosing. I never complained about how I don't get any help at home or when I'm working 65 hours in a week. I've accepted what I've been able to do with no excuses. I've trained at a level consistent with the distances I'm racing. I've never had a "perfect" diet, but I've managed myself so that I don't find myself needing to lose 10+ pounds.

The only thing I am highly aware of is my age now. It would be nice to have started all this nonsense when I was much younger, but I suppose that is just another reason why I am trying to make the most of my fitness while I still have it. When something tells me to stop, then I will. Until then, I'm going to keep on keeping on with NO EXCUSES.

She's Baaaaaaaaaaack!

Welcome to my new blog! For reasons I can't discuss here, I have archived my old blog. This blog is a fresh start. My entire life is a fresh start!

WARNING: If you did not read my previous blog, sit down and maybe put earplugs in your ears. I write exactly like I talk, and that includes fucking cuss words much of the time. I don't always swear, but get me riled up (e.g., cut me the fuck off while I'm biking, be oblivious to normal lane mechanics in the pool or just be stupid or an asshole), and I will let loose. But you will also see that there is another side of me that is very much into nature, self-growth, math, art, music, cooking and trying to be a good human being. So if you can put up with the swearing, you just might find something here. But it's your choice--you don't like it--DON'T FUCKING READ IT!

I left my full time job on January 29, 2016. It was a voluntary exit. Why did I leave? Because the job interfered with my main hobby--TRIATHLON! I was stressed out, working far too many hours, and becoming depressed. So I said FUCK THAT after I figured out that I had saved enough money to pull the plug on that shit. I was also beginning to figure out how to resolve the Morton's Neuroma that I've had in my right foot since 2010. Since that time, I've tried countless insoles, metatarsal pads, new orthotics, different shoes and just fucking praying for the thing to go away. It caused the ball of my right foot to hurt while running. Not all the time--just once I was like 40 minutes in. That fucking sucked! Well anyway, the solution for me was:

• Wider shoes. I measured my feet accurately and turns out I need to wear wide (D width) running shoes and some casual/dress shoes.
• An ingenious fucking device--a toe ring! I bought a pack of 10 of these things only because my tri baby Brad convinced me to race (after a 13-month layoff!), and I wanted something better than what I had been using that might even stay on my foot while swimming. I had been using a cut off piece from a toe manicure toe separator.

Check it out! I wear this while running and biking, and sometimes with regular footwear. I don't need to wear it while wearing flip-flops or barefoot. Since I began this protocol, I have experienced ZERO pain in the foot! 

So, with my foot figured out and ALL THE FUCKING TIME IN THE WORLD TO TRAIN, I started training in earnest again in April. There's another event here that I can't talk about (which is the reason behind archiving the old blog) that coincided with all this, but guess what happened? I train for 2 months, start racing and start WINNING again! Needless to say, I start having fun (I love training, but I love racing and I LOVE WINNING!), and start thinking about where I want to go with all this.

About a month or so ago, I started thinking maybe a Double Ironman was in order. After all, I've done an Ultraman, and so a Double would really be no big deal (well not big for ME). The best fucking thing about being retired is that I can train like a fucking madwoman, recover from it, have time for a social life, and still enjoy my other hobbies like cooking, sewing, gardening, and well--have time to spend on home maintenance projects!

So I'm thinking about what I want to do with my triathlon chops, since my endurance never really went away. Check out my training hour history:

As you can see, despite my former job sucking the life out of me during 2014 and 2015, I still managed to put in a decent amount of training--although swimming was the one thing I dropped whenever I wasn't "feeling it," which is why my swimming currently sucks. BUT, I managed to not be pathetic in terms of biking. If I don't put in at least 5,000 miles in a year, I consider that pathetic. But the 2 prior years I was sneaking a bit of biking here and there, way too much fucking time on the trainer, and not really doing anything intense. Same for running--since I have a treadmill in my house, and I was working at home, I could always go downstairs and get a couple miles in.

Well fast forward to this summer, and much to my delight, I figure out that I can do as much as I want ALL THE TIME! Of course, I still need to be careful I don't go overboard, as I love this stuff so much that I will drill myself into the ground! So I started biking a lot more, and I rejoined my local bike club, and that got me motivated to start improving my biking so I could get back the speed I used to have and maybe even surpass it. 

If you had talked to me in April, you would have heard me say that I didn't think I ever wanted to ride another century or do another Ironman. But then a friend got me into Tour de Cure ride, and said the team I'd be on needed 100-mile riders. I figured I still remember how to ride 100 miles, and it would be a good opportunity to figure out if I wanted to go that direction again. But I didn't want that to be my first century, so I did one the week prior--the Udder Century on June 5. I would say that 20 miles into that ride, I was grinning ear to ear and thinking I FUCKING LOVE THIS!!! I was so happy, and I only had one low spot during that ride, but I pushed through. Udder Century was my first 100 since Ironman Cozumel in December, 2013! I rode by myself and averaged just shy of 17mph. Not bad for a century comeback, eh?

Towards the end of Udder Century, I met the membership coordinator for the Downers Grove Bike Club--Tim. I saw 2 guys wearing Downers Grove jerseys, and rode up to them and we talked, and I said I'd think about rejoining, and let's meet up after the ride. So I finish the ride and Tim and Bob come and sit down to lunch with me. The first thing Tim says to me is, "Do you ever ride with women?" I said, "If they are fast enough!" And thus began a new friendship and I rejoined the club, and Tim asked me if I'd considered a sub-5 century. Well, um...no. Keep reading.

A few weeks ago, my 2nd BFF, Lori (Susan is my 1st BFF and you will hear a lot about her, even though she doesn't do triathlons) and I are talking, and she tells me I can basically cherry-pick a Kona qualifier now. I have the time to train properly and travel whenever I want. That got me thinking.

Then just last week I had a revelation--I've never gone for the BQ (Boston marathon qualification), and I should see what my BQ time is. Well, it's 4:25, and I'm pretty confident I can knock that out. And in October I'm going to Vegas to spend time with Susan, run a 50k, then celebrate the fucking shit out of me turning 60. Then in January, I'm going back to Disney to do Dopey Challenge--I've done Goofy (1/2 and full marathon on consecutive days) 3 times, and it's about fucking time I collect the other medals (Dopey is 5k/10k/half marathon/marathon). So I'll be a running machine, and I should be able to collect the BQ sometime in the spring.

Then I remember Tim telling me I should go for sub-5 century, and you know what happens next--I publicly proclaim I want the BQ, the sub-5 and the KQ (Kona Qualification). And also to be able to do a handstand, which should be achievable quickly. So here I am! I have hired a coach, Nick (one of my tri babies--we met at Ironman Lake Placid some years ago), who I am going to entrust with helping me achieve my goals. First things first--he believes I can do all this. He knows how I like to train, he's done Ultraman and we've talked training and coaching in the past.

So now I get to embark on this new adventure of shooting for the moon! Curiously enough, there's a full moon, and so here we go!

I have one more multisport race for the year--a duathlon on 9/18--where I intend to win my AG. Although I want to do a 1/2 NothingMan (for those of you new to me and my terminology, a NothingMan is a self-supported triathlon) over Thanksgiving weekend, coach-permitting. Starting 9/5, I begin concerted run training for the 50k and Dopey.

It's going to be weird for me to be coached again, but I know that I need to rely on forces outside myself to help me with my ambitious goals. And I know I will also get a lot of love and support from my immediate friends as well as my extended Facebook network. Of course, I do have some anxiety about all of this--who wouldn't? Seriously, nearly every day now, I pinch myself because my life is so wonderful! Here my financial planner had been encouraging me to quit my job for several years, and since I didn't grow up with much money, I had been reluctant to quit, and was prepared to work to the age of 62. But as fate would have it, it appears all my stars have aligned and I am free to revel in all my Crackheaded glory!

Thanks for reading and I am so looking forward to regular blogging again!