Thoughts and Dreams

There were no workouts to do yesterday. I needed to recover from ChickenMan!

So what did I do? I read the Sunday newspaper, then went outside to clean out the remaining gutter so that my brother Tom would have an easier time of putting the gutter guards on. After that, I covered 6 rose bushes in the back yard, and then Tom arrived.

I wasn't planning on raking the back yard, but I thought I might as well start. See, my new neighbor hasn't raked his yet, and I don't want his leaves blowing over my way, but I think they are pretty much tamped down with moisture, so I figured, what the hell, may as well rake. But I kept looking up at the large tree limb which hasn't fallen down yet. I was hoping that at least I would hear a warning sound before the thing broke free and either started swinging to hit me or crashed to the ground. I am still hopeful the thing will fall on its own and not hit my power lines or my house, but you never know. So all the while I was raking under that tree, I kept looking up hoping to not get killed. The branch still hasn't fallen. Perhaps the next big wind will do it.

After I finished raking, and Tom finished putting gutter guards on my house and the garage (and he also trimmed this pine tree next to the garage which belongs to my other neighbor, but he never trims the thing), we went to Chicken Basket for some food. A 1-day delay, since I should have gone the day before after my "race," but no matter, it was still good. I was so hungry I couldn't talk or move, but as soon as the biscuits came, all was good!

Then Tom worked on the switches for some lights in my family room. It seemed like it should have taken him maybe 1 hour, but I guess the wiring is a Chinese puzzle (sorry for the stereotype), so he spent about 4 hours on it! What we ended up with is completely satisfactory to me; however, it doesn't work the way it used to. There was much turning off and on of the circuit breakers. During this time, I was reading the newspaper, and frankly, I wanted to go to sleep! I was so tired, just fatigue incorporated!

This morning I feel pretty good. I can tell there is some residual soreness in my legs, and I don't have to run or bike or swim today, but I'm going to lift weights and if I feel like it, go for a swim at lunchtime. Hopefully that will shake all the cobwebs out of my body so I can get back to normal training.

"Normal" training? My coach is killing me! No, not really, he's just training me for that stupid Goofy Challenge, which is just running, but fuck, I'm a triathlete, so I also get to keep swimming and biking. Some pretty tough training coming up. I think these are the hardest weeks I've ever had during the winter, but if I don't fall apart during this 7-week stretch (yes, kids, it's only 7 weeks until that Goofy shit), I will have one fucking amazing solid running base to carry me into Ironman Brazil, where I'm pretty confident I can go sub-5 in the marathon. Woo-hoo, wouldn't that just be the shits? Well, I am NOT counting my chickens (or other animals) before they hatch, I will just keep keeping on. My swimming hasn't been too peppy, but now I realize that it's because I'm putting so much into my running and biking, and swimming is my worst of the three sports (let me qualify that: I have FUCKING TONS of swim endurance and can go all day; but I'm so totally MOP, and would prefer to be TOP OF MOP), so when I'm tired, it's my swimming that suffers the most.

I need to get on my nutrition more than I have. While I'm not gaining weight--in fact, I believe I'm the leanest, yet most muscular, that I've been in years--I could be eating better. In the late fall/early winter, though, I typically have problems getting into a nutritional "groove." My training now is different than it's been this time of year in the past, but it's not balls-out 18+ hours a week, either. So I need to find that middle ground.

I remember 2 dreams I had last night. The first was I was recently hired by this company, and first thing they wanted me to made modifications to this FORTRAN (I know, I know, how OLD SCHOOL) program that spit out information about people. I can remember looking at a printout of the current program, and then going around and finding people who could give me brief instructions on how to log onto the mainframe or main server or whatever, and then I would need access to some disk drives and then the location of the compiler and how to run it. I remember in the dream feeling quite confident in my ability to put all of this together and make quick work of the required program modifications. I also remember that the new information being added to the output had to do with who in the population were triathletes! What a way to put a bunch of elements of my existence together! At least it was a very positive dream.

Now the second dream was a little disturbing. I was shaving my legs, and on the back side of one, on the calf, I found this new growth thing. It stuck out about 1.5", was all this skin bumpiness with feathered, really dark edges. So I just continued trying to shave off these really long hairs growing out of it and though, "gosh I need to get to a doctor and get this thing removed." It's hard to describe what the growth looked like, but it was totally gross, and when I woke up from the dream, I was like what the fuck was THAT?????? I have goosebumps just thinking about this dream again.

I almost finished reading The Runner and the Path last night before I went to sleep. Good book. It is ending with the guy knowing he's going to lose his current job, and how he then ends up writing this book. Very liminocentric! What I have gotten out of reading this book is that some of us can use our sports as a vehicle to learn and practice observing ourselves and to get our mind out of its usual activities, i.e., sort of like meditation. And that if we can watch ourselves in difficult or uncomfortable situations, we can perhaps make sense out of our true feelings and possibly change our reactions or the degree of reaction. This is where I am, and I can't say I'm successful 100% of the time, but I have noticed a new degree of calm about myself that I've never experienced before. Even though my job has been quite stressful in the past few weeks, I think I'm learning how to separate that which I can control (my own reaction to a situation) vs. that which I can't control (how others perceive things or me), and while things aren't perfect, they are tolerable.

I wouldn't call how I feel right now "happiness," because I'm learning that that is mostly a ephemeral emotion. I would call it openness, heightened awareness and I'm really feeling more receptive to a lot of things around me. Whether that translates into new/deepening relationships is neither here nor there right at the moment; first and foremost is my relationship to my SELF.