Ch ch ch changes

It's official! I'm out of Ironman Florida (whoever made bets I'd still do it, sorry you lose) and in for Miami Man 1/2 Ironman:

Registration Date: 07/03/06 05:38:01 PM
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Your racing category is: Female 50-54
You are registered for: Individual Registration for Miami Man 1/2 Iron

A friend I made in Brazil (Peter) lives in Miami and will provide me with a place to stay and no doubt a great time in Miami. I've never been there except to pass through the airport, so it should be fun!

Miami Man will substitute for my annual (last two years anyway) Indoor 1/2 Ironman which I usually do in November, and will close out my 2005-2006 triathlon season. A short break and then it's Goofy Challenge training for 1.5 months and then the ramp-up to Triple T begins.

I must say that as much as I enjoy biking, around 6 hours a week is plenty of time to have fun at it. When I'm doing Ironman volume riding, well, it tires me out as much as the running. Right now I'm running almost as much as in my Ironman builds, but I'm not riding every spare moment, and I feel good and powerful. The swim volume is down a little bit, but no worries there. It's not like I'm going to get much faster without some serious pool time.

Speaking of feeling good, today I noticed a change. I noticed this during my third workout of the day (I swam 3300 yards and lifted a little over an hour in the morning and then ran :55 this evening). I think I've finally caught back up to my pre-Brazil fitness, and it feels good. And my mind feels like it's in a good place. A little less training, a little less structure, a lot more time in the sun and a little more time to absorb my mom's death (I am close to being able to smile more often than cry when I think about her) have been good for me. If I race well on Sunday, that will just be icing on the cake! But it's not like I have this silly grin or anything going on. It is just this inner peace. Things feel right. I feel good about where I am right now. Is it happiness? If you read me often enough, you know I don't really "believe" in that--it's far too fleeting. It's a comfort level with my own emotions, a sense of balance (yes, even 15-16 hours a week of training enables balance in my life!) and a feeling that I belong in my own skin and that there is nothing else that I should be doing right now.

It was funny yesterday after I finished a 1:40 run in extreme humidity, I was talking with these two women. One was a fairly new runner (and a bit out of shape, but working on it), and the other was a 3-year breast cancer survivor who started training for her first marathon a week after her chemo ended, and is now training for her first 50-miler this fall (I tried to get her to remember my blog URL so that she could find Julie's). I told them I primarily trained for Ironman and I think I must have been babbling about what I think about when I'm running or swimming and that my favorite part of the Ironman is the marathon, because if you've set things up right, it is the most serene place your mind can be while your body runs on autopilot. The newer runner commented that I sounded just like her friend (the cancer survivor), and I told this lady we endurance people are all alike in that regard. We have all tapped into something that we are able to connect with simply by going out and running or riding our bike or swimming. But we need to do those things A LOT or else the magic slips away. I have never heard someone who runs 3 times a week for :30 speak of the same mental processes. It's not like we are these enlightened monks who live perpetually in that state; yet we (IMHO) are much further along than most of the population. Isn't that the greatest gift? Other people manage to achieve the same state by pursuing something with a passion. It could be art or community service or some other sport, but clearly endurance training unlocks the gate pretty easily.

Now, I finished reading Way of the Peaceful Warrior a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, I didn't think it was that great of a book. Why? Maybe because I've read so many books now about people and their paths to serenity/enlightenment that I am now more inclined to just DO IT rather than read about it. Besides, the protagonist was really, really messed up since he couldn't find a way to just "be" with his sport and grow from it.

If all you ever do is want to generate results, then sadly but certainly you will be disappointed in whatever you pursue with your alleged passion. Passion isn't about results--it's about process, it's about knowing that you have to suffer to bust through mental and physical performance plateaus, and it's about sticking with the process but having the good sense to put it aside every now and then, much like hitting the refresh button in your browser. You don't grow spiritually when you are holding all the chips--you grow when the chips are gone, when you're not sure what your next move should be--but you continue to have faith in the process. You use adversity as a tool to manage the process as much as you use success as a tool to evaluate the process. Adversity is real-time; success is hindsight. As endurance athletes, we need to embrace adversity in every workout or race situation that requires our full attention in order to execute to the best of our abilities. When there is no adversity, but yet we succeed, all we can do is look back and say, "my process was good." Not that that's a bad thing! But when there is adversity, not only can we look back and say, "thank God that my process was good enough to deal with this," but we can also transmute it into future success. Perfection and success are no guarantees of anything. Adversity guarantees that you will look at success in a different way. And that is where the rubber meets the road when you are talking about passion.

I feel different today. Maybe I thought I feel like I did before Brazil, but now that I think about it a little more, I must have lied. I feel better. I have learned the lesson. I am preparing for the next one.