I'm in Mourning

Today was the last day for lap swim at my outdoor pool.

It was a perfect morning. A little below 70. I rode CF to the pool, for the last time this year. The sun was just coming up over the horizon. I really should get lights for CF...that will be next year.

As soon as I got to the pool, I saw someone I just met this year, and she was finishing up, and she commented on being sad that this was the last outdoor lap swim, and wished me a good year! I don't know where she usually swims, but I know she does triathlons, so odds are we will run into one another sometime before next June.

Out on the deck, where I snapped my last picture of the year there:









Boy, am I going to miss this place! This is my first summer of swimming there pretty much every swim I did, except for a couple days when I decided to sleep in and either didn't swim or drove. And I have to credit my former coach, Rich, for getting me to ride a bike there. It was one of those things where at first I didn't think I could make the extra time to ride there and back, but since for most of the summer I'm up with the sun, it wasn't really that difficult to leave many days by 5:30. And once I got used to riding there, well, I really had no excuse to drive. I never did end up buying a lock for CF because I just parked her to the side of the main deck, so no lock necessary.

The first few weeks that I rode I didn't know whether I should cut back my normal rides or not. Well, that turned into a no brainer. I just sort of "forgot" that I was doing this extra riding, even though I did record it in my training log. I ended up putting about 400 miles on CF just riding to and from the pool. And I think that extra riding made me stronger. Not so much faster, but it was just another good thing to add to my training regimen.

I got sort of lazy with my swimming, though. See I just enjoyed swimming outside so much that I wasn't much into the speed thing. But I can swim forever! Even though I didn't swim much in the winter, I got a lot in this summer because I usually just did whatever in yards as meters, and the meters added up to some extra yardage. All good.

But now it's time to say goodbye to swimming outdoors for 9 months. This week I've been thinking about all the different things that have made swimming outside so great, and I've summed them up in a Top 10 list below:

TOP TEN GREAT THINGS ABOUT SWIMMING AT MY 50 METER OUTDOOR POOL

10 I got to swim with a better class of swimmers, and bonus, better looking, than what I generally encounter at my Y. Face it, people who are swimming at 5:30 in the morning are pretty serious. I didn't have to worry about some idiot whacking me or not knowing how to circle swim.

9 Seeing/hearing the trains going by. The pool is right alongside railroad tracks, and every so often I'd hear a commuter train (there are lots of them from 5:30 to 8:30) go by or the low rumble of a freight train. Seeing the commuter trains made me smile--poor schmucks are on a train going to their job and I'm swimming outside!

8 Seeing planes overhead. I don't live that far from O'Hare Airport, so there's a good amount of air traffic, and for some reason, I enjoyed seeing them fly overhead.

7 Wearing two-piece swimsuits. What can I say? I like having a tan, armpits and all! Sure I could wear two-piece suits indoors, too, but I just don't normally.

6 Riding a bike there and back. It made me feel like a kid (and also like I was doing something good for my budget and also the environment) every single time.

5 50 METERS!!! Less counting when you're swimming, say 2.9 miles straight, like I did today.

4 Wide lanes. How can you go wrong with both long and wide? You can't.

3 Finding toys.
I don't know what the dolphin does (float? dive?) , but it was on deck one day when I was swimming in a lane with one of the high school girls, and I thought maybe it was a lucky charm or something for her. But she left, and the dolphin stayed, and I decided to keep it. I supposed I could have thrown it into the huge bin of forgotten toys and towels, but I doubt anyone would claim it. The other thing, I'm not sure what it is--it's like some cat/bear combination that I found at the bottom of the pool last week. You can fill it with water and then squeeze and it shoots out its mouth. I was highly entertained doing this while doing a bit of kicking with a board. I had the cat/bear thing on top and would fill it and squirt it. I am such a dork!

2 Cool morning air and water. There were only a few times this summer where I was actually cold, and there were only a few times when the water was way too warm. Mostly, it was cool morning air and cool water. I don't know for sure, but my guess is the pool temperature was 79-80 most days. We've had glorious summer mornings this year, so usually the air was cooler than the pool. There were many days when I was chilled on the bike, and happy for it.

1 Showering and shaving al fresco.
Now, it's already great to have swum outside in cool air in cool water, but you top it off with a nice shower pretty much outdoors, and what is better than that? The shower/locker room building isn't completely out in the open, but the ceilings are high and there are just screens on the windows and you can see outside while you're in the shower. Sure the showers get kind of gross, but who cares? Having that natural light and fresh air is just the bestest.


Well, all is not lost. We'll run right by the joint during NothingMan, and I'll tip my hat and remember all the fun I had there this summer. We got lucky that the lap swim was extended through today, so 2 extra weeks of outdoor fun, and I'm grateful for that!

I'll get over it...eventually.

OUCH! FUCK! OUCH! (repeat)

That is what was coming out of my mouth yesterday during my attempted run. I swam in the morning (rode bike to/from pool), and that was good, and then I was oddly pretty damn tired. Oh well, what to do, I need to get some running in this week.

Monday evening during a massage, I noticed my feet felt out of whack--the left one had something going on that hurt under one toe when I flexed my foot, and the right one just seemed generally abused in the arch area. I'm pretty accustomed to trigger point stuff, so I wasn't really concerned. After riding home from the pool yesterday, though, the left foot was totally fine, and I didn't really notice anything in the right.

As soon as I started running yesterday, my right foot didn't feel right on the oustide just in front of my heel. I'm used to all sorts of stuff hurting during the initial part of a workout, so I just tried to ignore it. When I was almost 3 miles out, I couldn't ignore it anymore and decided to take about a 1/4 mile walk break to see if I could figure out what was going on. Well, it hurt more to walk so I just tried to keep to an easy jog.

Stupid idiot, I should have iced my foot immediately yesterday, but I didn't. I did look in my trigger point book to figure out what muscle was causing the problems, and so I worked on it, sonofabitch that hurt! For those playing along at home, it's my abductor digiti minimi, which makes your little toe go away from your midline.

I think part of this is because I haven't worn "normal" shoes in months now. Flip flops, and then running and biking shoes. I got everything ready assuming I'd be running early this morning, but during the night, as it hurt to just walk on the stupid foot, I shut off the alarm, wrapped my foot in an Ace bandage, and slept long and hard.

Today the thing is still hurting, but I'm working on the trigger points, icing, compressing, you name it, although I'm holding myself back since I have a tendency to overdo pretty much anything. I'm also aware that the right side of my back is pretty tight, so I'm stretching that. My guess is that the tight back precipitated the whole thing, that plus just a lot of running on cambered roads for months now.

I guess, in short, this means I've been abusing myself a little bit. I'm going to just see how today goes--I may or may not bike some, and no worries, I'm pretty much tapering now so there's not a whole lot of additional fitness I'm going to get this week. I will make it to the outdoor pool tomorrow, though, since it's the last day of lap swim :(

Meanwhile, good luck to peeps racing at IMLOU this weekend--Shelley, Karen, Leah and Adam. I'll be watching!

More Nothing and Desire

I had a really nice brick workout today. It reminded me that sometimes just the thing you need is presented to you. While riding, I saw some people picking pears off a large tree along my interval route. I had never noticed the pears until today. I was also surprised at the size of the tree--as big as a large oak! I asked the people picking the pears if they were any good, but I don't think they heard me. I turned around to ride back up a 1/2 mile hill, and when I got to the top where there is a church and a big parking lot to turn around in, I decided to switch my bottles between the cages on LGL under this big tree in a bit of shade and guess what? It was a pear tree! So I picked 3 of them (after taking a bite out of a small one to satisfy myself that they would be sweet), put 2 in my jersey pocket and 1 in the Bento Box and headed on home. I ended up riding about 2 hours, which I didn't need to do, but it was just such a gorgeous day that I couldn't help myself. Running was a little rough, though, but I was glad to suffer a bit (suffering being the fact that I was running even though I knew it wouldn't be comfortable).

I had plenty of time today to think about desire and nothing and all I could come up with today is that it's OK to have desires and goals and such as long as you do your best to be in the moment during the implementation of those things. Now desire itself is not a thing to implement--goals are, though. I separate the two because goals seem to have more of an end point whereas desire seems to fuel itself ad infinitum. I mean do you ever really stop wanting really good food, sex, laughter, that sort of thing? On the other hand, I think most of us can be happy achieving the goal of one college degree, one special vacation, for example (although we may desire the feeling we have just when we accomplish the goal). Another way to think about it is that something that is sensual seems to go hand in hand with desire. Maybe endorphins are to blame for making my body confuse heavy training with sensuality! Goals creating desire, as it were. I didn't really get beyond that, but I do recognize that I have gone through this before, so I'm having fun doing a little deep dive into my thoughts instead of being puzzled by them.

Maybe there is something symbolic about the pears. You know how sometimes you notice something out of the ordinary and then all of a sudden you are seeing it everywhere? Maybe it was that. I had seen a pear tree on Sunday sometime during the 200K ride that I did. I remember thinking, huh, pears. I didn't think they grew around here. Maybe it was that I've turned around and gone down and then back up that same hill countless times (more so in the last 2 months) and turned around in the church parking lot and wouldn't have figured out there was a pear tree there until today when I'm looking to understand certain thoughts and feelings. Maybe it was just to point out to me that I can have pears! I also noticed some very large drill bits (like 6 feet tall) on a flatbed and thought those were pretty cool. I mean, who wouldn't enjoy seeing large drill bits like that?

Then again, maybe the pears represent nothing!

Anyway, here's some nothing










Here's some faux nothing:



















And finally, is it nothing?

Another Post About Desire...or Nothing

I find myself in a strange place right now. It's hard to say if it's lacking desire or trying to stifle it. In my mind, anyway, desire is what drives me, and if that is the case, I must love to suffer! Desire to achieve, desire to feel, desire to know, desire to discover, desire to escape the mundane, desire for new experiences. Desire is not something of the present moment--it's exactly the opposite of that. When I sense a lack of desire, it feels unexciting to me, and it's precisely that state of a lack of excitement that I find difficult to be comfortable in--but I keep trying anyway.

Desire is like that carrot in front of your face--you know you want it, and a lot of the "fun" of it is the not having. Isn't that crazy? To cause yourself suffering that way? Oh, to be human that way, and even better to think about why you behave like that! Even more fun if you're not even sure what it is that you want, but you think you'll know it when you get it!

If desire is such a great thing then what happens when you achieve its object? Sometimes it creates in me a negative desire. I want to not want. But how can that be? Isn't not wanting still wanting? Ah--I guess that state of nirvana is neither wanting nor not wanting. Just being. But how can I know how to describe it? Is "it" a thing? Or is it nothing? Isn't being something?

I like thinking about this. Or should I not like thinking about it?