Why not?

I remember this one time back in the day watching Universal Sports Network.  They were showing the highlights from the Kona Ironman.  I liked watching it; I wanted to be one of those racers.  They were putting all they had right at that moment combined with the tireless training over past months.  The finish line footage looked so incredibly satisfying.  I’m biased now… I can look back and remember that the satisfying finish line crossings were in the dark… lights out… sun’s down, gone, and set.  It was late in the evening.  People were still trucking just to taste the finish line.  One by one it showed the finish line crossings.  And that was that.  The show ended; I watched something else.

Now fast forward to years later.  I decided to run a marathon.  Why not, right?  There are more epiphanies than that, but it narrows down to that simple question.  I ran a marathon.  After that a friend convinced me to do an Ironman with him.  We signed up and training began.  I taught myself to swim from scratch.  I bought a tri-bike online and assembled it myself.  I could already run.  I trained, and I trained, and I trained.  I trained myself.  I had lunch with a personal trainer from a gym connected to my company through business.  He had done multiple Ironman races before.  We talked for an hour.  He didn’t charge me anything because he “enjoyed talking about it.”  I got pointers.  Some I used and some I didn’t, but it was firsthand information. 

I did that Ironman and it was great.  I had some crushing experiences and I had some great ones.  I did another a year later.  I have good and bad memories associated with each race.  I finished both.  That’s it.  That’s my short version story.  It’s simplistic and boring and lots of words to read.  There’s plenty more words to read though.

Fast forward again to now.  I watched a movie (again).  I remembered an event from the movie that turned out to be from a different movie, but I couldn’t remember which one.  I tried but couldn’t pull out the knowledge.  Days later I had a crappy night.  Like a beer and pizza night.  The kind of night you don’t want to go anywhere or see anyone.  I wanted to watch a positive movie.  I watched a movie I thought of, randomly.  So, no guff, my brain magically picked the movie that contained the moment I thought the other movie had.  That’s it.  That’s all.

That subconscious.  It’s a crazy super power we all have.  It just keeps chugging while we eat, play, and sleep.  It’s a machine that never stops without any actual effort from our conscious thoughts.

Now let’s backtrack.  That one guy who watched Ironman races and enjoyed the athleticism, dedication, and effort poured into finishing the race?  He did one later.  A friend encouraged him and he did it.  It just happened.  Afterwards it was just a casual thing.  Doing another, or more down the line, are no big deal.  That magical subconscious just kept the idea alive and the reality alive until it was time to actually do one.  Done.  Check.  Completed. 

So how many people have ideas of new activities or adventures in life?  But when these ideas propagate and surface… instead of tucking them away for later… they just shoot them down.

My life is too…

Work is…

I have … responsibilities…

I’m too…

Just submerge that idea and drown it in a pool of day to day repetition and monotony.  Take your conscious thoughts and strangle out an idea and keep it from your subconscious.  Your subconscious is like a superpower that all of us get to enjoy, but too often individuals run themselves into the dumps or set roadblocks in their own lives. 

Collect your aspirations and dreams and let them sit idle, because why not?  Just collect them and let your subconscious and even conscious thoughts think about your success.  Use that weird super power of subconscious thought that we all are gifted with.  Yeah, not everything will come to light, become a reality, or propagate.  But perhaps some will.  We may not all become a doctor, fireman, or policeman like we thought in 1^st grade.  We may not place 1^st in the Boston marathon.  We may not walk on the moon.  But something will shine through.  Don’t get stuck somewhere you don’t want to be.  Don’t accept the repetition of the daily grind.  We may not ever be first, but never accept being last.

 

If you fail, which we are all bound to experience, please explain to me how you are worse off than when you started.  If I had failed and missed the cutoffs of my first Ironman I would have a DNF (dfd not finish).  But I’d have the health, the dedication, and the trip to Whistler to remember.  What shame or defeat ever is tied or tethered to saying that you tried.

That’s it, you can stop reading now.

But let’s rewind to the time watching Universal Sports Netowork.  The dark.  The evening time when the finishers crossed.  My first Ironman (I know, it was my first), I crossed the finish line in the dark.  My family was there, they announced my name, and I was done.  I felt incredible.  I was triumphant and glad to be done.  I had missed the bike cutoff by less than thirty minutes (8 hours and 10 minute ride).  My family was worried and I had no idea that I was 20 minutes shy of getting pulled from the course.  That’s the summery.

My second Ironman I trained hard for.  I trained with my once upon time girlfriend.  We swam enough, ran enough, and spent countless hours on the bike and on hills.  I was ready to rock.  She may have beaten me, but I still got an incredibly improved time.  When I finished my second IM my family was waiting for me, and so was she.  But this time I was just done.  I had completed the race.  There was no “will I finish” mentality.  And that was it.

So now to compare the two.  The questionable finish with no experience or knowledge will always remain, in my brain, the more incredible race.  Because that feeling to identify if we can even do it is an incredible feeling.  Just jump in and see what you can do.

Pieces of the puzzle

I recently switched desktop computers and currently have zero access to my photo archives, so sadly this post is straight up text.  No sunsets, no sunrises, no pretty pictures of any kind.  But I'll have my network up soon and the photos will be back!  And I don't have Word installed... so watch out for grammar problems and keep them to yourself.  I ain't talk so good when the machine ain't checkin' my werds.


Turning 30

I’m going to turn thirty soon; i roughly a month and a half.  It’s a bummer.  But the biggest bummer isn’t my age or how I feel about said age... it’s my new racing category.  I’m in a faster racing age group; it sucks.  My last half marathon, the one that I placed first in my age group, I wouldn’t have even placed in for 30-34.  I’d have been chumped.  So now I need to get faster.  And I will.  Because even though I'm turning 30 I'm still progressively getting more fit than I've ever been.  By the time I'm 40 the world had better watch out.  I'll bring sexy back.  I'll bring it back and jam it in people's faces.  K'pow!

Physiology

I’ve been running long for about three years.  My body’s adapted to endurance racing.  Forget training and diet and all that jazz.  My body has adapted on the physiological level.  I can chug my body along at a pretty decent pace far more efficiently than I could when I started years ago.  I can hold a said pace with much less taxation on my heart, leaving me the room to crank my heart up to it's old standby rate while traveling faster.

Range of motion

The body is a crazy thing.  All your pieces work together to make you move.  My body is pretty use to running and moving for long periods of time.  But I have a piece that doesn't work right- my right big toe.  Yep.  My downfall in running all comes down to the inflexibility of my big toe.  Weird right?  I wont go into detail of the problem or how I'm going to solve it, but it's pretty interesting stuff.

New Toys

I recently purchased an inversion table.  It's pretty great.  It locks at many positions other than completely upside down... so I use it to pitch myself slightly backwards after a long run and help my blood make its rounds.

I'm in the market for a new GPS watch.  I want to have a heart rate monitor at all times during my "hundo" and I need to own a second training watch to swap out at exchange points during the race.  I'm completely irritated with watches on the market and feel like I'm getting ripped off for the technology that exists.  I hate Garmin.  I said it, I hate them.  I think I'll end up with a Suunto.  I could go into great technical detail on my rant, but I wont.

It doesn't count as toys but I have a new training trick.  It's a secret;;I think it's pretty interesting.  Sciencey people can question me for fun, but I know it'll be a fact that likely stays with myself.

My Brain

The ace up my sleeve is my brain.  It thinks thinky thoughts.  All it's mush and contours are filled with running knowledge and tricks of the trade.  I may start coaching soon to dump some of that knowledge somewhere.  But for now the knowledge remains free and available.  But someday...

More-so my brain knows what my body can do.  It's seen how I can push my body and how far it can go.  It knows when to tell my body to stop whining because there's still plenty of gas in the tank.  This, to me, is the most important trait I've learned.  I can check in with my body during a race and gather actual feedback, rather than just "I don't want to be doing this anymore."  In addition to this my brain knows that the activities I do are possible out of determination and training, but there's more to that.  My brain accepts that at anytime my body could break.  I could get injured, or be injured, and that's a reality I must accept.  I have future goals for racing and things I'd like to accomplish, but I know that can change at any point.  It's just reality.

My brain has heard words of concern about the toll I'm placing on my body.  No one got anywhere in life whilst hanging in the kiddy pool.  I'm aware of the demand and impact I throw on my body.  If I make it to 60 and my joints ache with every step I'll be aching with a smile.  Those aches and pains will have been earned.  It's like a scar.  Some scars have bad memories, but some come with great ones.



Until next time... with pretty pictures.  I had one on my desktop from my trip to Colorado.  I cant have a post without any pictures... relevant of not.

Sunrise in Wyoming.

Welcome to signing up for an Ultramarathon.

I’ve signed up to travel 100 miles on my feet in under 34 hours.  This is another new step in the whacky world of Justin.  Come September I’m going to beast it.  There are reasons I’m single, I accept this, I’m crazy.  I’m coo coo for coco puffs.  If coco puffs is synonymous for needing to create a savings fund for my future titanium knee caps.  I’m going to be half terminator.  Thumb up…  Get it?

Full disclosure, the pictures?  They don't have anything to do with this.  But people like pictures.

There are things about my body I’ve learned to accept.  You know how kids want to go out and play?  But it’s raining.  The rain is pouring down and just spoiling everyone’s party.  My abs are my children.  They want to play.  The rain is my horrible and atrocious diet.  My abs want to come out and play, but I keep dumping showers of pizza, burgers, and candy bars on their parade.  I’m a rain storm pouring on my own parade.  Such is life.

So it’s time to step up my game.  Last year I had a female to keep me on track with my biking and swimming and a friend that happened to be a female (and her awesome running friends, aka my friends) to keep me on track with running.  This year I need to stick hard to my own flight plan.  I need to be better at the diet part of training.  I need to log 30-50 miles a week and boost that to here and there 70’s closer to race season.  I have a plan.  I may post it eventually just to give an insider’s view to the experience.  I have a calendar… with dates… distances…  And I plan to somewhat stick to it.  One day a week is dedicated to long runs on pavement and another day each week is dedicated to 10+ miles of trail running.  My wiggle room is that I can substitute distance on trail for time at a mile to ten minute ratio: a planned 12 miles run can be settled for 2 hours because trail running can be a different beast.  I need to log between an hour to two hours running before meeting up with my (extremely awesome and just all out incredible ladies I run with) group on Saturday mornings.  Because that’s my favorite run of the week.  And if I can dedicate the distance before meeting up with them I can for sure finish with them.

I’m going to run a marathon in July and shoot for a Boston time.  Mixing two trainings is probably not a common plan, but I’m going to shoot for the moon.  Yep.

I bought a vest.  It holds a 2 liter bladder and two water bottles.  It’s pretty great.  I have several pairs of new shoes.  I’m going to spend the time over the next months narrowing down which shoes I want to race in and what food I want to carry.  It’s a new adventure and I’m going to discover the nooks and crannies of the adventure.

I have a job that really works great with my crazy races.  A normal work week leaves me with a three day weekend.  I can do two long runs a week with a day’s active recovery in between.  Really, everything in life is in a great spot for tackling adventures head on.  I’m looking forward to exploring this new whacky world.  My blog may get updates here and there, but really it’s hard to gauge where the interest lies without feedback.  I’m just going to run a bunch, haha.

That’s it.  That’s my rambling.  Hope it was enjoyable.