Cartoon Week

it's cartoon week here on my ironman fundraiser blog.

i have just had a well earned rest week after a good training block. i didn't do much. it was kind of enjoyable. a rest week for me means i exercise only a little bit more than the average person. and i might even have a few days when i do nothing.

 rest weeks can be some of the most difficult weeks. they can have quite a rich and varied emotional topography. at first, maybe you can't wait to get back to training. then, after a few days, you see how nice it is to only spend one hour working out. think of all the other things you can do! then you feel like you are losing fitness and panic sets it. if you get past that, then you can enter a dangerous place, and that is a place where you actually start to enjoy normal life again. God forbid, you might relax a bit too much and lose some motivation. then you could become like everyone else...a happy couch potato, someone who does not work out tiwce a day. you might even enjoy it.

and to put a perspective on the above, i still work out much more than the average active person on a "rest week".

this week, there was travel involved. i got sick. i ended up spending two whole days with no workouts. i actually missed a couple scheduled workouts...and i enjoyed it. it is the enjoyment of those rest days that has me worried. i am like an orthodox jew who just discovered the joys of bacon. what if i lose my faith?

it is amazing how single-minded, pig headed, upside down and self centered you can become while training for an ironman.triatlhon training is like a cross between a religion and an addiciton. a reliction. i truly understand the guy in the cartoon below who wants to quit his job and go pro. i have known people who "dropped out" to do yoga, or join ashrams, or travel. it is the same desire for self discovery, the same search for meaning, and the same sense that one has found a vehicle, a way out of the golden cage (with rusty bars) that is modern, domestic life. it is the same push to wake up and find out what life can be outside of the matrix.  except that, for most triathletes, the "escape" never really takes us anywhere outisde of the matrix. we get short fixes, we take soma vacations and then we return, and often the stress build up is even greater than before we left. things are undone. meetings were missed. notes are undone. the driveway needs shovelling. there are "agents" after us....

 i understand the current that pulls you to a point where, like a heroin addict, you could be willing to sacrifice everything; job, money, friends, family; to lose your balance and to become a full time addict.  A serotonin rush is a powerful thing. endorphins attach to opioid receptors in your brain, the same ones used by drugs like heroin, or codeine, some of the most highly addictive drugs in the world. so we really are like junkies after a while. i can think of many times when i was irritable and "jonesing" all day, until i got on my bike...

i have an idea for a reality show. the friends, families and employers of real life ironman triathletes get together to confront the ironman, training addict and stage an intervention. there could be a spin off where a group of recovering tri-addicts live in a half way house as they "tri" to stay clean and adjust back to normal life.

the cartoons below express some of this is in a way that i simply can't. i thought they were quite funny and i hope you do as well.

and remember...THIS IS A FUND RAISING BLOG so help out the addict. help him find meaning in his addiction. please donate to the leukemia and lymphoma society so he can feel good about his next fix.

http://my.e2rm.com/personalPage.aspx?registrationID=1047857&langPref=en-CA

ok, enough of rest week. i can't wait to get back at it!