I am always most inspired to blog after long brick days.
Today was one of the final long triples of the ironman ramp up. and so, as i rode along, i thought about my ass and wondered if i had used enough vaseline before i left. i thought, also, about blog topics. and then it hit me (metaphorically i mean, thank my angels nothing really hit me)
this is my document, my journal, my memoir of my road to penticton. so i must post a pic of my steed, my ride, my wheels, my ten thousand dollars of happiness.
here IT is, ready for the last test race before ironman canada.
MY RIDE
yes, i am a titanium whore. the wheels and handlebars may melt but the frame will be one of the few things left if there is a nuclear holocaust. i will probably ride this frame until i die. it rocks. it eats vibration for breakfast. it make jokes out of potholes. my perineum loves this frame. baggage handlers can kiss my ass. they might break everything else, but they wont' bust my frame.
SPECS:
litespeed saber frame
reynolds carbon aero forks
cane creek headset
campagnolo record with cts crank
hed jet c2 90/60 wheels
look keo carbon pedals
continental triathlon tires
power tapp
profile design carbon cobra up front
xlab hydration in rear with King titanium bottle cages
arundel carbon bottle cages on frame
ism race saddle
ok, now i am an official triathlon blogger. i have posted bike porn.
if anyone has followed this journey they will have seen the hero, the hypochondriac, the narcissist, the fund-raiser, the time strapped new father, the dreamer, the jaded-self loathing elitist seeking to be an ironman, the depressive self-doubter, head banger, cancer survivor and shameless self promoter.
yet today i realized, that none of these characteurs, nor even their sum total, comes close to describing the real why about this road to penticton.
it has been a while since i made a musical reference, this one pertains to the mood that struck today in the car on the the way home from an 8 hour workout. radio tarifa. an apocryphal band from spain who take their name from the southern-most town in spain, where the mediterannean and the atlantic meet. i was in tarifa. it is a magical, windy, moorish place. i have loved radio tarifa. they are one of the most ecclectic and original bands on the planet, i forgot how much i liked them until i dipped into the cd case today and pulled this one out.
the link above is to a modern version of an ancient castillan song, and the song that inspired this week's blog.
so now, back to me.
it is amazing how empty your head gets when you ride for six hours in extreme heat. in the car however, in the loving arms of my a/c, with radio tarifa playing, a flood of emotion and imagery came on and i began to feel like i was experiencing an epiphany.
i saw images of people finishing at kona with the most amazing smiles on their faces. i saw also, their looks of anguish and pain and the looks that said "i can't believe i just did that". i remembered their stories and how i identifed with the fight i saw in them. i remembered how i told myself "i want to do that" i want to fight like that, i became so moved by the shear force of their will that i wanted to become like them. identification. deep rooted.
i started to cry my head off in the car. i thought about my dead father for a moment. i cried from somewhere deep inside. it was a type of angry tears. i thought about how futile it is to say "look, i swam 2.4 miles, i biked 112 miles and i ran 26.2 miles" and the very thought of the beautiful and triumphant futility of it caught me up in waves of a type of ecstatic yet pointless protestation at the circumstances of existence. i cried more. then i realized that these were angry tears. i realized that ironman is a bucket for deep wells of rage within me, rage over things from the present, rage about things i can remember and things i can't, rage pasted together layer upon layer like a medieval palimpsest*, so glued together as to become indistinguishable, yet never expressed, bottled inside, released somehow through the pain of physical exertion. it took a while to ground myself. it took a while to return from this space of wonderful, sad, angry, triumphant tears.
and i said to myself...relax...you havne't done it yet. (it's just that it is getting so close i can taste it)
so is that the answer??? is anger the glue? is anger the culprit that wakes me at 5 am? is this all just an outlet for rage? you mean i could've just kept on kickboxing?
i dunno. maybe there was no epiphany. maybe i was just buzzing on endorphins. weird trip.
anyways, i will finish with a pic of tarifa. strange, beautiful, far away place, at the end of the once known world.
* ( a book where monks wrote one book over the other because they didn't have enough paper)
well, actually this morning time in the can is the only time i have to do a quick blog, just to keep my flow going (no pun intended). maybe the title of this blog should be "no time TO shit"...
but this is the time of the year when the shit hits the fan. and there really is no time for this proverbial substance right now, be it in my life, my head, my diet, my sleep, my relationships. things are serious. the ironman ramp up is full on.
but, life being what it is, shit still happens.
as i go through all of this now, for myself, instead of reading about other people doing it, i feel profound admiration for anyone who manages to work, stay married, know their children, and crosses the finish at an ironman. wow. we are pretty freakin amazing! much more impressive than the pros. we have no "training camps". we don't wake up alone in cool lonesome lofts to java and then go running in stellenbosch before our afternoon massage and bike session. we fit workouts in between trips to the park, the fountain, the grocery, nights on call, busy clinics and so on. we rock.
yet, there is little room for denial about what this is all about at this point in the year. this is all about me. fundraising is great, it is nice, it is smoke and mirrors. there is nothing self-less or even noble about this ironman endeavor. it is selfish and self focused to the max. my wife, my daughter, they would rather i was with them instead of riding my frickin bike for 6 hours. who could pretend anything different??? and me doing this ironman won't change the world, it won't make people's lives better. i don't know if it will even change me . it won't solve anything. and it will strain my mind and body, as well as my family's patience. if my life was a garment the seams would be bursting.
ahh, but i do love it. i really do. i love training. i love driving home and cranking tunes after a 7 hour workout. i love swimming in the lake at 7 am. there is something compelling about all of it, even though i simultaneously resent the price i pay...life is weird. we are all duplicitous and full of contradiction. self-understanding does not always lead to change or action. i feel like lear, compelled to wonder through the storm because it is my fate. or else ulysses, always thinking about home but never quite there, always fighting some monster on the periphery of the known world but dreaming of home. (and i hope that i don't return home after loo long, like he did, and find a banquet going on in my absence...)
thus i no longer feel like my race in penticton will be a competition at all. i feel a sort of comraderie with all my fellow ironman weirdos who will toe the line with me. i feel like i understand what we all will have sacrificed to be there. don't get me wrong, i don't want really want to know them. i wouldn't say i even like them, or even the idea of them. i just feel i am more like them than i am not. and i have never really felt more that way, about any group of people i don't want to belong to, in my whole life.
