no time for shit

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.