August: Do or Die Month

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It's a bit of a cliché, but sports ends up being such a metaphor for life. Lessons in perseverance, adversity, and humility. You set a goal, and you lay out a plan to achieve it, and along the way life throws everything at you. I seriously considered giving away my spot in the ITU Triathlon World Championships at the deadline for accepting the spot in January; major personal life issues, an economy that was starting to really hurt my supposedly recession-proof niche of architecture, and a general apathy towards my health and fitness had me not caring a whole lot about the selfish pursuit of another finisher's medal and a race t-shirt.

But somebody said something that came through loud and clear, despite my head being in the oven, kind of a Jack Handy line that convinced me that I could do it, I should do it, and I just needed a good reason to do it. I ended up talking to Ramey Kodadek, from Youth Homes, about her yearly effort to raise money for her organization through a few select races. I had helped with that effort at the Missoula Marathon the year before, and she was asking if I could do it again. I thought the idea of asking for money to "sponsor" one's efforts was a little, I don't know, needy. But I did it, it worked, and I was ready to do it again. Only this time, I had a better idea (and a better event) that could draw some attention to the organization that has placed 10,000 kids in permanent foster care over the past 30-years.

The sport of triathlon was hatched by a bunch of uncoordinated runners in San Diego in the mid-seventies who were tired of being injured due to over-training. they essentially invented "cross-training" by adding swimming and biking to their usual running routine. And boys being boys, they couldn't just leave such training alone, they had to make it a RACE. And so it started: The San Diego Track and Field Club held the first official "Tri-athalon" on Fiesta Island, in Mission Bay, in 1974. Four years later, a group of Navy Seals stationed in Honolulu, who were now familiar with the concept, argued over beers whether anyone could complete the Island's three major endurance events back-to-back-to-back (the Waikiki 2.4 mile Roughwater Swim, the 112-mile Round-the-Island Bike Race, and the 26.2-mile Honolulu Marathon.) They decided that anyone show could do it would earn the title "Ironman," and so the illogical ultra-distance version of the sport was born. 11 men and one woman lined up and completed that first race; 30 years later, there are 75 official Ironman and half-Ironman races around the world, and thousands of other sprint, Olympic-distance, and other triathlons every weekend. USA Triathon, the sport's governing body in the US, has 100,000 members, whose top level of competition culminates in the USAT National Championships, and then the ITU World Championships each year.

So with that history riding on my shoulders (my dad used to train the guys who started the sport, and competed in Hawaii three times in the early days,) I looked at the privilege of having qualified at Nationals and thought, "well, I better come up with a great excuse to do this." So Ramey and I came up with a plan to use my effort to raise money and draw attention to Youth Homes. Pay to Watch Jeremy Suffer became our working title. Like a school bus driver invited to compete in the Indy 500, my appearance at the World Championships should have a bit of an "Eddie the Eagle" quality to it; My friend Nathanael and I placed 15th and 16th at Nationals. They take the top 16 to Worlds. We got nowhere to go but up.

May, June, and July were a slow build-up of tricking an old body into some muscle-memory, some base training and a little racing to jar some recollection. As August came, I turned my focus to specific training sessions. A client-turned-friend, Tony Schiller (who raced professionally in the 80's and 90's, and qualified for the US Olympic Marathon Trials in 1984) laid out a modest training plan for me, sort of a checklist of key workouts that could fit into a 70-hour work week, with lots of rest and recovery efforts following the hard stuff. My old trainer, John Humble, agreed to sponsor me by training me in his gym two days a week; our sessions are a full-body circuit training session with increasing weights, long sets, and no rest, which are meant to mimic the effort of the sub-40 minute run that is the last leg of the race. Short races on the weekends, preceded or followed by long, slow bike and swim workouts and a steady, concerted effort to slowly eliminate bad foods and beer from my diet. Some parts are harder than others...

I was able to race the Whitefish Triathlon and the Bitterroot Classic Triathlon (both sprint races, about an hour each) over the last two weeks with identical results: age-group firsts, and sixth overall, against small fields made up mostly of kids half my age. In triathlon, they write your race number on your arms with a big marker, and put your age on your right calf, so you and your competition know who is passing who in which age-group. There is nothing better than pushing your 45-year old heap past a "23"-marked calf on the run. Although I could do without the "nice run...sir."

Elite athletes are routinely pushed to the point of injury; it's the threshold coaches need to know in order to assess physical potential. As weekend-warriors, we don't really have the opportunity (or inclination) to do that, but occasionally we put ourselves at risk by gathering for "group workouts." Such a workout at a track last Tuesday left my with a slightly-torn soleus, a muscle which stretches from the calf to the Achilles tendon. This came to my attention as I leapt off the bike in last weekend's race and took off on the run. The rest of my run was limited to a hitch-stepped hobble, very frustrating given how good I felt. But that's the humbling side of sports. Sometimes, when you're on your home field, in front of your friends, things don't go your way, and you have to take solace in the "just finishing" mentality, which 75% of the racers were running with anyway. It's the second time in three years that this race has humbled me (two years ago it was a flat tire.)

Now I have to back off the running for two weeks, try some physical therapy, and some pool-running. Yoga too, although my patience for things that seem to move slowly is pretty low. But this race, and this training, may not be about performance, and potential, and place. Maybe this time there's a bigger lesson, and a better cause than my own ego, at stake. We'll find out soon enough.

One more week of training in Montana, and then off to Australia for a week of acclimatization for the race on September 13. If you see me on the road or in your pond, kindly encourage my to hurry the hell up.

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