Well Cal.E. is in rehab for at least a week, due to her faux pa(w)s.(hehe) I have been working with Cal.E. for too long! Here is the first chapter of Beyond the Thirteenth Miler; The Iron Man Chronicles
CHAPTER 1:
DUATHLON
October 20, 2001; Kissimmee, Florida. Great Floridian Ironman Distance Triathlon; first transition area: I had a good swim this time. Not even one person kicked me in the head at this race. It was helpful to talk to that veteran Iron Man before the race. He told me to stay WAY outside of the pylons. I probably swam two-and-one-half miles instead of the two-point-four that the course is supposed to be by doing that. I still beat my goal for the swim by five minutes, even though I only used my legs to walk out of the water. That should be helpful in the bike leg and the run course. I conserved some energy, too..
This swim was better than most of my swims before I joined that master’s swim group. I am a good swimmer, but a wave swim is a different animal. All of us back-of-the-packers wasted too much time at the beginning of the swim doing our Heckle-and Jeckle imitations. We were all trying to avoid the crowd, inviting each other to go first. I finally just dove in.
It IS a long race, though. Maybe I should catch my breath before I get on my bike.
I am glad that I took my daily inhaler before the swim. That was helpful. Is that volunteer bringing me my bike? ‘Is that legal?’ (out loud). He said just don’t tell anyone by pressing his forefinger to his lips. I won't.
I cannot write anything down while I am involved in this race, and I cannot carry my phone to talk into. I must enter my thoughts in my journal as soon as I get back to my hotel room to remember this day.
Who am I kidding, if I finish this race, I will remember every detail of it for the next twenty years, and distracting myself with those thoughts will help me finish this race!
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I am glad I have THIS bike to ride in this race instead of the one I did my first competitive bicycle race on. It was in that first duathlon I ever attempted. Since there is no swim in a duathlon, the bike leg is very important….
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It was a hot, muggy day already, even at 6:30 a.m. The Southeast Texas sun peered out of the mid-June sky. “Men line up!" Came the call a mere twenty minutes later.
“Faster runners in the front, slower runners in the back," said the race announcer. With a “God bless you" from Adelina still ringing in my ears, I took my place about two-thirds of the way back, thinking that was about right for a ten-minute-per-mile pace. The temperature had reached the mid-eighties by the time the starter's pistol sounded at 7
a.m., so loosening up was no problem. I stood on my tiptoes briefly, trying to locate Luke, my friend, co-worker, and sometime training partner. “He should be about in the middle," I thought, “but there are too many tall, skinny guys here to pick him out."
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I had run my share of 5-kilometer runs and had completed them without a whole lot of problems, but a duathlon was a different story. I had never even heard of a duathlon a year ago, nor did I know the meaning of the words "multi-sport event."
Millie, a good friend of mine from my church singles group, had explained to me what a triathlon was since I questioned her after she mentioned that she was going to participate in one. "A duathlon," she'd said, “is a good way to learn the basics."
"I don't think that my surgically repaired right knee will take that," I remembered thinking at the time. Yet here I was, almost a year later with my right knee carefully braced. (I always used a knee brace on this leg during heavy physical activity as the result of an unfortunate accident in my late teens. Although I was now in my mid-thirties, I still believed the knee brace to be necessary.)
“On your left," rang out one rider after another, as I transitioned from the first two-mile run and onto the bicycle, still trying to catch my breath. The disturbing thing was that a majority of the riders were female, which meant that they were all now eight minutes ahead of me since their wave was staged eight minutes after the men's wave.
A ten-mile bike ride isn't really that daunting when it is done independently, but when it is staged between two 2-mile runs, it can be quite taxing. As a result, I let my mind wander to distract me from the pain my body was feeling. I remembered my marriage that had ended almost 5 years before. (It has been medically proven that distraction is an effective form of pain relief. That is something that I sought at this time.)
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A divorce decree had come in the mail, the only confirmation that I was really and truly divorced. My ex-wife had decided to undertake going to the court proceedings herself without informing me of the date. While I questioned the legality of the process, I felt no need to challenge the decision, except for two things. We (obviously) were not meant to have a permanent relationship, fighting over very inconsequential things. We had not known each other very well before getting intimately involved. That had been a mistake. However, we both agreed to a “no-fault” divorce, which meant that we would each keep the possessions that we entered into the marriage with. The wording of the document was the first thing that had disturbed me since I had never been "sued" for anything before.
The other thing that bothered me was a bit more daunting. In my brief, six-month marriage, I had developed a fondness for my stepdaughter, Ali, that I'm not sure will ever subside. I still think of her as my first child. That made the next memory a painful one.
"Jed, are you going to move back in?" She had asked innocently when I went to retrieve the remainder of my belongings from her mother's house.
‘'No, sweetness, I'm not," I stammered, as I turned away to hide the tears welling up in my eyes. What I didn't realize at that time was that I would never get another chance to say goodbye to her. “I’m still better off now," I thought; thinking of my friends, Adelina, Millie, and Leta, close female friends with whom some romantic possibilities existed. I did, however, empathize with Luke's situation to some degree since he was trying to save a troubled marriage for the sake of his son.
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The ten-mile bike leg was over, and I had my second wind. I readied myself for the second two-mile run.
The second run was much worse than the first, and by the second mile I was done for, or so I thought. With the smoke from the fires in Mexico burning my lungs, I doubled over in pain. I have had asthma since I was a teenager. The weather experts had given a warning, both on television and radio, for people with respiratory problems to remain indoors. The smoke from the agricultural fires in Mexico was blowing into the greater Houston, Texas area. I probably made an unwise decision not to heed this warning. As I was reviewing the situation, Millie came up behind me, shouting words of encouragement.
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