Well, it looks like CAl.E. will be in Ad. Seg. For a while. She is REALLY addicted to catnip, so she must get over that addiction before she is let out of solitary confinement. In the meantime, I will be bringing you excerpts from my biographical book “Beyond the thirteenth Mile; The Iron Man Chronicles.”
And, if you want to send CAL.E. wishes for a quick recovery, you can leave those on my manager’s Facebook page, since he is also her dad.
d.c.scot.
CHAPTER 4:
SWIMMING IN THE OCEAN
Bike Leg: Sugar Mountain; first loop: I REALLY need to distract myself. This is a brutal bike course. This is my strength, and I feel like a ninety-pound weakling, even though I weigh almost twice that much. I will figure out the splits that I need for each course to hit my goal to distract myself before climbing this VERY steep hill.
I need every second if I am going to finish this course in 13 hours. That is an aggressive goal, but it is still doable if I can gather speed coming down this steep hill. Man, climbing that hill was as difficult as swimming in the ocean…
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To my way of thinking, the only way to learn to swim in the ocean is to actually swim in the ocean. One of my triathlons was an Olympic distance one, with the 1500-meter swim leg being held in Galveston Bay. Because of this, I decided that what I needed to do was practice swimming in the ocean. This race had me much more concerned than the sprint that was coming up next. That swim (a short, three- hundred meter one) was in a pool that I swam in almost every day, and the swim and bike legs were in my old neighborhood.
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To someone like my grandmother, growing up on the beaches of the turbulent Atlantic Ocean, swimming in the ocean was out of the question. This was because the ocean was, really, the only logical place for her to swim during her childhood. As a result, she simply never learned how to swim, and neither did any of her three children.
My father did teach himself how to swim when he had reached his early fifties, with no small amount of coaching from my mother and all four of his children. My aunt and uncle never did learn to swim, although each one of both of their children can swim. In fact, both of my aunt's daughters were certified lifeguards. It is the two of them that get the lion's share of the credit for my learning to swim.
To people like me, learning to do something so technically difficult as learning to swim in the ocean is part of the attraction of participating in triathlons. (I am much more of a tactician than a natural athlete.) To someone like Luke, an open water swim is the only kind of competitive swimming that is worth doing. He still refuses to participate in any triathlons that have the swim leg held in a swimming pool.
Unfortunately for people like Luke and me, this aspect of our personalities often
carries over into other areas of our lives, such as our relationships. This is not to say that my grandmother, who raised a family during the Great Depression, or my aunt or uncle are cowards. Quite the contrary, my uncle is a Korean War veteran, and my aunt has seen her youngest daughter through two bouts of Hodgkin's disease. (My sweet aunt, who remembered everyone in her family’s birthday, passed away at the age of 91. It was a full house at her funeral.)
This does not mean that Luke and I are careless, either, (neither of us will get on a bicycle without wearing a helmet.) I am merely trying to point out that there are deep-seated differences in everyone's personalities. Those differences can sometimes be determined by observing what one's hobbies might be.
As I think back through my life and romantic relationships, most of them have been as difficult as swimming in the ocean. Quite frankly, at this stage of my life, I felt as knocked around by my relationships as I did when I would get out of the ocean after a practice swim. However, hearts, like arms and legs, do recover with time and rest. There was someone who was beginning to catch my eye, and it did seem to be reciprocated to some degree.
There usually does seem to be more than one possibility of romance, or none. This seems to be the nature of the beast. At this time in my life, the beast was at least smiling at me, if only in anticipation of the future, judging from my past track record.
Leta had seemed to be a good choice. We hung out together, danced together, and talked on the phone fairly often, but we had never dated. Every time it seemed likely this would happen, I'd get a call from an old girlfriend, or she'd get a call from a new
(potential) beau, and off we'd go, in opposite directions. This, however, was not the time to pursue Leta. Mary had been like an older sister to her, and I didn't want to interfere with her grieving process.
Of course, there was also Adelina, who, either by careful observation, instinct, or divine intervention, (I'm not sure which,) always seemed to be around when I needed a friend the most.
We trained together almost every day and served as each other's escorts when needed. Adelina is a quality person, but her family was complete. Mine hadn't even started yet. This is the problem with a man being 10 years younger than a woman, especially being in my mid-30's. I wished only the best for her, and I knew that wasn't me.
Add all of the above factors to the equation, along with the fact I work a forty plus hour work week, as well as try to train about twenty hours a week. This meant that I had, at most, two free evenings a week. The reality is that clothes must be washed and grass must be mowed. In other words, sometimes life gets in the way of having fun (as well as relationships.)
Heidi was pretty, as well as a pretty nice person. In spite of the fact that she had a strong personality, I felt a link between us that went beyond the pathetic co-rec softball team on which we both played. Only one complication- Heidi and I were as different as ketchup and peanut butter. Of course, to me, that was part of the attraction. I knew that she was an extrovert (and I am an introvert), I knew she was busy, (as was I), and I knew that she was getting over a broken engagement, but it didn't matter (Heidi was pretty). I asked her to dinner, anyway. Figuring out where and when was the problem.
With two triathlons and the warm-up series of runs for the marathon coming up, it seemed impossible, aside from a Sunday afternoon, when I had planned to do a practice swim in Galveston Bay. Fortunately for me, Heidi either really liked seafood or was interested enough, because she took me up on my offer of a trip to the beach and seafood dinner. Heidi and I both enjoyed our one and only date that afternoon, (I even forgot about the shooting pain in my foot and the fact that the waves had knocked me around.) Heidi got back together with her ex-fiancée after that, and I was happy for them both. They eventually married and had two children. As for me, I did finish both triathlons and both warm-up races, narrowly missing my goals in both triathlons and barely beating them in my two runs. This was no small feat. I learned that the shooting pain in my left foot was caused by the planter’s fasciitis, a result of overtraining. A “trigger point injection” in the bottom of my foot, though, allowed me to keep participating in races and (over) training.
As for the rest of my story- please read on.
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