C. : I’m wiped out after completing a double shift! However, d.c called and said he wasn’t feeling well. He asked me to write our blog solo today. I think that both he and I could use some words of encouragement.
d.c. sent me a manuscript to look over before he sends it to his editor and then his agent. He wanted a different perspective on it. I think these words of encouragement are appropriate for this situation in both of our lives. d.c. wrote this when he was training to do an Iron man distance triathlon. This is the last entry in the journal he kept for four years while training to do this event.
***
Even volunteers at Ironman distance triathlons have trouble comprehending that we
competitors are going to cover 140.6 miles in one day, (or about the same as going from Los Angeles, California to Tijuana, Mexico) and all under our own power.
"You guys - are nuts!" exclaimed the announcer, just before sounding the starting horn at the Great Floridian Ironman Distance Triathlon.
Actually, it's not that complicated. First, you put one arm in front of the other, then
one leg, then one foot, and you don't stop until you're finished. And, no, it doesn't take
the "rest of your life" to recover from competing in one either, contrary to the opinion of a physical therapist friend of mine.
I signed up for and completed a 50-mile run a mere eight weeks after having competed in my first Ironman distance triathlon, even though my heart rate stayed elevated above one hundred for a solid week after completing the Ironman. I had a good excuse to eat steak, or whatever I wanted to eat then. I needed protein to recover!
I did beat the time limit in the fifty-mile run of twelve hours, my only goal, by over twenty-minutes. I knew that my legs wouldn’t recover enough to set an aggressive goal. I don't recommend doing this, though. Mainly because I couldn’t escape injury. I hyper-extended my left (good) knee in a mud puddle. This would seem to be unavoidable, since the run was held in moderate rain that lasted until the time limit expired. At mile 44, I got my foot stuck in the mud puddle. I couldn’t pull it out without taking the unbraced knee out of joint, which left me six miles to “run” on one semi-healthy leg.) I did beat the time limit, but Nicole forbade me to attempt any more trail runs, because this course had caused me to injure each of my knees (and to have minor surgery, six months later, on the healthy one. No, it was done on me, so it wasn’t “minor surgery.” My definition of “minor surgery” is one that is done on someone else, not me!)
***
We train for endurance events in our everyday lives. If you think about it, you do a
"Mental Ironman" every day of your life. You swim through your morning routine, and
later, through traffic, only to cycle through things at work that may or may not interest
you. Then, you probably run home in time to catch your child's soccer game or practice,
or to go to that den meeting. Maybe, you'd just like to get home in time to eat dinner with
the whole family, for once. If you can find time to sneak in a workout, or to read a book,
or just sit and think for a short period, then I say, bully for you!
Let's face it, our harried, hurried lifestyles don't allow much room for slothfulness in
this fast-paced century. That, in my opinion, has contributed greatly to the explosion in
the popularity of extreme sports in the twenty-first century.
I’m d.c. scot, and this has been just one average, ordinary, everyday person's account of
his attempt at the accomplishing impossible. *
The apostle Paul also had something to say about attempting to do something difficult.
“24 Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize?
Run in such a way as to get the prize. 25 Everyone who competes in the games goes into
strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that
will last forever.” I Corinthians 9: 24-25
*From the upcoming d.c. scot book, “Beyond the Thirteenth Mile; The Iron Man Chronicles
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