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Hurricane Bob: False Starts
By Bob Mina
3/12/2010 |
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If you know me, or if you’ve read this column before, you know I’m not an overly sentimental guy. You know I’m well beyond being overly sentimental – I’m a borderline hopeless romantic. When 2010 started off, I was beyond thrilled to leave 2009 behind. It had been a year of endless uncertainty, inconsistent training, and a typical, rain-soaked beating at the hands of Mother Nature more times than I’d cared to remember. While I don’t normally make a big fuss about New Year’s Day, I was there at midnight with a glass of champagne in each hand, using my feet to kick 2009 out the door and slam it shut.
Turning over the calendar meant a new year – a new page: A blank canvas on which to pull out my old clichéd brushes, and paint a new Bob. I could leave it all behind, put one foot in front of the other, and make it all better.
Yeah. About that. Here we are stumbling into March, and when I say “we” I mean me, and when I say stumbling I mean that part, because I still can’t see the ground because of the snowpack. It wasn’t a tough winter here in Philadelphia – it was THE tough winter. It was the Mother, Father, Brother, and Mother-in-Law of winters. It was the worst winter, ever. And that’s not hyperbole. If we’d had this kind of winter in 1777-1778 we’d probably all know the words to God Save the Queen, because the Continental Army would have been buried by snow while they slept at Valley Forge.
In a normal year, Philadelphia gets about 20” of snow. So far this year, we’re at 80”, and I say ‘so far’ because I know what Mother Nature doesn’t usually give up on winter until April; there has to be more. It got so insane in February, that I started to log shoveling in my training diary as “Core Work.” That’s no fooling – one week I spent 10.5 hours moving the stuff. I couldn’t run outside – I certainly couldn’t ride, but I could shovel. I shoveled my driveway, my neighbors driveways, and then for ha-ha’s, I built a Luge Track by my in-laws house…and instantly became the coolest Dad in the neighborhood. Still – other than being the human chairlift and lugging kids back up the hill (didn’t count that mileage), no miles were coming my way – I wasn’t making ‘em happen.
I wasn’t training, and I knew it. For the first time in my athletic life, I was starting to feel out of control. I could barely string together 2-3 workouts before something would happen – life would happen. I’d get called into an all-day meeting. Katie would get sick (she’s 4, she’s in daycare, and this is standard operating procedure between October and April). St. Lynda would have to travel for work, and I’d be Mr. Mom for a few days. I’d crawl my way through a week and get to the weekend, and just be so beat up by it all, I couldn’t consider getting on the rollers for two hours. “I’ll start fresh next Monday…”
Every week started, and every week met with the same result – a merger of Amtrak and Delta. I’d just keep finding new, unusual, and annoying ways to end up in a smoking heap, lost, wondering when I was going to get, well, going.
I was caught in a negative feedback loop – a mobius strip of suckdom. I wasn’t training, so I felt fat. I felt fat, and that killed my motivation because I knew when I got to running, I’d feel like such a fat bastard, I’d be annoyed with how far I’d fallen. By not working out, at least I didn’t have to face the bad news. Now it wasn’t like I’d gained 10 pounds – not even close. Thankfully, it was only 3-4, but it felt like 50.
There you have it – The Resolutionist Loop. The Oprah Cycle. I was stuck in it. Not since 1995 when I’d had my big accident – the Lincoln that changed my life and knocked me off of my bike, into the windshield, and into Ironman racing – had I endured such a long layoff. I knew when I finally got rolling again, it would be from scratch: It would be 1995 all over again, only without hearing “Gangsta’s Paradise” every 11 minutes on the radio. I remembered that low tide very clearly: The first time I got back on a bike was 3 months after my accident. I planned on riding 30-40 easy miles.
Problem: I could only manage 11. It took me nearly an hour.
When I got home I sat down on my mom’s kitchen floor, and cried. I didn’t cry because I was so slow or weak, I cried because the floor was really, really cold and I was so damn tired, I couldn’t get up. I just had to sit there until my butt went numb, or until my legs could bear helping me stand up – whichever came first.
I made a mental note – no sitting on the floor this time, no matter how things went. If I was going to cry about it all I’d have to do it standing up, or leaning on a doorway if I really needed it.
We’ve all had moments like this. When you sign up for a triathlon, your first lesson is one that isn’t documented or published anywhere – it’s the lesson on balance. Balance is at the core of the sport, and is in everything we end up doing related to triathlon. You balance swim, bike, and run. You race your strength, you train your weakness. You find a middle ground, and race with what you have.
You balance work, you balance family, you balance training. If you have an apartment, you don’t have to balance as much as someone else who gets to add balancing a home to the mix, so consider yourself lucky (in a roundabout way). You become a constant accountant of your own time: You try to make time where it doesn’t exist, and guess where the next window might be. You sign up for 3 sports, but become a master of balancing so much more – it’s the hidden lesson and benefit in our lifestyle.
It suddenly can make you to appear as an Oracle of Time Management and Motivation. When people at work ask me how they can be like me, I tell them to shave their heads and start watching lots of “Top Gear.” Then they say, “No, I mean workout like you do.” Oh. Right. Sorry.
I have been giving the same advice for years: You cannot afford to wait for an opening to come along. You cannot afford to be polite, or wait until things calm down. When it comes to making time, you have to be selfish – you have to make the time happen.
But even the best of intentions will eventually fade when life’s endless grind gets turned up to 11: That’s when it becomes so very easy to become a passenger to a bad day, or a bad race. When you’re under stress – be it physical, mental, or emotional, that’s when you tend to get away from what you know. You don’t have the energy or the time, and you just get away from what you know best.
When you’re running near your mental limits in a race, how easy is it to forget what you’ve learned in your training? How many of us have done something in the heat of battle that made you think to yourself post-race, “You did, WHAT?!”
Case Study: Paula Newby-Fraser threw away a win at Ironman Hawaii in 1995 because she was so far in the lead, she just stopped eating.
Seriously – the greatest female triathlete in the history of Kona and all that is Ironman threw away her special needs bag for the run, mid-race. What followed was one of the greatest bonks and mental meltdowns in history – the one where NBC happened to have a camera nearby, and caught her on the ground, staring into the sky, remarking to her husband Paul Huddle, “I think I’m going to die.”
Check it out (complete with Phil Liggett goodness!):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_utqeQALVE
I can pretty much bet that you’ve never gotten a race THAT wrong. So no matter what, until you’ve done a Newby-Fraser, you’re fine. I might have let work, life, and Mother Nature drag me around for a bit, but here is where I stand up, dust off, and get my stuff together.
I’m happy to report that I’m not on my kitchen floor, nor am I laying on any road pondering a glucose-deprived ticket to the afterlife. I’m just a little bit behind in the mileage department, but I do have 15 years of base to lean on. I’ve never had to lean on it this much, but hey, there’s always a first time for everything.
I’ve been investing years and years, miles and miles, into building myself up. Life may have tossed a hurricane my way or two, but I’m still here. If New Orleans can rebuild, so can I. After all, I do have a nickname to live up to. I can’t buckle because things have gotten a little busy.
I’ve got my races picked out: I’m signed up to run the UNITE Half Marathon on April 18, and then the Delaware Marathon on May 16. I’m going to put down some miles, get in some consistent running, and do what I know how to do – put one foot in front of the other. Again, and again, and again, until I get somewhere. I know that I’ll get somewhere, because that’s the benefit of starting from the bottom.
When you’re at the bottom, where else do you have to go but up?
Speaking of that, I can’t leave you with an open-ended tale: Paula Newby-Fraser’s deal didn’t end there. She came back for one more go-around at Kona in 1996, made sure she ate all the way, and put her 8th IMH title in the bag.
I know I’ve got that part wired – I won’t forget to eat along the way.
Wish me luck. See you out there.
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