Morning Music…
Posted in Morning Music, Music
The Distillers – City of Angels (live)
Something Wonderful Is Going to Happen Today
Posted in Something Good
This isn’t a post about me virtue signaling that I’m a good person. If anything, it’s the opposite. This is a selfish post. Because today, I was reminded of something every psychology book, self-help article, and therapist has told me for years: one of the best ways to get out of your own head is to do something for somebody else.
Today, I actually felt it.
I took Cleo to the dog park to play fetch. Cleo has no interest in making friends. She has no interest in sniffing around or socializing with other dogs. She has one purpose in life: ball. Because of this, I always bring two balls. Other dogs inevitably steal her ball, because apparently “keep away” is a much more popular dog game than “fetch.” Cleo does not have time for those games. Today, there was another dog there with a mom and her young son. Their dog watched Cleo playing fetch and clearly wanted in. The kid looked around for a ball but couldn’t find one.
So I tossed him my extra ball.
You would have thought I handed him a winning lottery ticket.
He was so excited to throw it for his dog. When Cleo and I were leaving, the mom called out, “Wait! We have your ball!”
I told them to keep it for their dog, or leave it there for the next dog that came along. The look on their faces was like I had given them a million dollars.
That ball cost me about ten cents. I buy them in bulk. Ten cents bought happiness for a kid, his mom, their dog, my dog, and me.
Pretty good return on investment.
Later, I stopped at a corner store to buy a bottle of gin for a celebratory martini. I hadn’t had one in a month because of Ironman 70.3 training. Last night, after the race, it would have wrecked me. Today is recovery week. I’ll survive.
The guy in front of me looked like a painter, covered in paint after a day of work. He was buying three cans of beer. His card was declined. He checked his bank account and said, “There’s a three-day hold. I thought I had at least ten bucks in there.”
The cashier, who clearly knew him, said it was okay. “Just pay me tomorrow.”
The total was $12.55.
After he left, I paid for his beer along with my gin and told the cashier that if the guy came back tomorrow, he didn’t owe anything.
I was going to leave it there. But as I drove home, I saw him walking a block away. I rolled down my window and said, “Hey, just so you know, I squared you up. Don’t let him take your money tomorrow.”
He looked stunned. He thanked me, asked my name, introduced himself, and that was it.
The thing is, I’ve been that guy. When I was dating my wife, she used to call the bank before going to the ATM to see how much money she could take out. This was before internet banking. Sometimes the question wasn’t, “Do I have enough money?” The question was, “Can I take out twenty dollars, or do I only have five?” And back when ATMs gave out five-dollar bills, that was a real thing.
I’ve waited for checks to clear. I’ve had friends slip me gas money. I’ve had people bring me a couple of bags of groceries when I was a broke college student.
This wasn’t charity. This was repayment. A tiny installment on a debt I owe to every person who ever quietly helped me when I needed it.
I’m trying to embrace that idea I’ve heard in so many spiritual traditions: “It’s we.”
We’re all one.
And honestly, both of these moments made me feel better about life.
First, I felt grateful that I am now in a place where I can spend ten dollars—or twelve dollars and fifty-five cents—without worrying whether I can make rent.
Second, there is something deeply satisfying about unexpectedly making someone else’s day better.
Third, and maybe most importantly, it reminded me that there is still a lot of good happening around us.
I spend too much time reading newspapers, scrolling social media, and absorbing the message that everything is terrible and getting worse. But that isn’t the whole story.
The other day, I parked downtown for a doctor’s appointment. The validation sticker made the parking free.
Free.
In Chicago, I was expecting “half off,” which usually means they only rob you for $30 instead of $60.
Instead, I drove away happy.
The night before my race, my family and I went out for pizza. The manager apologized for the wait and brought us a large pizza even though we had ordered a small.
“We’ll only charge you for the small,” she said.
Great.
Then ten minutes later, she came back.
“Funny story. The kitchen made your small pizza too. We’ll box it up for you.”
Even better.
Then the bill came.
No charge for any pizza. Oh, and there was no ” wait.” Don’t know what she was talking about.
No matter, I still have a refrigerator full of free pizza.
Granted, I was so nervous about the race that I ate one slice that night. Anxiety is a great appetite suppressant.
But that’s not the point.
The point is that little wonderful things happen every day.
I once saw an old black-and-white video of a man saying:
“Every morning when you wake up, tell yourself, ‘Something wonderful is going to happen to me today.'”
And eventually, it will.
Not because the universe is magically delivering presents to you.
Because you start noticing.
The free parking.
The extra pizza.
The dog with a new ball.
The stranger who doesn’t have to worry about finding $12.55 tomorrow.
I used to write that sentence in my journal every morning: Something wonderful is going to happen to me today. I got away from that habit.
I think I need to get back to it. Not just believing that something wonderful will happen to me and finding that thing each day, but t remembering that sometimes, if I pay attention, I can be the reason something wonderful happens to someone else.
.
Ironman Rockford 70.3 – The Good, The Bad, and The Existential Crisis…
Posted in Triathlon
Saturday was actually wonderful.
My daughter drove up with me for check-in and we had a great time. My wife met us later and we had dinner at one of my childhood favorite restaurants.
I barely ate. Not because the food wasn’t good. My stomach was in full rebellion mode from nerves. I had been a mess for three weeks, and Saturday night might have been the worst of it.
I did not sleep. At all.
So Sunday morning at 5:00 a.m. arrived, whether I was ready or not.
My wife and daughter dropped me off at transition, I set up my spot, and took the shuttle to the swim start. I was disappointed that we couldn’t get into the river before the race. I haven’t done an open-water swim in twelve years, and getting a few minutes in the water would have helped calm my nerves.
The swim start was also a lot slower than I expected. We lined up by expected pace, and three people entered the water every five seconds. The pros started at 7:00, the age-groupers shortly after, and I didn’t get into the water until around 7:40.
The swim, however, was legendary.
I’m normally a strong swimmer, but the current turned me into Michael Phelps for about 26 minutes. I finished in 26:14, about fourteen minutes faster than my normal pace. Admittedly, that includes a brief moment of panic where I got tangled on an underwater cable near a buoy, had to hold onto a kayak for a minute to catch my breath, and questioned whether my “legendary” swim was going to end with a rescue boat.
It did not. I hung on the boat for about 20 seconds and launched back into the swim. I’d have been sub 26 but for that.
The bike was another story. What the triathlon gods gave me with the current, they eventually took back with the bike.
The headwind was brutal. For most of the ride, I was well behind my target pace and watching my average speed mock me on the Garmin. Eventually, I got a tailwind and gained some of it back, but I still finished at 3:36:42. I wasn’t thrilled with the time, but I also kept my promise to myself. I stayed in my heart rate zone. I didn’t chase speed. I stuck to my nutrition plan.
And that may have been the biggest victory of the day.
My stomach was still wonky from nerves. The nausea disappeared once the race started, then returned during the bike, but I fueled anyway. Previous versions of me would have ignored calories and water and then wondered why the run became a death march.
The run was… the run.
My runs are never my favorite part of triathlon. My strategy was simple: run from aid station to aid station and walk through the aid stations. The first 10K actually went pretty well.
The second half became more of a negotiated settlement between me and my legs. I wound up walking about two full miles. Not ideal, but I was moving at a strong pace and eventually crossed the finish line with a 2:29:43 half marathon.
Final time:
6:45.
Not my fastest. Not my slowest.
My two faster 70.3s were flatter courses, and that matters. Ironman says Rockford has around 1,900 feet of climbing. My Garmin has repeatedly called shenanigans on that number. This time it recorded 2,904 feet of climbing.
That is a lot of climbing.
Especially when you spend half the ride being personally attacked by the wind.
FML.
One of the best parts of the day had nothing to do with my performance.
Because of a timing issue online, my wife and daughter missed me at the swim and never saw me on the bike. Given my personality and current anxiety level, I naturally assumed this meant they had either been in a terrible car accident or had rushed back to Chicago because one of my sons was in the hospital.
You know. A perfectly normal and reasonable thought process.
Then, just as I came into transition from the bike, I saw them. They had made goofy signs and were wearing ridiculous hats that I knew nothing about.
It put a huge smile on my face.
And that was where my pre-race promise to myself came true. I looked around.
I saw the volunteers cheering every athlete. I saw Rockford residents sitting in their front yards spraying hoses for hot runners. I saw people with boomboxes every few miles. I especially remember two women blasting dance music and dancing like they were at a concert instead of standing on a sidewalk in the sun. On the bike and the run, I saw athletes pushing themselves. When someone passed, I’d tell them “looking strong” or on the run I’d walk a few steps through an aid station with someone and chat them up. Tried to be positive on the course and to fellow competitors. I got a lot of compliments on my bike jersey “Turtle Racing Club: We’ll get there when we get there.” I took time to look at the farm fields, the rivers, the sky, the parks we ran through, the outfits people were wearing. I took time to thank volunteers ar the aid stations. Anything I could do to stay out of my head.
It was wonderful.
I finished. And I am happy about that. I had a time I can live with. I didn’t mentally collapse. I didn’t shit myself.
The funny thing is that the anxiety did not magically disappear afterward. Part of that was because I was an idiot and still could not eat after the race, which became a vicious cycle: I was nauseous because I wasn’t eating and I wasn’t eating because I was nauseous.
Part of it is family stress.
Part of it is that the race was never the entire problem.
I skipped dinner, got in bed at 7:00, couldn’t fall asleep for hours, and eventually took medication.
So that part is still something I need to address.
But physically? I did what I came to do.
I finished under seven hours, which was my goal.
I executed my nutrition plan.
My mental game was better.
Ironically, the thing that made me say, “Never again” was not the result.
At the finish I told my wife I was done with the long stuff.
No Ironman Wisconsin.
No more 70.3s.
Of course, I reserve the right to completely contradict myself in about two weeks.
I was undertrained for this race compared to where I’ll be for Madison, so maybe I feel differently after some rest. But it raises a real question: why am I doing these races? The other week my daughter and I ran a 5K. It was fun. I was competitive. It hurt for 25 minutes instead of seven hours. Maybe sprint and Olympic triathlons are more my speed. I can still train hard, still stay fit, but have more confidence and more enjoyment.
I don’t know the answer yet.
That is probably a conversation for the sports psychologist.
I do know this: the Rockford 70.3 was extremely well run. The aid stations were excellent. Transition was crowded because it was on a city street, which meant my spot required a fast walk of roughly a city and a half in cycling shoes, but that was probably unavoidable. The post-race food was good, and I liked that it came from a local business.
We took pictures, grabbed my bike, grabbed some food (which my wife thankfully ate), and headed home.
Last night I hurt. I was tired, underfueled, dehydrated, and my back was angry.
Today?
Pretty good.
I walked to the coffee shop to loosen up my legs. I’m a little sunburned, but otherwise I feel surprisingly normal.
The anxiety is still there, which tells me this is a bigger issue than just a race. But that’s for another day.
Yesterday, I did a hard thing.
My wife and daughter were there to cheer me on.
It’s sunny outside.
I’m sitting in a coffee shop reading.
And despite everything, it is a pretty great to be alive.
Give Your Balls a Tug….That’s What She Said!…No, Really, She Said That.
Posted in Triathlon
Last post on pre-race nervousness. Promise
I did not sleep well last night. Not even a little. I woke up this morning stressed to the hilt about tomorrow’s 70.3.
I have spent weeks telling myself this is just a supported training day. I have said I don’t care about my time. I have said I am not trying to PR. I have said I have trained well, have a better fueling strategy, have a pacing plan, and the weather is going to be much better than the 85-degree death march I experienced riding the course.
Apparently, my Chimp brain did not receive the memo.
Fortunately, three things pulled me out of my mood.
First, coffee on the back deck. It was sunny and mild. The backyard was full of flowers and plants. Birds were out. It was one of those mornings where you think, “Oh yeah, the world is actually a pretty nice place.”
Second, while reading the newspaper, I came across a quote from the late artist David Hockney:
“The world is very beautiful if you look at it but most people don’t look very much, do they? They scan the ground in front of them so they can walk, but they don’t really look at things incredibly well, with an intensity….I do.”
That hit me.
Sure, it was reminiscent of the famous quote from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off:
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
Tomorrow, I am going to look around.
I am going to notice the river. I am going to notice the wooded areas and the farm fields. I am going to appreciate being outside on a day when I am healthy enough to swim, bike, and run for hours.
I am not going to spend the entire race thinking, “This sucks. I hurt. Everyone is passing me.”
Because yes, everyone will probably pass me.
I will come out of the water near the front and then spend the next several hours being passed by people who are better cyclists and runners. That has always bothered me. Tomorrow I will try to look at it differently.
Look at all these people doing something difficult. Look at all these people pushing themselves. Look at all the family members and friends standing around all day cheering for someone they love.
And yes, to be completely honest, there may be moments where I think, “Damn, those are some nice legs.” I am only human, and triathlon women are hot.
The third thing that helped was asking my wife for her opinion. And if you know anything about my wife, asking her opinion means you are definitely going to get it.
Her message was essentially:
“Give your balls a tug.”
A very sophisticated psychological intervention. Part of it was simply: stop navel-gazing. Do the thing. If it goes well, great. If it goes badly, nobody cares.
The other part was her reminding me of everything I have and everything I have done. It was a little bit of Clarence showing George Bailey what his life means in It’s a Wonderful Life.
It still came with “give your balls a tug,” but the message was the same.
She also reminded me of all the parts of tomorrow that have nothing to do with the race.
I get to drive to Rockford with my daughter, who is excited to go to the expo and watch me race. I get to have dinner with my wife and daughter at a restaurant I used to go to as a child. I get to sit in a hotel room watching bad television with them. Tomorrow night, regardless of my time, I get to have deep-dish pizza with my family and then go home and watch hockey with my wife and son.
That sounds like a pretty damn good day.
So I am in a much better place now. I have rested. I have trained. I have a nutrition and hydration plan. I have a pacing strategy. The weather looks cool, which is huge because I hate racing in the heat.
It will be what it will be.
My bad mood will not make me faster. It will not make me stronger. It will not make the race hurt less.
Which brings me to the final quote that keeps coming to mind. In Bridge of Spies, when James Donovan asks Rudolf Abel whether he is worried that the Soviets will shoot him when he is returned, Abel responds:
“Would it help?”
Exactly. Worrying won’t help. Being anxious won’t help. As they say, the hay is in the barn. I have my race pace plan, my nutrition dialed in, and I did what I needed to do.
Tomorrow, I will swim, bike, and run.
I will suffer some.
I will probably complain.
I will definitely look around.
And I will try to remember that I am very lucky to be there.
My Bhagavad-Gita Moment Before a 70.3…
Posted in Triathlon
It feels somewhat absurd to be sitting at a coffee shop reading the Bhagavad-Gita and thinking, “You know what? This ancient spiritual wisdom about duty, suffering, and the human condition really applies to me and my recreational triathlon.”
To be clear, Arjuna was standing on a battlefield, looking across at relatives, teachers, and friends, facing a conflict that would shape the future of a kingdom.
I am looking at a race course in Rockford and thinking, “That run is going to be really unpleasant.”
The stakes are not exactly the same. And yet, the deeper problem is surprisingly familiar.
For the last two weeks, I have been anxious about this race. Not because I have not trained. I have completed several 70.3 races. I have ridden the course twice. I have swum the distance. I have put in the hours.
The truth is simpler: I am afraid of suffering.
Not the dramatic movie-soundtrack kind of suffering. The very ordinary kind that arrives around mile eight and a half of a half-marathon when your legs begin negotiating a ceasefire, your brain starts offering very reasonable arguments for stopping, and every person who passes you seems to be having a wonderful day.
(They are probably not.)
The Bhagavad-Gita has a remarkably practical answer.
Krishna tells Arjuna:
“You have a right to your actions, but not to the fruits of your actions.”
In other words, focus on what is yours to control and release what is not.
I control:
- My preparation.
- My pacing.
- My fueling.
- My attitude.
- My next stroke, pedal stroke, and step.
I do not control:
- My finishing time.
- My place in my age group.
- The weather.
- Whether someone who looks like he was built in a laboratory specifically for endurance sports goes flying past me on the run.
- Whether the race decides to hand me a difficult day.
My anxiety has spent a lot of time camping out in that second list. I have been suffering Sunday’s pain for the last two weeks. That seems like a poor bargain.
The Gita also describes the ideal of the “steady person” – someone who remains balanced in success and failure, pleasure and pain, praise and criticism. That does not mean a steady person never hurts. A steady person in a 70.3 does not float through the run saying, “This is delightful. I hope it lasts forever.”
A steady person says:
“This is the hard part. I knew it was coming. I am still here.”
And maybe that is the real challenge of this race.
Not whether I can finish. I have done that before.
Not whether I can run every mile with a smile on my face. That would frankly be suspicious.
The challenge is whether I can take all those books I have been reading this year and actually use them.
- Epictetus tells me to focus on what I control.
- Kant tells me to do my duty.
- Emerson tells me to trust myself.
- And now the Bhagavad-Gita tells me to act without attachment to the outcome.
It would be a shame to spend the last few months reading the Harvard Classics only to ignore them when I need them most. So on Sunday, when the discomfort arrives—and I have no doubt it will—I want to remember a very ancient lesson applied to a very modern problem.
One stroke.
One pedal stroke.
One step.
Do the work.
Let go of the outcome.
Why Am I Panicking?
In three days, I’ll be standing on a riverbank in Rockford waiting for the start of a 70.3 triathlon. And despite telling everyone that this is just a training day, I’m low-grade panicking.
The weird thing is I know I can do it. My training plan actually called for an Olympic-distance race next week, but I couldn’t find one that fit my schedule, so the Rockford 70.3 looked interesting. So I signed up. As one does.
Objectively, I have the fitness. I’ve ridden the actual bike course twice. I’ve run 9 miles several times. I’ve easily swum the 1.2-mile distance. Putting all three together on the same day is different, but it’s not like I’m attempting something I haven’t done before. That’s what makes the anxiety so annoying. It’s not based on reality.
Part of it is that I keep reminding myself this isn’t really a race. It’s a supported training day. I don’t care about my finish time. I know I won’t PR. Looking at my old PR actually makes me laugh. Every time I see it I think, “Who the hell was that guy?” I’d be thrilled if I finished within an hour of that time.
But no matter how much I tell myself it’s just a training day, I know what’s going to happen. I’ll get out of the water feeling pretty good. I’m a decent swimmer and will probably come out in the top 15-20% of the field. Then the bike starts, and the passing starts. And it never stops.
I’ve written about this before, but it’s one of the things I dislike most about triathlon. The people who finish behind me come out of the water behind me. The people who finish ahead of me spend the next five or six hours riding and running past me. I almost never pass anyone. It’s surprisingly discouraging. I know it shouldn’t matter, but after the hundredth person blows by you on the bike, it’s hard not to feel like you’re doing something wrong.
The other thing I’m wrestling with is that I don’t actually like racing. I love training. I love the structure. I love checking off workouts. I love seeing my fitness improve. I love losing a few pounds and feeling healthier. But racing? I hate racing.
In hockey, baseball, basketball, golf, whatever, you practice and then you get to play the game. The game is the reward. Endurance sports are weird. You train for months and then your reward is doing the exact same thing, only harder and longer. There isn’t really a game. There’s just suffering.
And I’ve already done it. I’ve finished marathons. I’ve finished 70.3s. I’ve finished Ironmans. I don’t get the excitement of doing something for the first time. Which raises a legitimate question: why am I doing this again?
A friend of mine recently told my wife, after hearing I’d signed up for Rockford and Ironman Wisconsin, “He just doesn’t know when to come in out of the rain.” That one hit me pretty hard because it’s true. Apparently, I don’t know when to stop doing things I don’t like doing.
The encouraging thing is that I’m trying something new this time. Actually, I’m trying something that most people have been doing all along. I’m fueling. I’m hydrating. I’m pacing.
Looking back, my old race nutrition strategy was basically criminal negligence. On Ironman bike rides, I’d have two water bottles for over seven hours. Two. I’d eat half a sub sandwich at some point. Then I’d mostly survive the marathon on stubbornness and occasional sips of water.
In my last Ironman, a friend finally convinced me to take a caffeinated gel because I was mentally falling apart. Within minutes, I felt dramatically better. The fog lifted. The world seemed brighter. I was convinced the gel contained heroin.
When I explained my fueling history to Claude AI, I swear it laughed at me. The basic response was, “Ross, maybe your mental game isn’t terrible. Maybe you’re just starving.”
Fair point.
So now I have an actual fueling plan. I tested it on my second ride of the Rockford course. The ride was slower than the first attempt, but I felt dramatically better afterward. Not a little better. Dramatically better. I also have an actual pacing strategy. Historically, my pacing strategy was, “Whatever feels good.” It turns out that’s not really a strategy.
This time I’m going to keep my heart rate under a certain ceiling on the bike. If that means I ride five or ten minutes slower, so be it. The theory is that the bike sets up the run. You don’t win your race on the bike, but you can absolutely destroy your run there. On the run, I’m planning to walk the first minute or two until my heart rate settles, and then run about thirty seconds per mile slower than my normal pace. Slow and steady. Which is funny because I literally have a tortoise tattooed on my arm, yet I spend most races trying to be a hare.
The final thing I’ve done is reach out to a sports psychologist. It’s obviously too late for Sunday, but maybe a few conversations can help with the nonstop negative self-talk that has been hanging around for almost sixty years. Better late than never.
So that’s where I am three days out. Nervous. Excited. Dreading it. Looking forward to it. Wondering why I signed up. Glad I signed up. All at the same time.