Pride and Shame

(Photo courtesy of Iron Wil)

They say, character is what we do when nobody is watching. If so, that is why I was so disappointed in my race day at Wildflower. If I had been by myself, if no one had been watching, I would have quit. I am not pleased with that feature of my character.

This picture, however, shows something else about character. We are not alone. I was not alone. I knew that people were watching and I did not quit. I was a member of a community, and one of the creators of that community is right there in the picture, looking on as I struggled to the finish of my worst race ever. The other is behind the camera taking the picture and cheering my name.

Worst race, I say, but one that may turn out to be a key foundation in any future Ironman finish. The race revealed my true self, my errors, my weaknesses, and how to attack and correct those shortcomings.

My day started with a LOUSY swim. Part of this was because I should have warmed up more thoroughly (like I did at the Lone Star HIM) rather than standing around worrying about the swim. But the swim is not a physical limitation. I have easily swum 3k at a time and completed 2 prior HIMs, but Saturday I could not find my freestyle stroke, and it was almost entirely mental.

My breathing was restricted from lack of a warmup. I swallowed a lot of water in chop and boat wakes that I was not prepared for and suffered panic that was not rational. I had to resort to breast stroke because I could not bring myself to keep my face in the water. Then, I allowed my self-disgust at breast stroking to effect the rest of the day. I was ashamed of my swim and overall performance, but too proud to quit with people looking on.

Mental weakness then led to self-mortification for being so weak. (Isn't it great being complex and introspective? Arrrrrgggghhh!!!!) Add this to an extremely overtrained state and a bike setup that was not conducive to all the climbing required on the course and all the times after the swim came down as well. I cracked with 10 miles left on the bike. Obviously, riding 150 miles two weeks ago and attempting this mountainous course with no compact crank and an 12-25 rear cassette was disregarding my own limits by several orders of magnitude.

After the bike crackup, I basically could not run unless I had a gravity assist on a downhill. Even so, I did not run to my physical abilities because my mind was weak. I actuall made good tempo with a nice stride in the last 2 miles. I should have done that for much of the middle miles. I just didn't.

The key, for me, is attacking my mental game, principally by becoming confident as an open water swimmer. Courses will always be hard, and every race has things that will go wrong. I cannot control conditions, but I can control how I react to them. From this day forward, I will do so.

I am taking a week off of training and hopefully will return to health. Then, the gameplan between now and Wisconsin includes:

1. Sign up for every tri, no matter what the length, within ez driving distance in order to complete as many open water swims in traffic as possible. I don't care if I DNF the rest of the race in order to pursue Ironman focused training. I just want the swims.

2. Swim with the tri-club at Twin Lakes every Friday if possible. Hopefully I can find someplace closer to do a weekend open water swim as well.

3. Go to Galveston as many weekends as possible and swim in the Gulf of Mexico until I am comfortable swimming in waves and chop.

4. Read and absorb "Mental Training for Triathletes" which was ordered from Amazon today and arrives tomorrow.

***Full Stop****

Enough narcissism about me. Again, if I had been alone, I would have failed. I would have quit. But I was not alone. I was surrounded by a community of friends, all of us on our own adventures, all of us discovering something new about ourselves. I guess character is what we do when nobody is watching, but we were not meant to exercise "character" all by ourselves. We were meant to exceed the limitations of our character within communities. I will not end this post without a note of thanks to those who helped create our community.

Iron Wil, Kahuna, who would have thought that a couple of blogs and an amateur podcast had the power to build connections among talented and yet ordinary people, and even go on to motivate them to do extraordinary things? Of all the pride on display this weekend, that should be first on the list. All of us who toe'd the line, crossed the finish line, or even watched and started dreaming our own Tri Geek Dreams owe you a debt of thanks. Consider this payment number one.

Thank you.