Day One

Today is Day One. It is not yet New Year’s day, and I am not making any resolutions. I’ve come not to believe in them because I seldom see them through. Even so, today is Day One.

Today is the beginning. This is the first day of the 25 week Ironman training plan for Ironman Coeur d'Alene, the first week of which is in the sidebar. Day One, Week One, which will already have to be modified to fit around family and Christmas in the way that training always must be modified.

For the pessimist, beginning is a fearful thing. One looks at the goal and only sees all the effort involved and all the opportunities for discipline to flag and for the wheels to fall off en route. Such a person, me in my darker moments, has no use for beginning with grand resolutions. Most such grand designs die from neglect by mid January. Just thinking of all the hours and pain and effort between now and the finish line, I am sometimes unsure whether it is worth it. At other times, I know beyond any doubt that it is.

For the optimist, there is a love for all beginnings. “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” The “journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” The optimistic sloganeer, me in my sunnier moments, holds resolute fingers in the air and even pounds a table or two, resolving that this time things will be different. This time bootstraps will be pulled up and all will be changed. Heady stuff to drink deeply of imaginary finish lines, especially without the sobriety inherent in counting the cost of all that it takes to get there.

I have enjoyed these past weeks of not logging workouts and treating my training time like uncharted play. With no goal, there is no risk of failure, yet no opportunity for success either. I guess a certain part of me needs an Ironman plan or an “A race” to put all the rest of life in some kind of order. It helps put my manic optimist and my depressive pessimist into balance. The optimist gets his grand resolution, but the grand sum of Ironman is made up of many smaller, daily choices that are much less grand and much more mundane.

Ironman is honest, almost brutally so. You can desire the finishing chute with every fiber of your being, but grand resolutions won’t get it done. You have to assemble all the smaller skills. You’ve got to swim. You’ve got to bike. You’ve got to run. You have to assemble the volume, bit by bit over a period of long months. You have to work. You have to rest. You have to eat.. You can’t cheat the training. Either train adequately or you will suffer the consequences. You can’t procrastinate. Either lay the base early or you will have no foundation on which to rely. You can’t cram. Either build the volume gradually or your body will betray you.

People who don’t do Ironman look at this and shake their heads in admiration (or pity), but if they only knew, they might admire quite a bit less than they do. Sure, there is some “iron will” in getting all this done. But when the “iron will” fails, there is also a cold, unrelenting fear of failure to get one out the door. All you have in your control is what you’re supposed to do today. If you waste enough of your todays, your dream dies a slow death. As if you could waste time and not injure eternity. (Thoreau).

What beginning is calling out for you? What small, mundane choice must be made today? It’s exciting, uncomfortable, scary, wonderful, awful. But, it is here. Day One. Let’s begin.