Another Ironman Ramble

Christmas night I finally sat down and watched the NBC coverage of the Ironman World Championships in Kona, HI. I see this program every year and it's the first time that I can remember them showing how brutal an Ironman bonk can be. Did you see it? Folk staggering, sobbing, crashing, barfing, and getting carried off on stretchers. Good family fun! They still can't do the race justice by editing it down to a little over 1-hour of air time, but I applaud them for allowing viewers to see it's not all about story book endings.

I read and copied this quote when training for Ironman in 2007. I can't remember who wrote it (maybe it's in "Going Long" by Friel & Byrn?), but I used this passage to keep me focused during training,

"The Ironman rewards preparation, planning and patience and it can brutally punish those under prepared, those with self doubt, those who are physically under -trained and equally those that assume their right of passage instead of earning it.
I often think a video clip showing athletes at the back of the run course, sobbing in pain or just sheer fatigue would portray a very realistic side of the Ironman. This portrayal would not be good for marketing, but the reality of the event is that if you get it wrong, you usually get it horribly wrong."

Most athletes have a good healthy respect of the Ironman distance. But I can attest that it's easy to fall into the trap of feeling this "right of passage." In the past couple years I've surrounded myself with Ironman freaks - literally hundreds of athletes that live and breathe Ironman. We publicly track training metrics. We talk about training, gear, and nutrition. We plan epic training weeks and share race reports. Training and racing is still cool, but the magic can get stripped away. It's like waking up one morning and realizing Santa isn't real. Christmas is still cool, but the mystique is gone forever.

Converting my mindset from simply wanting to finish strong to wanting to compete and contend is proving to be so very hard! My ego has taken a good healthy pounding by masses of athletes that can just simply kick my ass. I've been practicing what I preach to my boys, "If you want to get stronger, you should play with the bigger boys." It's a difficult position because, even though I can't keep up with the varsity kids, many of my JV buds no longer want to train with me as I get faster. The way I see it, the only thing to do is keep my foot on the gas pedal.