Swim

6:45 am - Floating in the water having a pee in the wet suit. There is a crowd of 3000 swimmers around me and another 6,000 plus on the beach. This officially makes it the most public act of urination for me by about 9,000 plus.

In spite of the peeing, and the guy with the bullhorn, and the forced adrenaline from the repeat plays of “Ironman” by Sabbath this moment is full of calm. It has been at least a year building til this point and for quite a few of us a great deal longer.

In 2000 I spent my summer working 50 - 60 hours weeks in food service. I smoked a pack a day (Camel Lights) and weighed 235 lbs. I spent my evenings with some fellas who cycled through jobs like this all the time. They killed them selves for middling pay, made car payments and rent (mostly), drank cheap beer. Repeat. This freaked me out. There was no way I was going to drink cheap beer for the next 40 to 60 years. At 20 years old I was having something that looked too much like a midlife crisis, complete with hacking cough, paunchy gut and a can of warm Miller Lite. What the hell was I doing with myself?

I had a conversation with my dad on one of those summers night. My father has never been accused of bending an ear so when he speaks it is to the point. In fact, to make things easier he comes armed with a handful simple choice turns of phrase, reusable for many occasions, “Everything perceived leaves an impression, the question is ‘how much’” or “Any job worth doing, is worth doing right”. At this point I wasn’t sure I was doing a job worth doing. And I certainly wasn’t doing it right. I told him as much.

He said, “The thing I was doing when I was 20, wasn’t what I was doing when I was 25. The thing I was doing when I was 25 wasn’t the thing I was doing when I was 30.” Out of context it doesn’t seem like much. But they were the right words at the right time.

My parents have always given me the freedom to choose my own path. Providing me with just enough opportunity to make things happen, but never so overbearing that I suffocate under the weight of expectation. I took his advice to mean that things could be different, it just had to be my choice. I quit the smokes and rejoined my college swim team. Oh and met met my wife.

The last part. That’s how I ended up in this water at 6:45 am on a Sunday morning in July.

7:00 am - Cannon. Gun. Bazooka. Loud. Not really sure what it was they shot off. It was a bit of a blur. But there was a big bang and then there was white. And fists. And feet.

It would have been easy for me to freak out. But I didn’t. I went with it. I didn’t try to fight anything. It is as close as I will ever come to being David Caradine. I felt like a Tai Chi master. Fist came my way: DODGE! Leg kick to the left: BLOCK! The swim is two loops of what is basically a rectangle. There is a somewhat visible golden line you can follow, but it is difficult with 3,000 other folks looking for the same thing, churning gallons of water as they go. On the way out things were certainly rough, but I never lost control. I held my ground without being so rigid that I bruised and broke in the washing machine that was the once calm Mirror Lake.

7:28 am - Done with a loop and sailing. In the water there is a muffled hum. You know that just beyond the water there is a buzz. You sense that it has rained a bit. You burst free and there is roaring thunder of 6,000+ fans and friends and family. They’ll have to wait another 30 minutes for me. Back to the muddled hum.

On the second loop I hugged the line and just floated as much as one can float in the middle of an extreme athletic event. I was coy about setting any goal times for the day. I knew about where I could be for each leg, and I knew about where I should be. But deep down inside I desperately wanted to break an hour in the swim. Not so much I was going to let it ruin my day. But I wanted to get there. And get there effortlessly.

I popped up at 59:47. 13 seconds to spare. A smile would come across my face. It would pretty much stay there for the next 12 hours.

Prep

Preparation:
The previous year - I started doing marathons in 2005 because I intended to someday do an iron distance triathlon. How I ended up at this iron event, on this day, took a bit of slight of hand.

One friend called another and said, “Everyone one is doing it. We have to. This is our last best chance.” Little did anyone know that the everyone that was doing it was also being told that everyone was doing it. My friend Jonathan said as much to me on the beach at Coney Island. Everyone was on board. It was a done deal.

We would have to go to Lake Placid to sign up. This was to guarantee entry. The week before I had my first and only ‘did not finish’. It was at a half iron distance. My stomach shut down. Two weeks before that my wife and I had had a strained conversation about the demands of training on our social life and marital bliss. For me, this was not quite done deal.

I went to Lake Placid anyway. Ironman weekend in Lake Placid is not a place to go ‘undecided’. There is no chance you make it out of town with your money or your life. By Monday morning it finally was a done deal for me. I would start having anxiety dreams two weeks later.

My official training plan started on December 28th, 2009. At the peak I put about 22 - 25 hrs a week into training. On big days I burned about 9,000 calories. My resting caloric burn rate came to about 2,700 a day. This is how many calories I would burn if I did nothing at all.

There were a few highlights of the preparation period. Strangely, many of the same incidents also sound a bit like lowlights.

There was the iron time trial in New Paltz, New York. This was four loops of a 28 mile course. You had to summit the Mohonk mountians to complete a loop. Twice. After the second loop I crashed my bike twice from fatigue and hunger. The worst of it is you pass by your car, which would gladly take you home or to a cheeseburger. I did not stop.

There was the 1.5+ mile San Francisco Bay swim. The water was 57 degrees. I wore no wet suit. I wore no wet suit. Children may not be in my future. I did not stop.

There was 18.5 miles at race pace (slow) in 95 degrees and 115% humidity (slight, but not unbelievable, exaggeration). This was done the day after I did my longest bike ride of 120 miles. I did not stop.

But mostly, when I think back on the training and the prep, it wasn’t so much a singular big day that proved my mettle. It was linking a lot of smaller events. Being consistent. Getting up, getting the rides in. Watching the food in take. Getting enough sleep so my body didn’t fail. Ignoring the please for social calls, and getting everything done so I didn’t get sick, or injured

By race day I felt fully prepared, even if I still didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t have a single anxiety dream (nightmare) in the final weeks. Done deal, indeed.