Reasoning

I was listening to a series of endurance sports and triathlon podcasts on my way home from Madison, and one woman was talking about how this year she'll be doing a half-marathon and training for a half-Ironman race in July. The podcast series is just dedicated to triathlon and triathlete life rather than weekly interviews with pros or elites or whatever, so its interview subjects always come from many different and diverse backgrounds. Anyway, keeping in mind my hysterically elaborate training schedule and absurdly scientific perspective on the slightest nuances of all things triathlon (which, as we've established, is part of my enjoyment - I'm a complicated thinker, and so be it), I enjoyed this woman's perspective - she's the mom of two small daughters, and she runs 3 times a week - 1 long run - rides 3 times a week - 1 long ride - and swims really once a week. Except for her long run, she runs with one of those running strollers and 100 pounds of toddler attached to her. Except for her long ride, she rides with one of those kid-trailers behind her and she said her daughters count the ducks around the lake as she rides. She joked that it's great resistance training, and when she finally rides or runs without the added weight she feels like she's flying. She goes swimming on weekends, when her family goes along, and for the first hour or so her husband takes the girls in the "play" pool while she swims laps, and then she joins them. Her purpose for getting into triathlon - she emphasized that she began with a real hatred for running - was to get into shape after the birth of her second daughter, and also to demonstrate positive behavior and modeling for her daughters.

What a useful and inspiring way into triathlon, and what a healthy perspective. I admit - I am here, putting myself through this Ironman thing - because - appropriate metaphor - I am running away from much, and running towards much. Somehow this process is for me a proving grounds, and a purging, and a refinement as much as it is a purpose and a process. Any suffering, struggle, or sacrifice is a welcome change to the years spent in a sort of haunted ether. And I've often thought, to do Ironman or any other kind of ultra-endurance event, you have to be a little mad. Seriously. You have to have a complex about something. You have to have something inside yourself that isn't at rest. How else explain this? True: why climb Everest? "Because it was there." But why YOU? Why NOW? Why THIS? For each of us that's ever chosen to put one foot in front of the other in competition, the answer is different. I do this in honor and in memorium. I flee ghosts. I endeavor as fast as I can around the next corner because I run to those that wait for me. I acknowledge that there are dark edges around my purposes here. Not sinister in any way, but colored by the same greys and crimsons that are, in the midst of all the beautiful and bright hues in the Painting Of My Life, still the primary shades to me. I embrace this. This is how I exercise, and this is how I exorcise. And in general, I'm of a belief that I share this bond with many, if not most, endurance athletes. I don't speak of the professionals, who obviously have money to make and legacies to leave with their performances (yet whose personal reasons are still rich and complicated and admirable - see Lance Armstrong), or of the weekend warriors who sign up for the local 5k or even trains for a marathon to lose a few pounds, whose intentions are pure and probably temporary and that's perfectly applaudable. I'm talking about the people who will never have their names called to the podium, and who races first to outrun himself - literally and metaphorically, gauging success only against past successes and failures. I'm talking also about the people who race to qualify for Kona, or the Boston Marathon, or whatever. Because while their motivation is to qualify, their motivation for that motivation is something else, and I relate to that - there are no dollars, not shoe contracts, no endorsements on the other side of that qualification. Just you, alone again on the road, racing for something only you understand. I speak of those who, with bleeding feet and barely able to walk, will sign up to do it again. Who will hear the timbre of one cheering voice in ten thousand because THAT voice belongs to the most important person in the world. We each have reasons for being here, and I simply think this is all too much for those reasons to be singular and unremarkable.

I don't mean to complicate what is, plainly, a simple thing: swimming, biking, running - it's not brain surgery, and most of us know how to do all of them by the time we're 7 years old. Nor do I want to add undue gravitas to what is, after all, just a game. I know that. I've not totally lost perspective here. I also acknowledge that, as I tend to wax philosophical about this stuff I risk seeming pretentious in some way. I'll choose unconcern. It was joyful for me to hear this unassuming woman and her unassuming reasons that were, by nature, unclouded. That seemed right. Her reasons for being here seemed heroic to me. Her way of doing it seemed complete, and appropriate, and right. Her family was part of her training. Part of her routine. Part of her reasons. In clear, tangible ways that are unlike my own complicated reasons. I liked that. Admired it. And it got me, for whatever reason, thinking about Todd's always lovable self deprecating remarks on the blog this week, alluding to how "insignificant" his Sprint triathlons are compared to Ironman (his allusions - his illusions - not mine). Which isn't to say Todd's intentional humor was lost on me or that I interpreted him differently than he intended or whatever. Just - his comments came to mind. And I remembered how I felt after my very first triathlon only 2 years ago - when I said out loud "I am a triathlete", and how fun that was, and is. And how Todd's doing this thing now, for his reasons, for whatever reasons they are for him, or whatever reasons they turn out to be. His real reasons. He joked that he wanted to kick some friends asses. Probably only a half joke. But his reasons BEHIND those reasons - those are his, and that is why he races, among a million others. And it just got me thinking: you know, you could do this. I mean you. YOU, as in you reading this right now. Except for the injured or infirm or incapable, and I know Patric and Amy that these things are not realities for you just now (and so do you see how I do them on your behalf? As Iris did, at the end of her marathon when she thought of Amy? Do you see these connections, like so many firing synapses that seem, like my reasons, to be so unrelated and unspecific but in the end TOGETHER move the muscle?), but there is nothing more magical or monumental about my 146.1 miles compared to Todd's 28 miles. The distance is a false indicator, you see? What's important is that this is what I choose to do to respond to the reasons that I have for doing it. As Todd has his reasons for doing his. Case in point: In the summer of '04 I raced a short Sprint triathlon that took me something like and hour and 37 minutes or something to finish. It was a combined 29 mile course or something. And after the race we stuck around, and an hour and a half later, coming in at over 3 hours since the race started, was the very last racer on the course. And she was a very large woman who was struggling significantly through the finish line shoot, and her family was there cheering her on, all wearing bright orange shirts with her name on them, and as she approached the finish line her kids - 4 or 5 of them I think - all came out and held hands with her as they crossed the finish line. For me it was a short training race on the way to a larger, more significant race that season. But for her and her family, who knows what it took to get her here? What efforts and changes in her lifestyle she'd made, what sacrifices she endured, what reasons she had. Or in the same race, the elderly man that crossed the finish line to have his small grand-daughter come running and leaping up into his arms and kiss him on the cheek, probably hardly aware of what was really happening, but so clearly evident on the man's face that THIS is the prize he was racing towards these last hours. It's all relative, you see? My course, my reasons, they've taken me down this path, and it's mine to tread, however I will. For Todd, his reasons, however simple or complex, they've led him to his race in July. Maybe it's his first of many, maybe it's his last in his life, but it's HIS, for whatever it is. For this woman on the podcast, it was more about her daughters than herself. Whatever the distance, whatever the reasons, I count myself only as one among many who are themselves one among many, and each of us has a universe around us responsible for getting us first to the starting gun, and then to the finish line.