Hrumph.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007

The greatest quarterback that ever lived? I'll give him that. But this I take exception to.

Posted by Erin 11:02 AM 4 comments

Again
Tuesday, November 20, 2007

This morning looked like -- felt like -- spring. Misty. Dewey. Moist. The only giveaway that it was -- is -- in fact, November, was the slight twinge of cold riding the coattails of a faint breeze.

I woke at 6 a.m. It took me nearly an hour to get out of bed and dress. But it was not because I was tired. It was because of what lie ahead. And it both excited and scared me. The starting again.

By 6:50 I was lacing up my runners. This particular pair hadn't been on my feet since just after Ironman. It felt like forever ago. And they felt strange, like a borrowed pair of shoes. I felt strange, like I had borrowed somebody else's life for a handful of months -- just long enough to train for a race that covered 140.6 miles in one day -- only to have given it back.

But today wasn't about that day. It was about me doing this. Facing it. The starting again.

I waited what seemed like an eternity for my Garmin to locate its satellites. I started my long run mix on the Ipod. And I set out. I would run for 2.5 miles out, and 2.5 miles back, or...until.

Legs felt encased in concrete. Lungs burned. I plodded through one mile, then another half. Checked the Garmin. Only 9:40 miles, even though it felt like I had been pushing it. Only 1.5 miles covered, even though it felt like ten.

The conversation in my head scrolled like this:

"I feel like I've never run before. Now I know how it feels to 'take up' running. How easy I made it sound to people who were trying to start before. I'll have more emphathy next time."

"When people start running, they run-walk. You can run-walk, too. You're just starting."

"No you can't. You're an Ironman, for crying out loud! And this is not even mile two. Get some damned perspective. Suck it up."

"God this feels awful. Terrible. I want to make it stop. Walking makes it stop."

"No, keeping on makes it stop. If you keep going, every day, each day it will feel less awful. Plus, awful is how it felt at mile 21 of the Green Bay Marathon this year. Awful is how it felt when you tried to run through hip pain for most of the summer. Awful is how it felt at 8 p.m. on September 9th. This -- this is not awful. This is running."

And just then, "In a Big Country" came through my headphones.

So take that look out of here, it doesn't fit you /

Because it's happened doesn't mean you've been discarded.

Pull up your head off the floor, come up screaming /

Cry out for everything you ever might have wanted.

And I thought of the very last time I had listened to that song on a run. It was one of my last big weekday workouts before Ironman. I had already done an hour swim, and an hour bike, and I had a hour run on tap to complete the trifecta. It was hot. Humid, heavy air hot. And I was tired. End of Ironman training -- both for the day and the year -- tired. And either in my tiredness or Ironman-warped sense of what constituted a "short" versus "long" run, I decided against taking a water bottle.

And paid for it dearly. That run was miserable. Goose bumps formed on my arms -- my first surefire sign that I'm overheating. Water sounded better to me than any glass of wine, any cup of coffee, ever had before. But I had to keep going. Because Ironman was nearly upon me. And because if I couldn't pull off a measly five miles, how was I going to pull of 26.2 after swimming and biking all day?

Pull up your head off the floor, come up screaming...Cry out for everything you ever might have wanted.

Those words moved my legs. Conjured up an image of me, under lights, in the finish chute. Hearing Mike Riley tell me that I was an Ironman. Everything you ever might have wanted.

I finished that run. I finished the Ironman. But the making it easier? That's never finished, I found.

So today, I started, again. In earnest. Because I found that you can be an Ironman and a beginner all at once. Because I like the feeling that my lungs still burn and my legs still ache a bit, even as I type this hours later. And because it will, eventually, feel better.

Again.

Posted by Erin 12:32 PM 4 comments

Killing Time
Thursday, November 15, 2007

In my line of work, I deal daily with the killing of animals (I mean, not personally, but with the media fallout or hype surrounding said killing) -- from mute swan and Canadian geese population controls to various hunting seasons for a whole slew of different animals. Today it was the asserted inhumane trapping of raccoons. And deer season. Who can forget deer season?

Over lunch, I was reading the news clips, particularly Kevin Naze's article in the Green Bay Press Gazette today -- "Gun Opener Doesn't Come with Guarantees" -- that contained this little passage:

But by and large, the hunter who has the patience to sit tight in bedding cover or along escape routes more likely will be the one to don the gutting gloves after the flurry of opening morning activity is over.

Whitetails seem to have a knack for disappearing after the first wave of shots subsides.

The deer that don't high-tail it to thickets either are quickly dispatched, or find themselves running from one area to another in an effort to evade all fresh human scent.

And it made me so sad. The thought of these deer running frantically through the woods, trying to avoid being gutted and hung up by the ankles behind someone's camp.

I know, I know. I was born and raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan -- a place where hunting is such a part of the culture that school closes for the opening of deer season. A place where the economy is vitally dependent on this pastime. And a place where you grow up understanding that controlling the deer population with a 9-day hunt is far more humane than letting those same deer starve to death in the frigid months that follow.

But it still makes me sad.

And then I considered what I was eating for lunch -- duck ragu over linguine -- and the way I hacked at and twisted the duck carcass yesterday, trying to separate the legs and wings so as to fit the whole thing into the roaster. And how that duck must've lived and met its eventual fate.

And I thought about my dinner-to-be tonight. My mom has come to Madison (since she's off of school -- she's a teacher -- for the deer season opener), as she always does, with food. Veal cutlets, in particular. Veal is the one meat I won't -- can't -- eat, which started after reading this, but she spent a good deal of money on the cutlets, and I eat meat, and thus, I feel obligated.

And it made me want to be a vegetarian. All of it.

But not really. Because I love to cook. And I really, really liked the duck ragu that I made. And every now and again, I loves me a great, big steak.

So maybe, for now, I'll just continue to be sad about it all. In the meantime, following is a flash nonficiton piece I wrote and just dug up on the same topic that had previously been published in the now-defunct Second Review. Seemed appropriate for today, and this time of year.

*****************************************************************

Interspersed with the golden leaves are a few crimson ones—drops of God’s blood that fell from on high. It’s killing time here in Michigan ’s Upper Peninsula. Here in the great north woods.

Soon men, and a scattering of women, will take to the trees and fields. They will look like neon pumpkins. They won’t even try to be sneaky with camouflage. They will lure the hunted with apples and corn, silence and stillness, promises of the good of sacrifice, and few apologies.

My best friend cries at sappy movies: Clueless, The Lion King, For Love of the Game. When she was in sixth grade, her dad took her to see Dances With Wolves. He thought it would be nice, thought it would give them some time together, just the two of them—time to bond. But it wasn’t nice. The wolf died in the end, and my friend wouldn’t speak to her father for weeks. “You never told me that they kill the dog!” she screamed at him as they left the theatre. She was still sobbing, even though the movie had ended fifteen minutes before.

“I didn’t know, Pammy. I’m sorry. I just didn’t know.”

The same friend shot a forkhorn last year. All morning she sat in the deer blind her father had constructed just for her. Cold gnawed at her bones, her stomach growled. But there was a slight rustling in the trees behind her, and then it moved up in front, where she could see it. Slowly, methodically, she raised her gun, leveled it at the deer, and pulled the trigger.

I asked her how she does it, this girl who sobs over dead movie dogs.

“Just don’t look at the eyes,” she told me. “You never, ever look at the eyes.”

In the small rowboat off the shore of Vancouver Island , I can see a flat-as-a-pancake fish nestling in close to my lure. I jig the pole so it can’t latch its teeny fish lips around the hook.

What in the hell are you doing? my boyfriend asks, drawing out the last word longer than necessary.

I tell him that I don’t want that one.

And why not? he asks.

I tell him that it looks like a bottom feeder, that I’m not going to hook it and throw it back just to say that I got a fish.

Erin , he says, it’s a flounder. It is not a bottom feeder. You’ve heard of flounder, haven’t you?

I have heard of flounder, but I tell him that that isn’t really the issue. That even if one of the huge salmon that keep leaping out of the water all around us wanted to suckle on my lure, I don’t think I would let it.

My boyfriend looks at me as though I have lost my mind. As though he just witnessed all of my functioning brain cells leaping one by one from the top of my head into the ocean below like little lemmings.

What is the issue, then? he asks me, badly faking patience.

I ask him if he can imagine what it must feel like to be pulled up into a boat, the full weight of your body hanging from a sharp hook lodged in your lips, in your gums, what it must feel like to slowly suffocate. I tell him that I don’t want to do that to a fish, to anything.

Fish have itty-bitty brains, he says, almost no nerve endings. They barely feel a thing.

I tell him that I don’t care—it still doesn’t feel right. He shakes his head slowly, back and forth, wondering, I’m sure, how he could have misjudged me so badly. Mistaken me for a good girlfriend.

What can I say? I tell him. I am the daughter of a man who brings books to deer camp, and forgets his gun.

Driving down M-95, on the way to Iron Mountain , I end up behind a rusty old Ford, maroon and white, pulling an equally rickety-looking trailer. The Ford creeps along at fifty miles an hour, but I can’t pass in the face of the long thread of cars coming the opposite direction. So I settle in, adjust the cruise, and scan for a decent song on the radio. I look over the trailer ahead of me, attached to the Ford. On it is a four-wheeler and a blue tarp. Cloven-hoofed legs stick out from under the tarp—four of them, sticking straight out, rigid. Then, some miles down the road, the wind whips just right, peels the tarp back. For a moment I think it’s a doe, but then I see two little nubs the size of a man’s thumb on its head, and the soft black orbs below them drink me in. And they tell me, whisper to me, My friend, this is just how things are.

Posted by Erin 11:46 AM 2 comments

Ironman Hangover
Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Lately, I have no drive, no desire. Actually, that's untrue. Seems I have much drive and desire for things like, say, the occasional (nightly) glass of red wine...or four, hanging out at my condo and cooking, spending countless hours at the barn, taking weekends to travel and visit friends and family I haven't seen in what seems like forever, trying to figure out some god-forsaken location to host a wedding, et cetera.

And now and again, I get the twinge to strap on my runners and move my legs over a handful of miles (or three).

But when it comes to getting in the pool or on my bike, I just can't seem to do it.

I've thought about both. Quite a bit. Once I was almost on my way out the door to Masters. But then I really thought about it. And then, suddenly, I was on the couch watching Dancing With the Stars.

Walking to work this morning, I had a dreaded thought: what if I'm just a normal person in triathlete's clothing?

After all, shouldn't I be itching to get back on my bike and back in the pool? Shouldn't I be checking out programs that are going to make me faster and stronger for next season? Shouldn't I be planning next season? (I got the email update last week from Midwest Sports Events with next season's events and dates, and what did I do? Hit "delete").

Because I'm not. At all. Doing any of it.

And lately, I've felt bad about this. At best it makes me feel like I'm an impostor Iron(wo)man...one who snuck something by everyone else on this whole journey -- like I didn't really earn it as much as others did. At worst, I feel like it wasn't even really me who completed that insane/amazing journey only two months back -- like it was someone else who looked a lot like me and had a life like mine and the same people in it, but wasn't actually me.

And on my morning walk to work today, I realized that it's not the activity that I've been having an adverse reaction to. Rather, it's the schedule. And, as such, I've come to loathe the dreaded schedule.

For the past year, every second of my day was scheduled. In fact, with two to three-hour workouts each night, dogs to entertain, a horse to check in on now and then, committee meetings to attend, and work to show up at, there wasn't even time left over for dentist appointments, grocery shopping, or accepting any kind of impromptu "let's meet for a drink after work" invitations from friends. Every night, looking at the next day's workout and trying to figure out how I would fit those hours in in addition to everything else that had to get done, was a lesson in stress management for me.

And that -- the schedule -- is what I don't miss. At all. Having to do something. Having to be somewhere. Having to cram it all in and figure out how I was going to exercise my dog and get a swim in all at the same time.

What I need to get my head around, though, is that it's not all-or-nothing. I can do a three-mile run, and call it a day. I can attend Master's once a week, and be okay with that. Or try.

But eventually, if I'm going to continue with triathlon -- which I would like to do -- I'm going to need to get back on a program. And sticking to the program or doing the work doesn't freak me out. Losing my freedom to a schedule once again does, though.

In the meantime, today, I took a baby step and started running again. (Amazing how quickly that endurance leaves the body!). More on that to come...

Posted by Erin 7:48 AM 11 comments

Why Planning a Wedding is Harder Than Doing an Ironman
Friday, November 02, 2007

1. One word: schedule. Unfortunately, there are no Training Peaks for weddings. There are just lots and lots and lots of materials that tell you what you already know and completely leave out what you need to know...or else don't tell you anything and just show you pictures of dresses that cost more than your entire wedding should.
2. Triathlon magazines tell you how to get stronger and faster. Wedding magazines -- from the articles to the emaciated models -- only focus on how to get thinner.
3. No one has an opinion on how you must do Ironman, unless they've done one (a very, very small segment of the population) and (usually) you ask. This does not hold true for weddings.
4. There is little choice involved in where and when you do your Ironman, it doesn't matter if anyone else can be there except you, and you're the only one who will care what location you pick.
5. You can work off the stress of doing an Ironman in training for an Ironman. Weddings? Not so much.
6. Your mother does not try to plan your Ironman.
7. Think a swim coach, YMCA membership, wetsuit, bike shoes, road bike, helmet, running shoes, Ipod, Garmin, race fees, Ironman entry fee, endless supplies of GU, Gatorade, and Endurolytes is a lot to spend in a year? Start adding up a dress, shoes, ceremony, reception site rental, chair covers, centerpieces, band, catering, security, insurance, limo, flowers, save-the-date cards, invitations, website construction, welcome bags, favors, photographer, videographer, table set-up fees, linens, tips, etc, etc, etc – for ONE DAY.
8. No one ever demands to bring a guest or their child to your Ironman.
9. When you see your team for the 15th time during Ironman, you want to cry out of gratitude. When see your guest list for the 15,000^th time, you just want to cry.
10. Your best friends don't complain about what they have to wear to your Ironman.
11. You could care less if one of your team gets falling-down-drunk at your Ironman. In fact, it would be a welcome diversion.
12. Registering for an Ironman is over and done with in a matter of minutes. Registering for a wedding can test the patience and endurance of a seasoned diplomat.
13. Very few people have had to go into therapy as a result of doing an Ironman.
14. You take special pride in people asking if you're insane or what you're thinking by doing an Ironman. It never gets old. By comparison, being asked, "Have you set a date?"for the 100th time is old the day after you get engaged.
15. Race directors are not out to get you. Not true of reception halls, caterers, or florists.

Posted by Erin 7:57 AM 7 comments