This year they decided to change the swim start to accommodate more people, er, uh, I mean to ‘alleviate anxiety’. For whatever reason you believe, the swim started in waves (pun intended). We were asked estimate our swim finish time and get into a group with others estimating the same finish time. The faster swimmers started first and if you thought you needed the full 2 hours and 20 minutes, you started last. This way, the faster swimmers wouldn’t run over the slower ones. Makes sense, right?

Since I seeded myself with others planning on finishing between an hour and 30 and and hour and 40 minutes, I started about 15 minutes after the first ones got into the water. The first group got in about 6:30 am and I did about 15 minutes later (which was still before 7 am (the usual official start)). The official cut off times were no longer a set number. For instance, I ‘started’ (by crossing the chip reader at the water entrance) at 6:45 am and I only had 17 hours to complete the course, then I would only have until 11:45 pm to finish. The problem was I had no idea how many minutes before 7 am I started.

Not in my wildest dreams would I have thought about worrying that I couldn’t make it by the 17 hour mark. That is, until I got to about mile 50 on the bike and was only 4 1/2 hours into the day. At mile 50 I was going 6 mph up the hill and only averaging 13.4 miles on the trip so far. So it was before noon and my calculations were pushing me close to a midnight finish already! How depressing! About 12 more hours….. That’s a long time (a really long time).

If my thought of not making it in time wasn’t enough, the guy that won the race PASSED me on his second loop about a mile later. He was already 45 minutes into his marathon by the time I got 1/2 way through the bike. Hows that humanly possible?!

When I finally did get back into town, I got my special needs bag but couldn’t eat much of any of the delicious food I packed. My stomach couldn’t handle much for some reason. So I threw out my yummy jelly and salt sandwich after a bite and took the soon to be famous Fawn’s Energy Bites and put them in a baggie on my bike for my next FOUR HOUR RIDE! I’m tired again just thinking about that….

I saw Fawn as I was leaving the special needs area and told her that the first leg of the bike damn near killed me and that I was already calculating a close to midnight finish. She just smiled and said “That’s OK, you’ll still DO IT!’ Thanks for the tear in my eye… With a big breath, I started my second loop.

There were fewer people in and around me on that second start. The climb out of LP wasn’t too bad (probably because of those Bites!) I got to the first aid station and they still had supplies to hand out… a good sign, I wasn’t that far behind everyone.

I was wearing a GPS from My Athlete in addition to the chip given to me by the race so the people tracking me could see my, er, um, progress. Because of the lack of cell coverage in the area, the GPS dropped out about that time and would find me again about 20 miles later. My dad was one of the ones tracking my progress and could see the elevation map on his computer. Right at about that aid station, there was another mile climb then about a 9 mile decent. Since my GPS lost my signal there, my dad (who was tracking me on his computer at home) thought I just stopped. He told me later that he kept thinking that he wished I knew that if I only went one more mile, I could relax for the next nine. But there was my GPS blinking in the same spot as if I stopped. I’m sure he tried to mentally send me a message.

It turns out, I did keep going and eventually got to nine mile decent (thank goodness). And let me tell you, going 40 mph on the bike is a scary thought until you actually do it. It is a huge rush. Though I did hit my brakes for a bit on that section because the people in front of me didn’t quite enjoy going that fast.

The straight away after that was pretty non-eventful. The good news for me was that I could see a bunch of people in front of me which meant I wasn’t too far behind. I had in my head that the first lap killed me and I was surely among the very last riders out there.

I’ve been having a tough time avoiding what became an inevitable sugar crash during training. I knew it was coming that day, just didn’t know when. In my transition bag I packed a coconut oil and water combo and a small serving of veggies. That was my attempt to push the crash back to later in the day. On the course the volunteers hand out some sort of sports drink, gu packets, and power bars. All of which are really tasty, easily handled and a source of ‘energy’. The ‘energy’ comes with a price though. As long as I could keep my blood sugar high by timing the consumption of these energy sources, I’d avoid having to feel like I have to go to sleep.

When I say I have a sugar crash during training, I mean if I consume too much sugar, my body shuts down (and it happens quickly!).  I can feel great, then within a matter of minutes, I would rather be in bed under the covers with the sound machine playing white noise. The ‘crash’ starts with a false energy burst (which has fooled me in the past) but is accompanied by a voice in my head telling me to stop immediately or I’ll be sorry. It’s sort of like the voice I hear when I’m eating a delicious meal and there is plenty to be saved for the next meal if I stop, but if I don’t I’ll have a food baby later and I’ll be miserable from over consumption. I only listen to that voice (You’ll Be Sorry If You Eat Too Much Food Voice) about half the time (which is a really high percentage…for me), but I DO listen. Back to the first voice (You’re Gonna Have A Sugar Crash If You Don’t Change Something Voice), I DON”T listen, at least I hardly ever listen.

After ignoring the voice, I develop tunnel vision. Then quickly after, I get the shakes and feel light headed. The shakes seem mostly internal. If I looked at my hands (I’d only see my hands, you know the tunnel vision thing) I probably wouldn’t see them shaking, though they feel like they were. Come to think of it, it’s probably more like slight muscle twitches.  What is actually going on in my body, I don’t know. I can guess that my body is trying to balance out my sugar level. It’s also taking protein from my other muscles to put it where I was using it, in my legs. Perhaps the protein carrying blood heading south contributes to my  light headedness.

So, here I am, 10 miles to go, internally shaking with tunnel vision and a light head (though I’m sure if I didn’t balance it properly above my shoulders, it’d be so heavy I’m sure I’d topple over). ‘Concentrate Tom’, I’d say to myself. I’m on my bike, taking turns slowly (there are so many turns at the end!), hoping to get back to the transition safely. Each mile passed slower and slower as it felt like the end was getting farther away. My cartoonish idea of the line getting smaller and smaller as if was being sucked into a vacuum I wasn’t invited to.

I grabbed a bottle of water at the last aid station and pedaled into the abyss.

I can’t remember anything that went through my head those last miles, but I did somehow make it. I had a jelly and salt sandwich waiting for me at the transition (made at Nourish (not a menu item)) and couldn’t wait to get there.  I handed my bike over at the dismount line and stumbled into the change tent……

Chomp, chomp, gulp.

Five minutes later…. I was jogging out of transition and onto the marathon.

In 2012, I decided to start in the front of the pack. I was on the front line, right smack in the middle of the action (or the front of the action). Like the previous year, my breathing was short and heavy from when I entered the water till the cannon shot off. My breathing was so short and heavy, in fact, it was just shy of a panic feeling. As I’m waiting and wading for 7 am and the official start of the day, I kept telling myself to calm down….. It didn’t work.

My lack of confidence at that moment didn’t make me pull back from the front of the line (as I certainly should have done, so it seems in hindsight). In fact I couldn’t wait to start swimming,  thinking that would make me calm down as it would have taken my mind off of how many other people were around me (only about 2300 others). In the grand scheme of things 2,300 people really isn’t that many. For some reason, on that particular morning it seemed like the whole world. Since there is no clock that can be seen from the water, my anticipation for the start seemed prolonged and made my anxiety a little worse. There was a moment I wished time stood still so the canon wouldn’t go off and I wouldn’t have to go.  I usually don’t have any issues breathing and have a certain level of self confidence to feel like I can handle myself physically in any situation, but that morning there was nothing ‘physical’ I could do about it. My mind had control. It controlled my breathing and, soon my swimming ability.

BOOM, shot the cannon! Ohhhh crap! I got run over in a matter of seconds, I got kicked in the ear and got my right arm hung up on another swimmer’s body. Unfortunately, my breathing didn’t calm down. In fact, it got worse. I started to panic. A feeling I don’t remember feeling in my life. I was hyperventilating. I couldn’t even put my face in the water for one stroke.  As I tried to keep my head above water, I just wanted it to be over. I spied a kayak and contemplated heading over to it to grab the front and tell the volunteer “I quit”.  I had enough, but I had to keep moving forward to avoid getting run over more. Since I started in the (left to right) center, getting to that tiny kayak had more risk involved because I would have had to have gone cross traffic. Talk about a really difficult level of Frogger. What a crappy feeling that was.

With my ear throbbing, my right shoulder hurting, my legs now cramping up, and this hopeless feeling inside, I was just pulled (and pushed) inside the Tempe Town Washing Machine.

I had no concept of time. It may have been 2 minutes or 20 minutes later when I came to the realization that quitting really wasn’t an option. People flew all the way from Pennsylvania and everyone that cared about me was there (or tracking me online) just to see my try this. There was no way I was giving up. So, ultimately, I don’t know if it was my not wanting to fail with people watching or the reason I wanted to do this in the first place, to feel good about myself, that kept me from giving up.

Since we were heading toward the bright sunrise, and looking up to sight was futile, I tried something that blocked out all those ‘distractions’ (thousands of kicking legs and flailing arms in my personal space). I closed my eyes and pretended I was the only one in the lake, like the one in Allentown where I went by myself. It took only a few strokes, but there I was, all alone, in this giant lake. The sounds I heard were waves created by the wind, the things I felt touching my body were just curiously friendly fish that wanted to swim along. Suddenly my breathing became normal and I was …. swimming.  Occasionally I would open my eyes to make sure I was going semi-straight. I couldn’t help by see everyone still around me, but for some reason, none of the ‘friendly fish’ in wet-suits bothered me anymore. My breathing was restored, that silly thought of quitting was gone, my swimming technique was back and I just overcame a panic in the water. How freaking cool is that? I panicked, then overcame it, on my own, in the water, with people climbing all over me! Big smile, then and now.

I got out of the water an astonishing 2 minutes faster than last year! Weird. I must have had a really rough time this year because last year I was conscious of how bad I was doing.

There are some things that happen to you in life that you will never forget and in this race that is just one of them.

I was a bit nervous driving to New York this past weekend (with no place to stay but in my truck) and volunteering for the Ironman Lake Placid 2012. The drive, nor the lack of a comfy sleep space didn’t bother me at all. The thing that made me nervous was thinking that I’d be committing myself to race in the event next year. Ok, that really wasn’t it either. It was the unknown of what Ironman Lake Placid was. I’ve heard of the place, Id even seen it on Google Earth, but I still couldn’t picture it. I had to see it. For some reason I felt like the distance at the Lake Placid event would be longer or seem harder than the one in Arizona.

After the confirming nod from Ollie that the distances were in fact the same (even though it is in a different time zone than AZ), I started to get excited and began to have fun.

I went to the gym this morning and used the leg presses (I like the feeling of tight leg muscles…. you know, blasting your quads). As I pushed more weight than I did last week, my mind started thinking about this moment in time. What a different mindset than I normally have (despite popular belief). As I watched my lower quads tighten, I was glad that I had a chance to move like that today. I didn’t think about tomorrow, next week or 6 months from now, my only thought was right now. Right stinkin now. Having fun in the moment.

My ‘exciting’ stories about training for and becoming an Ironman will become just another story about one thing I did once…. like hitting for the cycle. But for today at least, and at least for me, it’s pretty exciting.

I hadn’t been running frequently because I hurt my ankle last week. I figured if I ran on it, I’d hurt it some more and that would prevent me from running better in the near future. That’s good thinking, right? But what if the way I run today is the best I will ever run from this point on? I hope that’s not the case, but who knows. When that day eventually comes, will I know that was my last best day?

He looked exactly like I did as he walked out of the driveway and ‘attempted’  to balance on the bike for the first time. I suggested he go up the street to get comfortable balancing. Thank goodness no cars were coming in either direction. I rode next to him and could see his hands with a strangle grip on the bars, and the front tire was weaving because of it. We, thankfully, made it to the top of the hill (the first mental obstacle) without hitting anything or falling. Next it was time to learn how to use the brakes because the next 1/2 mile is downhill. We practiced stopping completely and stepping off the bike (a very important… step). The reminder of standing on the pedals, moving hips forward off the seat and then stepping off after stopping was repeated quite a bit.

We crossed Elm St and headed toward the curb cut for the path. Oh boy, I thought, this may be tough. I went first then looked back and saw his bike take a very smooth turn behind me. I was impressed. Since it was a very nice day, there were a lot of people on the path. I suggested he ride in front of me because I felt more comfortable about being able to avert trouble if any arose, plus I could ‘teach’ him about the gears (how and when to change them).

“We’re only going to the office and back, right?’  The fear of going further, without even knowing what 10 miles felt like, seemed semi-paralyzing. “When we get to the office, we’ll decide”. I remember being concerned that first day too. I wish someone would have told me not to worry about miles the first time I went, because thinking about distance when I’ve never gone that far before seemed really really far. Ten miles can be done in less than an hour at a leisurely pace, anyone can ride a bike for an hour, right?  That thought just changed the equation. If we commit to a time and not a distance, you’ll be surprised how easy the distance will add up in no time. I don’t know if that lesson was translated properly or even accepted if it was.

When we stopped at the office for a drink break, I told him about the canopy of trees over the path in Valley Forge. I told him it’s about 2 miles away (he just did 5) and 2 seemed easy. Since 2 was a much smaller number than 10 (minutes), I went with 2 as a comparison for the ease of getting there. So what if I contradicted myself. The goal was to think differently than ever before. We’re only riding bikes, but it was an obstacle and sometimes you need encouragement and a different thought process to overcome obstacles. So, we continued on to search for the tree canopy.

Right at that moment, there was no fear, no fight, no worries about not making it. We passed people and people passed us. “Pretend you are playing the piano as a reminder to yourself not to strangle the handle bars”. The goal was not to go fast, it was to reach the canopy…. and there it was! “Another 1/2 mile and we hit Valley Forge, wanna see it?” A surprising “yes” was the answer. In what seemed like a minute, there was our turnaround cut out at Valley Forge. You made it! In just over a half hour of riding at a leisurely pace. That will be like a warm up for you in 2 months.

Heading home is always like riding downhill regardless of the terrain. The anticipation of reaching home along a familiar path (because you just saw it) away from the unknown makes the time go much faster. Before we knew it, we were at the office again. This time, we just stopped on the path, took a drink and kept going. That was important, we didn’t ‘need’ to stop and rest we just ‘needed’ to make it home. In less than 20 minutes we’ll hit the bottom of the hill in Conshy (then we’ll figure out how to get up that hill). We hit 23 mph on that path without me ‘pulling’ him. We caught faster riders and got more comfortable with speed. We said ‘on your left’ and had fun passing other riders.

“After the bridge, we have a sharp left, then a sharp right, make sure you signal in case there is someone behind you.” Once we got to Maple Street, I had him follow me. We had to find the easiest hill to climb. There’s an alleyway between third and forth that I chose. ” You can do this, switch to the big gear in the back and stand up on the pedals if it gets too hard.” He stayed with me and we made it. That was a hard way to finish. We crossed Fayette St and coasted home. One last reminder about how to stop and dismount and our ‘lesson’ was over.

Later that day, I thought about all the things I learned by telling someone else what I knew. Steve went a total of 18 miles on his first bike ride in years. Now he knows he can go ‘that far’.

Knee brace: check.

Ankle brace: check.

Walkman set to Awesome Mix 7: check

Wrists and forehead sweatbands: check

Knee high socks: check

My favorite ”yea, I jog” t-shirt: check 

While jogging (which I love to do, especially on cold days when I can wear my jogging suit) I tried to concentrate on landing solidly directly below my body. Though my concentration only lasts for a few steps at a time until I’m distracted by 1000 other thoughts going through my head (like “I bet I could wear my velour jogging suit to go jogging, take off my forehead sweatband after, then go to a fancy restaurant for dinner without changing, it’s that nice).

The neat thing is when I concentrated on landing properly, I actually did land properly and felt lighter. I guess I have to practice running that way so eventually I don’t have to practice.

The best part of the night, besides being able to jog, was that I had and still have no pain. Now off to the fancy restaurant.