Deflation and Metamorphosis

“Corollary to Murphy's Law: If you tell the boss that you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the next morning you will have a flat tire.”

George Edward Woodberry

When I raced in my first triathlon in July 1994, the only thing that really worried me was getting a flat tire. At the time, the idea of having to sit at the side of the road trying to replace a blown inner tube while everyone else was zooming past was somehow a Titanic-like prospect to me. I was doing the triathlon on a borrowed road bike and I had also borrowed a pump, which I clumsily duct-taped to the top tube; during my ride it shifted position and poked into my stomach each time I tried to bend over into the drops.

It was one of those old-fashioned pumps, the kind I used to have attached to my bike as a kid: a long silver tube with a little hose that was stuffed into a hole in the handle and which you screwed onto the valve to use. Of course in the race, the Presta valve on my road bike tires would not have fit the Schrader valve on the little hose, so I had also borrowed a brass adapter to make it all compatible. I was ready. As it happened, somewhere along the bike ride, the little hose slid out of its hole in the pump, fell to earth and, like Dorothy’s ruby slippers, was lost forever. But I didn’t know that at the time so I finished my maiden 40k bike feeling safe, protected, and chastely unpunctured.

My fear of flat tires that first day nearly twenty years ago must have been born of prescience, as I have had more of them than any cyclist I know. I am actually one of those people you see during a race at the side of the road - bike upside down with one wheel lying on the ground and a discarded inner tube curled around his feet - and are glad you are not him.

Most recently, the rear tire on my commuting bike experienced a series of slow leaks. Each morning I would come out to find the tire flat, with no apparent cause. I could find nothing whatsoever wrong with the tire or the rim, and stupidly I kept replacing tubes at the rate of about one a week. For a while, I actually suspected that a neighbour was sneaking into my garage each night and letting the air out. Yes, I did eventually go out and buy a new tire, and yes it’s fixed. The functionality of my commuting bike has recently become less relevant, as I will describe below.

At the Race Across the West in 2010 we were puzzled about repeated flats in the desert until we noticed that there was a large spike-like thorn from a cactus embedded in what had been advertised as an unbreachable tire. Luckily I had my crew to change the tires for me; if I had had to do it myself at that point in the race I probably would have just lain down and let the vultures have me.

My T1 prayer:
just this once...please, no flats

At Ironman Canada in 2011, I had two flats: one while climbing Richter Pass and the other just before the out and back section at 100k. I was lucky enough to have the second one right next to the terrific support van from The Bike Barn. The observant tech volunteer noticed that my rim tape had shifted, exposing my tube to the holes in the rim, which explained the recurring blowouts. A new piece of tape, a replaced inner tube and I was on my way. Like Chrissie Wellington blowing away her one CO₂ cartridge without getting any into the tire while leading the race in Kona, two flats in one Ironman comes under my personal definition of Worst Case Race Scenario. Having undergone it once, I like to think that if the Universe is inflating as it should, I should be exempt in the future.

One good thing about every flat tire I have ever had is that somehow I have gotten each one fixed and then carried on. I have learned to say "OK, it’s happened; now what do we do?" Those who have never flatted have not had this opportunity; they are still waiting and worrying about what they will do when it eventually does happen. I have learned what life is like on the far side of a flat and I feel somehow richer for the experience. And I’ve learned that the only wrong thing you can do is to do nothing.

A flat tire during a bike ride is an event that requires that you stop, assess the situation, consider the options, and choose your next steps: you can sit at the roadside communing with the mosquitos and looking forlorn until someone comes along to help; you can call your wife to come and pick you up; or you can fix the problem and get on your way. A world of choices appears that wasn’t there before.

A few weeks ago I was presented with another such challenge when the financial industry job I had held for many years was erased from existence by the company I worked for and I was suddenly unemployed. Not their fault any more than a flat tire is the fault of the bike, but the feeling was somewhat the same: OK, it’s happened; now what do we do? I have found myself presented with myriad choices that weren’t there before. And like standing beside my disabled bicycle in the blazing August sun halfway up Richter Pass, doing nothing is the only unacceptable option.

Many choices. All the better for getting on my way again.

I Never Metatarsal I Didn’t Like - Florida Ironman 70.3, May 19 2013

“It ain’t the heat. It’s the humility.”
Yogi Berra (attr)

Last weekend my activities consisted of the following: I swam two kilometres, biked 90 kilometres, ran 21.1 kilometres, and drove 4,200 kilometres.  The first three were in my first triathlon of the season. The last was to get to the triathlon, which was the Florida Ironman 70.3. Not unsurprisingly, I found the drive to be the easiest but least fulfilling of these activities.

The race, which like all 70.3 events is beautifully organized, is held in Haines City, south of Orlando. This is a move from  the former venue of Disney World, at which I always felt a bit out of place, being an athlete surrounded by thousands of tubby tourists waddling around in their oversized T- shirts and Mickey Mouse ears. The Haines City townfolk came out in huge numbers and supported us as volunteers and as cheering well-wishers.

The swim was probably the most daunting part of the day, not because of the distance but because of the medium. The lake—a term which would be laughable to anyone used to the pristine beauty of Muskoka waterways—was really a glorified swimming hole, with attendant mud and weeds making the water into an opaque and unappetizing subtropical sludge. The lake is not large enough to accommodate a complete 2K swim, which is not unusual; many triathlon swims have two loops in them. Rather than having a two-loop swim here however, the one-loop course doubles back on itself, making a large ‘M’ shape, which happily is not as confusing while you are swimming it as it is when you just try to think about it.

Since the lake temperature was well over 80F, there were no wetsuits allowed, thus removing a layer of insulation between my body and whatever liquid suspension the lake was filled with. In the end, it was swimmable however, and swim we did, nearly 1700 of us. As I became horizontal and began my slow freestyle stroke I forgot what the lake was made of, forgot what might be living in the muck beneath me, forgot to wonder if a stray alligator had ventured in overnight, and just concentrated on enjoying my day. It was one of my slowest swims ever for this distance, a fact which mattered not a whit to me, even though having started in one of the first waves, I got subsequently swum over by nearly everyone else in the race. I was glad to be back in a long distance triathlon on a beautiful morning.

The bike ride was a great one for the early season. I have not given my terrific Cervélo P2 much outdoor exercise since the very hilly Muskoka 70.3 last September, so it was good to be back on the road hearing the gears clicking precisely into place and feeling the carbon fibre, metal, and rubber moving smoothly and responsively beneath me. The 90 kilometres of the Florida course are fairly tame hillwise and the road surface is mostly good. Winds kept calm; in any event, I mostly stayed down on my aerobars and enjoyed the feeling of being streamlined and swift. Overhead, the sun was climbing in the sky and was already warming up the run course like a light bulb in an Easy Bake Oven. The heat and humidity were waiting for us.

One of the first things you encounter as you start the three-loop run course is an aid station offering water and ice. I wanted lots of both, and I took as much as I could drink or carry every chance I got. In my last 70.3 race in Florida, my feet had swollen up from the heat and had really hobbled me; the memory of having to stop and sit down every mile to massage my pinched and protesting feet had been nagging at me for months. I was determined to do whatever I could to stay upright and keep moving forward despite the potential dangers of the oppressive heat.

I swallowed a lot of salt tablets and took in oceans of sports drink to keep my electrolytes in balance as much as possible. I have come to believe that there is a relationship between electrolyte imbalance and the swelling and pinched nerves in my feet, which affects me almost always in very hot conditions. But as they say, correlation is not causation, and I had no assurance that I would not once again be hobbling painfully for most of the 21.1 kilometres. At every step I monitored the intermetatarsal plantar nerves that run from my heel to my toes for signs of distress.


Secret to a good, comfortable run:
don't let your feet  touch the ground

There was only one challenge in the Florida 70.3 run: the relentless and unforgiving sun proved a great leveler, an agent to inspire humility in even the speediest runners. Many people, as they began their third and final 7K loop, started to resemble the extras in The Walking Dead (but with redder faces). In addition to popping Lava Salts, I ate and drank as much nutrition as I could stomach and stuffed ice everywhere I could think of:  my hat, my pockets, my shirt, and even down my shorts (distracting, but not recommended unless in dire straits). Whatever it was I did, my third loop of the course turned out to be my strongest, easiest, and most comfortable. Best of all, there was no twinge of pain from my feet; they were not exactly fresh as daisies, but they carried me across the finish line with a minimum of fuss.

My splits were all slow. I had expected this though, and my goal was to accomplish nothing more than I did. I now have a good benchmark for Ironman Mont Tremblant training, which I plan to begin immediately. As slow as I was, I loved every minute of this race; it was a treat to get back into an event as challenging and well organized as this one was, and to push my body and mind against the distance and the elements once again.

The Finish Line

One by one, I’ll face the tasks before me and complete them as best I can. Focusing on each stride forward but at the same time taking the long range view, scanning the scenery as best I can. I am, after all, a long-distance runner.

Haruki Murakami

My fingers have been frozen above the keyboard this past week; frozen like a diver on a board who has just realized there is no water in the pool below. For isn’t part of the writer’s task to make sense of the senseless, to turn meaningless babble into meaningful words when no one else can?

And isn’t the task of the runner to cross the finish line?

As always the questions: How could this happen? How could anyone target innocent people, athletes, spectators, children? Who would do such a thing?

And as always, it is next to impossible to put all the thoughts into a coherent pattern:

That there are people who hate. That hatred has the ability to warp and pervert vision until somehow it becomes somehow justifiable to kill and maim children. That there always will be such people.

Anyone who has ever finished a marathon or an Ironman knows that it is the wave of positive energy from the cheering crowd that helps us surf across the line, smiling and energized. At the finish line in Boston, it was the spectators who felt the full force of the blast. To a certain degree, the bodies of the crowds at the finish shielded the bodies of the runners.

The coarsest violence four hours and nine minutes after the start of the 2013 Boston Marathon was not against those athletes approaching the finish line, but against those men, women and children who had come to cheer for fathers, mothers, loved ones, or friends. On April 15, when death unkindly stopped for them, we need to know that it was that great crowd of well-wishers, not the haters, who inherited the real power.

When we begin to run a race, we have no idea what we will encounter along the way. Aside from the fact that someone has told us that there is a finish line somewhere down the road, we have no idea when we start what we will face before we get there. The task is simply to run, and thereby to strike some kind of bargain between body and soul; a bargain to make forward progress under our own power until we reach the end.

One thing is sure: one way or the other we will all reach the finish line one day. So what do we do about the unknown future that awaits us there? How does this uncertainty affect our task to run towards the line?

It doesn't.

We keep running; we run with endurance, with intention, and with heart. Because we need to do it and because performing the task set before us makes us feel more alive than many can believe possible. Because we cherish it, as we cherish those who support and encourage us.

When I found myself out of words to write this week, I turned, as I sometimes do, to Haruki Murakami's simple, elegant memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. In his postscript, Murakami mentions that his title is adapted from the title of a short story collection by the great Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.

And I realized that, to a runner, they are the same thing.