Dateline, Tucson

“Why don’t you find yourself a life that’s real/Too lazy to work/Too nervous to steal.” BR5-49

The seasons have reversed.

It’s in the mid-60s here in Southern Arizona, with bright sun and a stiff west wind. Some days, that’s a beautiful summer day in Wyoming. But it’s February 11, not August 11. Either place, six months apart, would be the perfect place to train.

Thus, I’ve fled my frigid home for the sun and warmth of Tucson, the self-described winter training capital of the world. And train I do. I brought my bike, my running shoes, my red mesh swimsuit, and nine days’ worth of workout clothes. I crash at the elegant bi-level condo of Gail and Kevin, my friends for life for nothing more than putting sheets on the futon in their guest room and laying out a comforter and a pillow. The debt of gratitude for this respite is infinite.

In the pre-dawn chill and darkness, I swam at the Tucson Jewish Community Center, where steam rises from the water surface when some swimmers churn things up. After the sun comes up (more on this later), I have breakfast, change clothes, air my tires, and put rubber to the road. Other days (or sometimes on the same day) I lace up the running shoes and put EVA midsole to the road.

Regardless, I’ve taken a week to clear my head of some bullshit and just train. Chop wood, carry water. Swim, bike, run. It’s all the same. I swam with some faster people, rode with a faster person, and have taken initiative in crushing myself on my own in the run. In between I’ve hung out with a Ph.D. student in archaeology, road tripped to Tombstone and Bisbee with same, dined well, laughed a lot, drank a bit.

It hasn’t been all warmth, though. It’s been all sunshine, but the warmth takes its time about showing up each day. Hours after my arrival, Gail sent me off to the trails around Mount Lemmon with her coworkers Eric and Crystal. I wondered just how cold it would be at 9 a.m., so I went in shorts, long sleeves, a ball cap, and gloves. Eric wore an ear warmer and wind pants, while Crystal (native to the area) donned two pairs of tights, gloves, a base layer, t-shirt and jacket, and stocking cap. I ditched the gloves halfway through the grueling 9-mile run on steep grades and shifting ground.

The next morning, I dutifully woke up at 6 a.m. (vacation notwithstanding), dressed (if you must know, shorts, leg warmers, cycling jersey, jacket, full-finger gloves, synthetic beanie, helmet, socks, shoes), and headed out on my bike by 6:20. Within five minutes I was chilled. Another five minutes passed before my hands and feet went numb. And my concern was the lack of light, so I stood at an intersection waiting for the sun. My hands and feet lost feeling, so I went back to a Circle K and warmed up inside for about 15 minutes. Then I headed back out on my bike toward Oracle.

I turned back at Stone Loop. Fuck this, I thought, it’s too fucking cold. I’m going to Tucson, Arizona, I thought the week before, why would I need bigger gloves and shoe coverings? I forgot about the 30-degree turnaround between night and day in the desert. Gail and Kevin gave me some shit when I got back, but I headed back out in the afternoon, still somewhat bundled up and far more comfortable.

No vacation I’ve taken has been more necessary or more beneficial than this one. While I’m obviously on my computer and checking in at work, I don’t feel affected by anything in Laramie. I’ll return refreshed and ready to tackle the aforementioned work bullshit and hopefully save my job in the process.

More importantly to me, though, I’ll have a stronger training base established. The lower altitude here has allowed me to push harder than I can in oxygen-poor Wyoming, and the warmth lets me peel away some clothing layers for the sake of body movement. A five-mile run in tights, base layer, jacket, gloves, and a beanie feels a hell of a lot different than the same run in shorts, t-shirt, and ball cap. Hint: not better.

The toughest thing, aside from letting go of work, has been letting go of the Tucson summers. It’s brutally cold in Wyoming as I write this — single digits temperatures, double-digit-below-zero wind chill, stiff westerly winds blowing snow across any smooth surface — so it’s easy to embrace the warm, sunny days here in the desert. The vegetation is different, thinner than the thick evergreens that surround my office. The greens of the prickly pear and cypress trees have faded in the sun, and the red rocks stand out against the brown mountains. All those things remind me that it’s brutally hot in the summer, and that I would want to kill someone after about the third week of 110-plus degrees in May or June.

But this is a cool place. All the main roads have bike lanes, and all the bike lanes get used every day. Whole Foods is around the corner from Gail and Kevin’s; eclectic local restaurants line the strip two blocks west of the University of Arizona campus; the mountains linger to the north, east, and west; saguaro cacti seem to stretch their arms to the perpetually blue sky; palm trees (!) sway in the breezes and stiffen when the wind kicks up.

Yeah, it might be the coolest place I could never live. Because there’s no work for me here.

Blowing off the dust

Wow, this thing is still here. Who would've guessed stuff on the Internet has staying power? Sometimes I wondered if there was an eviction process, where if your blog stayed inactive long enough someone would come by with papers to sign and a truck to move your stuff out; I saw more evictions in the year at the prison block in Davenport, Iowa, then I ever had and learned way more about the process than any college-educated human should know.

So where to start? How do I catch up the six of you of on three months' worth of stuff when I've been good about updating my Facebook and Twitter feeds?

A week after the last entry, I headed out for a little three-day weekend to Georgia, where I watched two nieces and one nephew compete in the state cross country meet. I knew those kids had some ability but to have Lauren, Alex, and Ryan (Samantha, 11, is a couple years away from being there herself) running in the same meet was just amazing. Even my sister Diana (Lauren and Ryan's mom) said she thought it was nuts to think Starr's Mill would make it to state, and that Lauren and Ryan would run on the same day as Alex.

While pricing plane tickets, it crossed my mind that Lauren's a junior and Alex and Ryan are freshmen, so I have another year to see them all run at state. No, it doesn't always work that way. Funny things happen in sport, and I won't get into those things here. I've seen them happen. So thanks to 40,000 United miles left over from my days as a college basketball beat writer I got to see this:

Long story short, Alex got third, and Ryan and Lauren ran well. I'm trying not to be too proud and uncle because there's more to all these kids than their athletic accomplishments, but watching them all run in the state meet was an unmatched thrill. Ryan said he started out too fast, but acknowledged he was a little fired up for his first state meet, and that happens. Now he's a Prefontaine-quoting, bona fide high school runner with three years left to chase the dream.

Lauren observed "there are 112 other people in the state faster than me, and one of them is my cousin. Pretty cool." Even cooler is that Lauren, within the last year, had intoned that she hated running. Now she's giving up lacrosse to go out for track, and gave up swimming to run through the winter. No one saw that coming.

Alex attacked a hill with less than a mile left to move into third, wearing a scowl I haven't seen before; well, there was her early childhood where, upon her mom's request that she "give me a LOOK," she'd furrow her brow and purse her lips and wrinkle her nose and put her hands on her hips, and that way only 3- and 4-year-old girls can do. No, this time was serious. Later that same night she played trumpet with her high school marching band. Awesome.

After that, I went back to discover that my magazine was financially insolvent and the UW foundation hadn't delivered the funds they'd promised (they did, in fucking January). Then there was Thanksgiving, where I brought record cold to the Atlanta area. Then at Christmas, I brought record cold and snow to the Atlanta area. Even that place looks good with snow on the ground, trees, and rooftops.

In the meantime, I've been struggling at work, but not with training consistency. There hasn't been much keeping me from doing something every day — swimming three times a week, biking and running twice each. Tucson and its resultant sunshine beckons next week for my bike and I. My friend Gail, a triathlon coach, retail person, and camp counselor with TriSports, offered up a futon and spare room for a winter-weary soul and I took her up on it. Even offered to take on some of her brutal workouts, so I'll probably need a nap when I get home. The guillotine of California half-Ironman looms on April 2, but it has kept me training through the typically brutal Wyoming winter.

Giving up on Kona, Boston?

In case you hadn't guessed, two of my life goals are to toe the respective starting lines in a couple of hallowed places — Kona, Hawaii, on the first Saturday in October after the full moon; Hopkinton, Massachusetts, on Patriot's Day. Those races would be the Ironman Triathlon World Championship, and the Boston Marathon.

Seriously, I'd put those two ahead of a lot of the "American dream" kind of goals — home ownership, marriage, children, retirement, being my own boss, etc. Yes, I'd rather do an 80-mile bike ride in the rain followed closely by a 10-mile run, than mow the grass, change a diaper, or go over spreadsheets with lots and lots of red numbers. OK, bad examples, but you catch my drift.

Those goals are rooted in my childhood, which obviously was not normal. It became apparent early on that I wasn't going to fill out my frame, that I was going to be lean for much of my life, that I didn't have much in the way of coordination, so I adjusted my sporting goals accordingly. Instead of wanting to throw the winning touchdown pass, I dreamed of a four-minute mile (one more goal that never got reached). Instead of coming to the plate with two outs in the bottom of the ninth blah blah blah, I dreamed of turning the pedals in that lava desert on the Big Island. In junior high, when things got rough on a five-mile training run with my cross country team, I wondered how on earth I'd deal with the far more excruciating pain of mile 18 in the Natural Energy Lab. It started when I saw the Ironman on TV, realized I already did two of the three sports, and set that in my head forever.

So I did it many years later. I slacked off in early adulthood as I got in the groove of my newspaper career, stayed up too late, slept too late, and drank and worked too much. Once I got back into triathlons in 2002, the goal was Ironman. I did five of them over the course of six years (separated by a nice interval, of course), knowing full well most of the time that I'd finish well off where I needed to be. Whether it was crappy training or melting down mentally, every race short-circuited at some point and I'd stumble across the finish line, get my medal and shitty pizza, and go home, IT bands on fire.

Obviously, it's become cost-prohibitive as time has gone on. Ironman Florida cost me $325 in 2003, while Ironman Wisconsin cost me $625 in 2009. That's to say nothing of lodging and travel costs. There are more races, true, but they fill up faster and faster every year. The races themselves get faster, too. To give you an idea of how seriously I take this, I analyzed the finish times for the LAST Kona qualifier in my age group every year at Ironman Coeur d'Alene in Idaho. The average time for the first six years of the race (2003-08) was 10h13m46s. In 2009, the last qualifier went 9:52:41, and in 2010 he went 9:49:13.

I guess it's silly since, according to some of the Internet literati, it's just a race. At the same time, two of the stupidest things I've ever read about Kona came from Slowtwitch. The first: "Kona's really not that big a deal. It's just a race. I've been there six times and it's so stupid how seriously people take it." Then why have you been there six fucking times if it's not that big a deal? The second: "You know, it's actually kind of a boring course. You take away the wind and the heat and it's not that hard." In 30 years on the Big Island (the race started in Oahu at Waikiki), you could "take away the wind and the heat" twice — once for the Iron War between Scott and Allen in '89, once when Luc Van Lierde set the current course record. Maybe there was another one recently, but those are the prime examples. Again, a ludicrous statement, and when I get there, I want the mumuku winds, the 100-degree heat radiating off the asphalt, the 2-3-foot seas, and the flower lei around my neck at the finish.

Or maybe I don't anymore.

This has been a rough month for my goals. First, the 2011 Boston Marathon sold out the day it opened for registration. I find it hard to believe that many people met the standards, but then again the race relaxed their standards in 1996 for the 100th to let more people experience Boston, and they haven't changed them since. When I was young and first learned I had to qualify for Boston, men under 40 pretty much had to break 3 hours. You can see now that's not the case. No word on whether the BAA would revisit its standards, but if I make the 3:15 standard for men my age anyway, the chances of getting in are insanely slim now. Even if the standards tighten up and I have to break 3 hours into my 40s, again, no guarantee I'd get in if I'm not quick enough on the mouse.

For Kona, just when the World Triathlon Corporation seems to have exhausted its store of stupid ideas (i.e., the rule that states pros must finish within 8 percent of the winning time to earn prize money, otherwise you're SOL; later rescinded), they do this:

Today World Triathlon Corporation (WTC) launches an exclusive athlete membership program called Ironman Access. In addition to other member benefits, the program will offer advance registration for Ironman events worldwide before entries open to the general public. Membership into Ironman Access is on a first-come, first-served basis and will close once it reaches capacity.

In addition to exclusive, advance registration, Ironman Access will offer perks including an official membership ID card; a second chance in the Ironman Lottery Program*; two VIP passes per registered event; a one-year subscription to LAVA Magazine; discounts on Ironman partner products at shopironman.com and at Ironman’s on-site event retail stores; and a 2010 Ford Ironman World Championship NBC broadcast DVD. Membership benefits are valid for one year starting from activation date. In order to take advantage of early event registration, membership must be current. The annual membership fee is $1,000 USD.

Basically, for a grand, you get to cut the line and register for as many events as you want. You already saw what one of these M-dot branded events costs, so consider that the $1K fee is on top of whatever entry fees you pay. Since most of these events sell out a year in advance, that $1K would save you the trouble of traveling to the race site and signing up there the next day. Not a bad deal if you can afford it, though it is only a yearly thing; you'd have to renew your membership every year at that cost, likely more given the state of things.

The topic has been beaten to death elsewhere. Simply, it's a money grab. The WTC sold out to a private equity firm in 2008. That firm is beholden to no one but shareholders — not customers (like us racers), not the hundreds of thousands of volunteers who make the events work, not the towns where the races take place, not even their employees. The shareholders demand more returns, product be damned, and they come up with shit like this. For once, the company saw the error of its ways, and rescinded the program within 24 hours. CEO Ben Fertic issued this mealy mouthed statement ("If you say we're wrong, we're wrong." Suuuure.), and like a good, chastened company, wiped the original release off the site.

This is where my social conscience wakes from its slumber. I try to do right by the world — buy organic, shop local, hug trees, save endangered species, support causes I believe in. That said, Ironman is my id taking over, my selfish nature manifesting itself in exercises in masochism (as if rooting for the Cubs wasn't enough). Truthfully, I enjoy running, swimming, and cycling (in order of favorites), and this is a way to test myself on a measured, catered course. But I don't feel like I can support this company (and it is a company, make no mistake) any more when they're trying to make their races a survival of the richest. I've thrown some serious coin at this silly dream, and the odds seem to get longer by the year. As of yesterday the plan was to give it one more shot in Coeur d'Alene in 2012, then abandon if I didn't make it. Now? I don't know. I just don't know.

So my options now are the stellar Rev3 series, or the Challenge series overseas. But those don't carry the carrot of Kona spots. Ironman star Luke McKenzie wondered on twitter if anyone would do M-dot races if there weren't Kona spots attached. I'd have to say no, no matter how far off I am from qualifying.

As for my goals of 50 states in both triathlon and marathon? The plan was only one marathon in Hawaii and Massachusetts, one triathlon in Hawaii; the 50 States Marathon Club will take Ironman marathons. Now? Looks like the Maui Marathon, the Cape Cod Marathon, and whatever triathlons I can find in those places. Sometimes it sucks to have a conscience, but at least I sleep well — most of the time.

Portland Marathon, brought to you by the number 10

As I said before, I wanted to do something monumental on Oct. 10, 2010. The Portland Marathon fit the bill, especially considering the original plan for the race — helping someone qualify for the Boston Marathon. See, my personal best is 3:44:34, set at Atlanta in 2006, which would get her to Boston. That went belly-up, however, and I was left to my own devices to not train and wallow in whatever it was I wallowed in. In fact, had I not bought my plane ticket in July and prepaid for the hotel room shortly thereafter, I would have bailed on the trip altogether.

The trip got off to an inauspicious beginning Friday when I left 40 minutes late. My friends Matt and Bryan, the members of Seattle band Bekker, were crashing at my place for a few days while playing shows in Laramie, and we had a fascinating discussion about writing music. However, it meant I got a late start and was rushed in getting to Denver International Airport 130 miles away. I made my flight in plenty of time, but I cut it much closer than what I feel comfortable and I breathed a hell of a lot easier when I was on the plane.

My Aunt Sara and Uncle John, in Portland for their grandson Trey's 5th birthday, picked me up at the airport, drove me to my hotel, and then took me out to a lovely prerace dinner at Sideline's Sports Bar and Grill (no relation to Sideline's Sports Bar/Meat Market in Casper). After some salmon, rice, sweet potatoes, veggies, and two pints of Alaskan Amber, I headed back to the hotel and got some sleep.

Saturday morning I was supposed to be looking at provided photos for a story for the magazine, but instead watched ESPN's Gameday and the Hawaii Ironman on the computer. As I mentioned before, this is the race I would rather have done, but at this point it's going to take a miracle for me to get there; frankly, it'll take a miracle for me to land on the start line in Hopkinton on Patriots' Day. It was supposedly all part of my motivation. At least that's what I kept telling myself.

Later Saturday, my friend Mindi came down from Seattle to take me downtown for lunch and packet pickup. We ate at a New York-style kosher deli called Kenny and Zuke's, not that a six-inch-high club sandwich and fries is the best prerace meal. Then we hit Safeway and picked up a couple friends of hers who were attending a dinner at the Hilton where we had to pick up our packets. Let me just say that with 13,000 runners spread between a 10K, half-marathon and full marathon, the Portland Marathon has a monumental task to get all these people in and out of a prerace expo in reasonable order. That said, while they did a good job of herding us through (literally, if you saw the labyrinthine pattern of hallways, escalators, and warehouses saved for the expo) I determined that I'm not doing any more big-city marathons. I can achieve my goal of 50 states while avoiding the big ones, really.

At Safeway I got a frozen meal to stoke the stove for Sunday's race, and called it dinner — that and 22 ounces of flat Pepsi left from an earlier 32-ouncer. I also had the bananas and Clif bars for dessert, as well as for my prerace breakfast. Sleep never comes easily the night before a race, so there's no point in talking about it. Part of it is being keyed up for the race, but the other part is the fear that I oversleep and miss the race; every Ironman competitor has that dream during the training cycle. In fact, I opened my eyes for some reason, and no more than two minutes later my alarm went off.

I had the breakfast of champions, fouled up my bathroom, and then headed downstairs to catch the shuttle to the airport, where I caught the Max/train downtown for the race. It started raining sometime Friday night and certainly hadn't stopped by race morning, so I steeled my resolve to get soaked — and stood under an overhang near where my wave would push off. I listened to my loud, angry music and eavesdropped on various conversations before dropping off my dry clothes bag. So intent on avoiding the rain was I that I waited until the gun went off before leaving the entryway to a building.

The plan was to be very conservative throughout the race, because my training would not allow for me to push myself. Indeed, a big-city marathon forces no other strategy, because even though 90 percent of the people were in the proper waves, somehow a few joggers and walkers snuck into the first two waves and the rest of us had to dodge them, or get slowed down. Fine with me, since I knew anything less than 4 hours (around 9:10 per mile) was a pipe dream.

The 3:50 pace group passed me early on, and then the 4-hour pace group passed at about mile 4. The rain stopped briefly, then resumed at that point. That's also when my cool technical t-shirt started chafing some sensitive protuberances on my chest, necessitating a vaseline stop at the 4.5-mile aid station. Don't mind me, I thought, I'm just reaching under my shirt and groping myself with vaseline, saving me some major pain later on (that was a lie, because I knew the postrace shower was going to hurt in a major way regardless of how well-lubricated I was). I had to reapply every half-hour at the nearest aid station, and I ended up with two gooey blobs on my shirt.

Lots of people passed me and that bothered me for about those first four miles, but then I realized for once in my life that I was running my own race. The course took us through the industrial part of Portland — not what you think of when you think "Portland." Seriously, we passed loading docks, warehouses, train yards, and more warehouses. Surely the course could have taken us to Forest Park or through the Rose District rather than the train yards north of downtown. The only cool thing was seeing the fast people running in the other direction, and in my case wishing I could click off 6-minute miles for one-tenth the distance.

My iliotibial bands are a well-documented bane of my existence in this space. Sunday was no exception. It was worthy of note that the halfway point for the marathon was front of an all-nude revue place, located conveniently across the street from some shipping warehouse along the Willamette River, and that kept my mind occupied until mile 14, when my IT bands completely tied up. That makes sense, since I figure my longest run this year was in that range. I was sort of prepared for it, and I ran through it anyway. I was one of the few people plodding out 9:30 miles on average to run all the way up the one hill, from mile 16 across a bridge to mile 17 at the middle of the bridge over the Willamette. Holy Christ, the downhill was brutal. But I kept running.

In fact, I think I ran more in this marathon than I ever have, and that includes my PR in Atlanta four years ago, when I walked much of the last five miles. Well, I jogged, anyway. My refueling plan of 24 ounces of grape Gatorade worked like a charm, so my only folly was my shredded IT bands. I ran next to a woman who said she trained for the marathon with Crossfit, meaning her longest run was 3 miles; they believe anaerobic power in short bursts builds aerobic fitness, and that elite endurance athletes train incorrectly, because Crossfit is The Way, The Truth, and The Light. I held my tongue and left her behind at 22.

There was another long downhill before mile 24, and then a brief uphill to another bridge over the Willamette, and then back downtown for another downhill off the bridge. With my IT bands screaming for mercy — actually, no, that was me screaming for mercy because of those damned things — I mercifully made a series of turns through the tall buildings and finished the damned race, as raindrops exploded all around me.

I got through the food line, put on my dry finisher's shirt, wrapped myself tightly in my space blanket, and stood in line for a half-hour for my dry clothes bag (another reason to never do another big-city marathon). There was no place to stand, and I beat bricks to the Max station and the ride back to my hotel.

That night I had dinner with my cousin and her family, as well as my aunt and uncle. It was great to see them, and to see Mindi the day before, so I guess I can take that away from my lost weekend in Portland. The time wasn't important (4:11:55); I knew that about a month-and-a-half back. It was time to see that part of the family and to run my tenth marathon (five standalones and five Ironmans) on 10-10-10.

Guess I'll have to come up with something big and legitimate for 11-11-11.

Three days out

Marathon No. 5 takes place Sunday, 10-10-10. I liked the idea of doing something semi-monumental on a numerologically significant day, so I decided on the Portland Marathon. I was supposed to have some company but, alas, it was not to be.

Thanks in part to that issue, plus a few other things bringing me down, I've done three 2-hour runs in the past three months, and that stands as my distance training. It's been all I can do to do something every day, much less get in the running I need for a good marathon. Sunday, I'll settle for a shitty marathon. Seriously, it'll be a death march. In fact, had I not purchased my plane ticket four months ago, or secured a prepaid hotel room, I'd probably bail on it and focus on swimming.

This might be one of the stupidest things I've done, but at least I'll see a new part of one of my favorite cities — the industrial waterfront. Goody. I'll see my aunt, uncle, and cousin and her family while I'm there, too, as well as a dear friend who's running the half. I'll bring my computer so I can veg out and watch the Ironman coverage from Hawai'i (aka the race I really want to do this weekend). So the weekend won't be a total waste.

And I'll still shave my legs.

Did I shave my legs for this?

With respect to Deana Carter, I have been shaving my legs on a monthly basis. Like football players taping their ankles over their shoes — provides no real stability, but it's force of habit and part of gearing up for competition — I invested in discount girl razors, no doubt to the amusement of the clerks at Safeway. I've either got a deep, dark secret (which I don't, other than... the incident) or I drew the short straw from a significant other (which I didn't). It makes me feel faster, especially lying in bed the night before the race and sliding around like an Olympic luger. And with my season in a tailspin, I'll continue the habit in hopes of at least feeling fast if I can't actually be fast.

On July 8, I found a sock I'd been missing for more than a year-and-a-half. It was the other race sock from a set I bought at the Austin Tri-Cyclist in 2002, and I designated as my race socks — black with orange stripes and yellow smiley faces. Maybe, if I get it together and figure out this digital camera thingie, I'll take a picture of them and post them here. Anyway, I pulled a t-shirt off the massive stack and out rolled this sock, presumed missing at a Davenport, Iowa, laundromat in late 2008. I thought that would be the break I was looking for, since shit's been kind of stinky in 2010.

Alas, I rode the wave for a few days. On July 11, I won my age group at the Cheyenne Sprint Triathlon, with the same time as in 2009 on about half the training. I had a brief upturn in mood, since it felt like the $3K I spent on a bike was worth it. For a while, anyway. I bagged the Headwaters Triathlon in Montana because it would have put me on the road for a long time right before I went on vacation with my parents, so the next race would be the Rattlesnake Triathlons in Aurora, Colorado. That was to be a back-to-back weekend, with an international distance race on Saturday and a sprint on Sunday. I did Saturday's swim in a decent 26:16, then hopped on my bike, grooving along the shittiest roads in Colorado — rural Arapahoe County, in case you're wondering. I stayed on the white line because the roads were open to traffic when I looked up in time to see the white line disappear into gravel.

I successfully kept the bike upright but the loud pop told me there was more to worry about. Not one, but two flat tires. I changed them in about 20 minutes, but my mental state went south with every passing minute. There goes the 1-hour, 10-minute goal for the bike, the 1:15 goal, the 1:20 goal, the 2:30 overall goal. After a while I just stopped and reset my watch, figuring on being a tourist. Once I got the tubes changed (tossing the spent tubes in the ditch with the beer cans and cigarette butts), I went for the CO2 dispenser and learned the hard way that if you put a CO2 cartridge in there, it slow-leaks. I was deflated as those tires, and started walking with my bike toward the turnaround for the bike. I was done, even if somebody — like the official in the red pickup who ultimately gave me a ride back to the transition area — had a pump. My mental state was shot and I'd already checked out.

In fact, I bailed on the sprint the next day, choosing instead to run for an hour in hopes of boosting my ego, followed by retial therapy, Dave-style — the clearance racks at Sports Authority, Big 5, Dick's, Running Wild, and Performance Bike, because you can't have too many pairs of running or cycling shorts, or CO2s, or tubes, or pullovers, or synthetic, wicking shirts.

So that was the last time I rode my bike, choosing instead to get into a groove with my master's swimming group, and shore up the run miles in advance of the Portland Marathon. Meanwhile, we got another issue of the magazine to the mailboxes of our alumni, donors, and friends, and the come-to-Jesus meeting with my boss was tolerable, resulting in weekly progress reports, instead of the bi-weekly ones previously assigned.

The latest setback is health. I've been lucky so far, not being sick since last December's bout with vertigo, but over the Labor Day weekend I picked up a head cold (Warning: graphic description). For about 24 hours, there was this baseball-sized piece of phlegm stuck to the back of my throat, too far back to force up, and my throat felt like it had been sandpapered. I worked through it for a while, but ultimately got tired of walking down the hall to the bathroom repeatedly, so I called it a day at noon today. My cold solution is to drown it in fluids, hoping the liquid loosens things up. Pepsi, Gatorade, water, V8, apple juice, soup. Then pee, rinse, repeat.

The Harvest Moon Triathlon is Sunday, and I have a prepaid hotel room and everything, but between the lack of bike miles over the past month and this week's illness, there's no way I can fake a half-Ironman. A shorter race, certainly, but a half-Ironman would be the most excruciating six hours of 2010, this side of a stint in the doctor's office. In case you've lost track, I signed up for eight triathlons, DNSed four of them, DNFed one, and finished three, winning my age group twice. The offseason can't get here fast enough.

So the plan is to go down, stay the night on an unfamiliar bed, collect the Marriott points, and help out at the race.

And I'll still shave my legs.

Crisis of motivation, crisis of confidence

These days I spend much of my time staring at a blank page on a computer screen, waiting for inspiration to strike. After a while I realize the pointlessness of that exercise, so I transcribe some minutes of the hours upon hours of interviews I have in my recorder. Between sentences, I idly surf the internet, and wonder what would happen if the university knew it was paying me a handsome sum of money to spend my days this way.

Outside of work it's not much different. I idly surf the internet, wondering if I should go back in to work or if I should get out on the bike, or if I should have a beer and make dinner. I also wonder if I should email the girl who's not interested in a long-distance relationship to let her know I understand and hope we can remain friends — or whatever line of bullshit people in that situation feed each other. When I wake up in the morning, the guilty feeling that I should be at my desk by 6:30 overrides the necessity of training, so straight to the kitchen for breakfast, then off to work after the morning ritual.

Let's go back to June 12 and the Boise half-Ironman. I was as undertrained for a race of that magnitude as ever, and one guy I talked to at the hotel said, "That's great. You don't have any expectations." Indeed. Still, my personal best of 5:09:13 from my first half-Ironman has been on the books for too long, and every time I toe the line in a race of that distance I hope for a PR. Boise was no exception. Still, the race started at 2 p.m. and because of the limited access to the swim venue we had to be there two hours before the race. There was no shade and as the sun beat down on us, the energy seemed to evaporate in the 80-degree warmth, about 10 degrees warmer than anything I'd trained in.

My swim was four minutes slower than it needed to be, despite feeling as good as I could have hoped in my restrictive neoprene sausage casing while cutting through the chop. The bike was where the wheels came off (no pun intended) as a 30 mph wind made it feel like I was wearing a parachute. Everybody had to deal with it, though, so aside from wasting mental and physical energy fighting the wind I had no excuse. The first few miles of the run went well, until I depleted my salt stores and felt heavier and heavier. I walked much of the last two miles and jogged across the line in 5:46.

I spent not only much of the 10-hour drive home pondering my future in the sport, I've done that for much of the past month. I want to qualify for Kona, which was the reason for starting this shitty blog in the first place, and I want to qualify for Boston. But 22 years since my first triathlon, however, there's far too much I'm still figuring out — nutrition, how to get out of my wetsuit with numb hands, how to adjust my effort when it's hotter and windier than I'd anticipated, nutrition, how is far is too far to drive for a race, how to best execute flying mounts and dismounts from the bike, and nutrition.

So I wonder how much effort I'm willing to put in for a lost cause. From my best Ironman time of 11:42 on a dead-flat course in ideal weather, I need to drop about two hours to qualify definitively, and an hour-and-a-half to have a reason to show up for the Kona spot rolldown the day after. I was told months ago that, in the words of a certain Nike commercial, everything [I] have is inside. If that's the case than I'm missing some parts. The girl said it's time for me to hire a coach, because I've been doing things my way for this long and it's obviously not working. If I could retain a nutritionist and a psychologist for the same monthly price as a coach, I'd be fucking golden. But I'm still looking up a mountain at a lofty goal, and all I see is the storm building over the peak. The space between my ears might as well be a thousand miles wide.

If my hobby is in that bad of a state, my work is even worse, and more urgent because it is my livelihood. A couple weeks ago our designer was laid off and for that two weeks we were a ship without a sail. Thankfully, he's back in a freelance capacity, but it created some drama and uncertainty we didn't need.

Personally, I feel completely bereft of creativity. The interviews, for the most part, are done but I can't write. I feel like warning my boss to expect straight AP shit on the cover story. Thankfully, a freelancer has stepped in to take one of the 1,000-word features off my hands. The last issue came out and has gotten positive reviews. A couple of my friends told me they loved the cover story. That praise does me good.

But now? I don't know. In addition to the aforementioned time-wasting (add to the list strolling all the way across campus to get coffee, and strolling across campus for no reason at all) I spent time wishing for a job at a widget factory, something that requires no brainpower and still provides a steady check. I lived on shit wages in newspapers, so no salary is too small. I just want to do my job and go home, and I don't want to end up tearing my hair out or going insane over the accomplishment of those duties. That's not the case here. I'm worried about my ability to get my stories done, edited, and laid out in a timely manner. I'm worried about my boss discovering just how far behind I am. I'm worried about which steps in getting the magazine to the printer I'll forget. I'm worried about one of the four remaining delinquent computer scientists not returning my email before I need to write the cover story. And I'm worried about a dry creative faucet when it comes time to write.

So I haven't been motivated to work, and I haven't been motivated to train. For the first time in years, all I've been motivated to do is love, and that didn't work out. It's affecting me more than I thought it would, but I can't use that as an excuse. I guess I have to press on, no matter what.