Iron Pol

I heard a statistic recently that helps explain the apathy or outright anger toward our military members in recent history.  During World War II, pretty much everybody knew somebody (or several somebodies) serving in the armed forces.  And a great many people knew at least one member of their extended family who wore a uniform.

Apparently that percentage has dropped dramatically.  I don't remember the exact figure used, but recall it was somewhere in the range of 20 to 30 percent.  That makes it easy to view those serving as anything less than superheros.

When it is your friends and family wearing the uniform, HERO is the only word you are willing to use.  Words like terrorist, occupier, and any of the other pejoratives used so frequently, today, are unacceptable, and border on fighting words.

The picture above is the long awaited homecoming of my brother-in-law after his deployment to overseas combat zones.  My sister was obviously overjoyed at his return.  If you look closely, you can see just how big an impact these dangerous assignments have.  One niece is standing by her parents.  Another is only a hand on his chest as she refused to let go of her dad.  These kids understand the risks our military face, and know their dad IS a hero.

Now, only weeks after the safe return of a family member, a close friend is headed into harm's way, himself.  The guy third from the left is my best friend's brother, John.  After spending the last several months training in Kuwait, he is headed to Baghdad.

His job, to help teach the US and Iraqi military how to use new technology to defeat roadside bombs.  So he is, in fact, heading directly into the jaws of the shark.  And this is something in which he had a choice.  With nearly 22 years of service and facing retirement, he had other options.

He believes the assignment demands the very best from people who believe in the effort.  John knows how many lives his training can save, so he serves.  And he does it with the always present smile you see in the picture.

For the past six months, my family kept my brother-in-law in their prayers as he was forward deployed.  Due to the nature of his job, his exact whereabouts were classified.  Now, we will add John to our prayers.  Due to the nature of HIS job, we know exactly where he will be and the extent of the danger he faces.

For everyone out there who DOESN'T know someone serving in harm's way, think about how your perspective might change if you did.  Growing up, I was taught to treat the girls I knew as if they were my mom.  Take a look at the pictures above (or consider any of the thousands serving in combat zones) and imagine they are a father, brother, or son.  Look at my sister and imagine if she were YOUR sister.  Then carefully consider how to voice your opinions.

One very notable thing about triathletes is their ability to laugh at themselves.  And before anyone disputes that fact, I acknowledge there is a comparatively small group of hardcore athletes who lack that ability.  That's okay, the rest of us will laugh at them.

To prove I am not in that group, I present the following "WTF?" quandary.  Exhibit A is this picture from the Bellin Run 10K.  We're breaking this in slowly.  Please note the relatively good running form.  Head up, legs moving, shoulders relaxed.  But am I, perhaps, TOO relaxed.  I think a few more pictures might answer that question.  I'll allow you, the faithful reader, to be the judge.  And don't worry, I'm already laughing at myself, so you can't offend me.

Besides, I'm sure it's a conspiracy by the photographers.

Consider the next picture from a nearby camera.  Have I gotten perhaps a bit TOO relaxed.  Granted, I'm moving at a pretty good pace and have clearly blown by the guy in the red shirt.  But is it TOO laid back.

It would be nice to think this was an odd occurrence in one event.  Perhaps I was overly tired or took one too many muscle relaxants prior to the race.  Maybe it was an unguarded moment of sheer exhaustion never before experienced.

That might be comforting, but someone is bound to bring up my Green Bay marathon finish line pictures.  And they do nothing to support the comforting theories.  They simply add to the conspiracy.

This picture was snapped by a friend as I approached the finish line for a 15 minute marathon PR at the Green Bay Marathon on March 18th.  I must have been very tired (or relaxed) here, as well.  Rubbery, in fact.

Sort of like George Schweitzer and the "flying duece" (peace sign) he flashed all last season, I seem to be afflicted by a much less flattering "flying limp" problem.  And like George, I need to work on being more photogenic at races.  Or I need to by something to provide support as I go completely limp.

Finally, just to show that not EVERY picture of me running exhibits the same limp-wristed pose (which is, by the way, very counter IRON Pol), a final picture from the Green Bay Marathon.  As you can see, the arms and wrist are in a very normal position.

Of course, it's tough to tell exactly WHAT is going through my mind at this point.  Is it:

A.  MAN, I shouldn't have had all that cheese for breakfast!

B.  Where's Casey?  I'm going to kill him.

C.  Are we there yet?

D.  Is anyone missing a stick?  I found it.

A normal post, tomorrow.  Promise!

First, let me congratulate the members of the TBC who competed at Ironman CDA, this weekend.  So far as I could tell, everyone finished the race in fine fashion.  This includes:

Bigun - who now adds Ironman to his list of accomplishments

Geek Girl - who finished her second Ironman with plenty of time to spare (and proved she didn't need the time trial start used in Kentucky)

Sweet Baboo - who continues to amaze his family by completing all day endurance events

Bold - who proved you can continue to "have a life" while competing in Ironman events

Neoprene Wedgie - another first time Ironman finisher, and he did it in fine style

Spokane Al - all the training Al is able to do pays off in Idaho

Taconite Boy - showing off his super powers (and his WIFE's Flashpoint wheels)

Trigreyhound - Lawyer, advocate, husband, two time Ironman (does he share some of Tac Boy's superpowers?)

If I missed anyone, please let me know.

Now, on to other weekend events.  With Friday off, I was able to get some good bike training completed.  Thursday evening I headed out toward High Cliff to bike the hill only to find a bunch of Tri Foxes near the swim start for the High Cliff Triathlon.  They were holding a "newbie" swim, and I stopped to help out as best I could.  We always put together a swim gauntlet to get people used to swimming with a bunch of people.  Anyone who can survive our swim gauntlet will be fine in a mass start.  With the ride home, it was just over 20 miles, though with a 40 minute break between sets.

I woke up early Friday so I could get in a 90-minute ride before Mrs. Pol left for the day.  I went closer to 1:45, cranking out 33 miles in that time.  It was cool with nearly dead calm air.  The rest of the day was dedicated to my kids, including repairs to the training wheels on Monster Girl's "big girl" bike.

Saturday I volunteered at set-up for the High Cliff Triathlon, then headed to the pool for a swim workout with the tri club kids.  It turned out to be only one young man, allowing us to focus on a few weak areas of his stroke.  Summer always makes group workouts a challenge.  The rest of Saturday was spent disassembling, cleaning, and rebuilding our clothes dryer.  Apparently, I still need a few parts, as it won't run.  Mrs. Pol is searching for those items, and I'll be going through the process again when we have them.  For now, we have the cleanest broken dryer on the planet.

Sunday was filled with preaching at church and training.  I headed out for a planned 2.5 hour ride once the kids were napping.  After about 18 miles, minimally threatening clouds suddenly darkened, and I found myself on the very edges of a rapidly developing lightening storm.

While I'm not one to let a bit of rain deter me from a ride, I've been shocked enough to know getting hit by lightening shouldn't be on a "to do" list.  I decided to heed the storm's suggestion I head home.  The turn around was a bit of a bummer as I had just reached the bottom of a fairly major hill.  The electricity in the air motivated me to get back UP the hill at nearly 18 miles per hour.  I finished the 36 mile ride with an average pace of about 19.5 mph.

The new route I was using turned out to be a very nice change.  On Friday morning, I passed a deer while riding through the state park.  We were only about 10 feet apart when I passed, and it never moved.  I passed another deer on Sunday, though nowhere near as close.

All in all, it was a pretty good weekend.  Added to the work, training, and volunteering is the fact that my back somehow stopped bothering me Sunday morning.  I didn't really notice it until I went to put my shoes on and had no trouble doing so.  For the past several weeks, shoes and socks have been quite a chore because I couldn't really bend properly.  Yesterday and today, absolutely fine (knock on wood).

This is a good omen as I have less than four weeks until my next race, the Spirit of Racine half-IM.

 

 

In everything we do, the piper must be paid.  And the better we want to be, the higher the price.  The only thing left to us is deciding just how much we are willing to pay.  Any time we misjudge the costs, we can find ourselves stuck paying more than we originally intended.

This might be applied to the current housing situation as people find themselves facing foreclosure, but it wouldn't fit the triathlon theme.  So, I'll have to apply it to myself as I recover from the past month of racing.  With a marathon, hard raced sprint triathlon, and full effort 10K all within three weeks, I'm paying the piper, now.

Let me tell you, it's really a pain in the a$$.  And no, that's not figurative.  It really is a pain in my butt.  Between overworking my legs and apparently putting a bit too much stress on some tendons, certain activities have become quite a chore.  Things like standing up.

I'm fine when I'm standing.  I can make do sitting down.  It's the transition from sitting to standing that gets a bit comical.  Every muscle in my rear gets kind of comfortable in their disuse.  When I stand and everything has to release and go through various contractions, the real pain starts.

This is new to me, and I've been having my son help with stretching at night.  It's a bit much for me to physically push enough to really stretch, so I relax the legs and let him push them up and back.  I get stretched and he gets a kick out of it.

The plan is to take it relatively easy for a week and see how things are after that.  With a half-IM on the horizon, I can't sit on my laurels, too long.  Not that my laurels are all the pleased about sitting, either.  Sitting is only a bit more preferable then standing up.

Luckily, it isn't all pain and suffering.  The doctor had moderately good news with relation to the biopsy on my ear.  The tests showed a benign growth, and the doctor wants to just watch things for a bit.  He believes the growth will return, at which point he will schedule surgery to remove all the "offending" tissue.  There his, however, a chance it will clear up on its own.  So long as it's non-cancerous, I don't care too much either way.

Sadly, swimming is still out while the area he cut open heals.  That puts me in a tight spot.  Running is bad.  Swimming is out.  And biking means I have to sit.  Talk about options.  Tear the legs apart, rub an open sore with ear plugs, or sit on my decidedly sore a$$.

Apparently, I'm a wreck.  The good news is that I only have to deal with that for four weeks.  I have a race on July 20th, and I won't have any choice but to deal with it.  Well before that, I'll just suck it up and decide that I'm ACTUALLY fine and just get back to training.

I can go back to being a wreck on July 21st.

The 2008 Bellin Run is in the books.  It was a beautiful day, with very slight breezes and fairly moderate temperatures.  While it was a bit warm in the open areas, it was far from the extremes of heat experienced the past few years.  In fact, conditions were so good that at least one new course record was set (though I don't know which).

For me, it was a good run, though less than I had hoped.  The first several miles allowed me to know I was unlikely to break 40 minutes.  It would have taken a significant negative split, and I didn't have that in me.  I set my sites on maintaining a good enough pace to set a PR.  By mile five, I knew that was out the door, as well.

I finished with an official time of 42:49 for a pace of 6:54/mile.  My 5K split was 20:30 making it easy to see how I faded on the second half.  It also shows how big a negative split I would have needed to break 40 minutes.  Given the physical circumstances of the past weeks, I'll take a second best 10K run in lieu of a personal best.

It seems many of my co-workers were dragging the same anchor.  The top three runners from last year were the top three runners, this year.  Our fastest was about 1:45 slower, this year.  I was 1:27 slower, and our third fastest runner was 2:08 slower.  While still 1, 2, 3, our cumulative times were over five minutes slower.  It looks like next year we all need to focus on speedwork in the weeks leading up to the race.

That's three races down, and one big one left on the horizon.  I now have about five weeks to recover and get myself to the starting line in Racine.  After that 70.3 miles, I'll figure out what my body can handle for the rest of the year.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

No, wait, that's the jedi story.

Okay, let's try again.  Several years ago, I started running.  Completing a 12-minute mile was quite a chore back then.  Between being physically out of shape and weighing close to 225 pounds, I guess that was actually a pretty good pace.  Especially since I never gave myself a heart attack.

Over time, I gained considerable fitness.  I lost a bit of weight, too.  And I got faster.  Eventually, I broke the 10-minute barrier, and celebrated.  Then, I gained even more fitness, lost more weight, and managed to break the 8-minute wall for a distance greater than three miles.

Then I became a triathlete.  I lost a lot more weight, made huge gains in fitness, and got to where I could push 8:30 pace over marathon distance.  I even managed to run a sub-42 minute 10K.

Now, it is the eve of that annual 10K race, again.  And I find myself staring down the barrel of a sub-40 race.  I don't know if I can do it.  In fact, given the recent marathon, I doubt it is realistic to expect it out of myself.  Still, it's only 1:23 faster than last year.

So, I find myself running the numbers.  What does it take to break 40 minutes over 6.2 miles.  The answer, 6:26 pace.  That is what makes it seem so daunting.  You see, 40 minutes doesn't frame it properly.  I can run for 40 minutes.  In fact, I can run pretty fast for 40 minutes.  But 6:26 pace, that puts it in my face.  I know just how hard it is to maintain that pace over any kind of distance.

But, I will try.  I will place myself right behind the elite runners.  I will find a rhythm that feels right, and I will see what happens.  If I hit the first two mile markers within 13 minutes, I will keep pushing myself harder and see what happens as I head toward the final 5K.

One thing is certain.  It will hurt.  But it will only hurt for 40 minutes.  Than, I can lay down.  Or, it will hurt for 30 minutes and I will know it isn't going to happen, and I can ease up.

But I WILL try.  After all, that's what it takes to run with the elites.

And that, my friends, is the truly frightening part.  To even be considering an attempt to hang with the elites (well, at least the slow ones) is something I would have thought ridiculous a few years ago.

For those of you who believe you're "too slow," just keep working at it.  If you push yourself, you will amaze yourself.

Eight years ago, I sat in a doctor's office as he threw around words like surgery, biopsy, and non-Hodkin's lymphoma.  Though somewhat stunned at the urgency with which the doctors were considering options, I was fairly stoic about the overall discussion.  There was little to be gained from wigging out over "possibly" and "potentially."  A minor bit of surgery and some time with a microscope was all that was needed for concrete information.

Those results and the doctor responsible for my care thrust me onto the endurance scene.  Well, to be fair, the doctor accepts no responsibility for my becoming an endurance athlete.  He says that's all on me.  I blame him.  He's the one who told me to start running.  Who knew that like Forrest Gump, I'd still be running years later.

It seems I have now gone full circle.  Biopsies performed nearly a decade ago were the starting point in my journey from out of shape sailor to marathoner to triathlete to Ironman.  Recently, while preparing for a training swim, I noticed both a "bump" and blood in my ear canal (I wear plugs and routinely clean the ear to ensure a secure fit).

A visit with the ENT identified a couple things.  First, I seem to have yet another (or still existing) rupture of the tympanic membrane (eardrum).  Given the lack of any real symptoms, the doctor is fairly unconcerned with this.  He'll keep an eye on it and see if any reasons to treat it develop.

He was a bit more concerned with the bump in the ear.  Eight years after surgery for lymph node biopsies, I sat in a doctor's office as he removed a sample from my ear.  It will be sent to the lab for testing.

The doctor had two positive comments.  First, he is fairly certain this is a fairly common and routinely benign growth.  If so, we'll add it to the "wait and see" pile along with the ruptured eardrum.  Second, he was amazed at how quickly I identified the new growth.  While it seemed huge (in ear terms) to my wife and me, he said it is relatively small and is most likely a recent development.

In the event it isn't benign, we are ahead of the curve with the quick discovery.

Who knew that one biopsy would so directly result in another.  That was one big circle.  Next Tuesday I will know if I'm once again dealing with a minor inconvenience or if it's a bit more serious, this time.

Imagine running an Ironman and finishing with a PR of nearly an hour.  If that race was an Ironman 70.3 event, it would be even more satisfying.  And achieving that kind of improvement in an Olympic is huge.

So what about a 50 minute PR in an 18 mile sprint event?  That would be truly impressive.  Maybe, maybe not.

My return to the sprint distance was also my return to the Trinity Triathlon.  Consisting of a 220 yard swim, a 15 mile bike, and 3.1 mile run, it was the scene of the first triathlon I ever completed.  Or, as I refer to it, the scene of the crime.

After having a chain break at mile six of the bike and then running the next 6.5 miles barefoot, I completed that first race with a time of 2:04.

Things went much better, today.

We had a wonderful day for a race, with moderate temperatures and winds that weren't TOO bad.  The water was only 58 degrees, and I wore my wetsuit despite the short distance.  Any time lost in transition was more than made up in comfort in the water.

The winds made for a challenging bike.  Luckily, we had the wind at our backs for the worst of the uphill portions.  It's obvious I need more time on the bike prior to Spirit of Racine, or the 56 miles there will hurt unless I slow way down.  Most importantly, no broken bike parts.  (There were a few serious wipeouts and a "race ending" flat).

I was concerned going into the run.  The bike had taken a lot out of me, and I haven't fully recovered from the marathon three weeks ago.  In the end, things went well.  As usual, the run was my best discipline.

In the end, I finished with an official time of 1:15:31 (my watch showed 1:16:31).  That was good enough for 21st overall (108), 19th among males (58), and 7th in my age group (23).  Most importantly, it was a 50-minute PR!

Editor's Note:  The clown who ran the race and wrote the post seems incapable of actually stopping his watch at the end of a race.  After a quick review, his watch shows a final time of 1:15:30 PLUS 42 seconds on a final "lap," most likely the time it took to get to the food tent.

By the numbers:

Swim - 2:46 (based on this, I REALLY doubt it was 220 yards.  It's probably closer to 150.  22nd overall)

T1 - 2:17 (This isn't timed by the event.  I went without socks, this race, which made a huge difference.  Lost that time to getting out of the wetsuit.)

Bike - 46:28 (19.3 mph).  For timing, they include T-1 time in the bike.  They show me as 48:34 for just over 16 mph (25th overall). (I have NO idea how the calculate those numbers)

T-2 - 1:01.  Continued without socks.  Struggled with my gloves.

Run - 22:58 (they have 24:06), 19th overall.