61 Candles

I was had.

Played like the five of hearts.

Set up.

My dear friends invited me over for pizza and beer. That is an easy one. What time? Earlier in the day I should have recognized the signs. Why was everyone wishing me Happy Birthday on June 7 when my birthday (even posted on FaceBook) is August 31? I am all for merry pranking but this one had me scratching under the cap. By the time 5:15 rolled around and I finished off a decent but demanding 10K in the park, I was very contentedly sitting on Bernie and Linda's beautiful deck sipping a delicious Red Hook ESB.

And then Cindy showed up claiming to need discussion about the Historical Society. And then Chris and then Stephanie. Then came Bob and Kathy, Ruthy and Vince. Before I know what (the heck) was going on EVERYBODY was in the kitchen with food, grog and big smiles. A banner was hung. There was laughter and commotion. Party on!

I keep asking, innocently, what is going on? 

It's your birthday party, silly. 

But it's not my birthday.

We couldn't wait till the end of August so we thought we'd celebrate early, do you have problem with that, Scrooge? 

Not hardly.

Then let's celebrate.

Roger to that.

And we did. Incredible selection of food talking me three plates to sample, enough exotic ales to last a month and a birthday cake with 61 (Babe Ruth is smiling somewhere with me at the irony) candles. I make a wish and listen gleefully to a monster version of HB to you. 

What a blast.

We go outside for a group picture and a tiny bike is brought out as a prop. This is fun I am thinking, all my wonderful friends hanging out in celebration of life.

I hear a chorus of oohs, and look  left in time to see Tom wheeling in a blindingly beautiful (and brand new) Felt F1SL (Dura Ace). 

I am still in fog. Dots remain random, unconnected. Tom hands me the bars and I am speechless, stunned. After a few minutes it finally registers on my radar that this is a birthday present, so I ask, making sure I finally get it.

Is this mine, to like, keep?

Eyes roll, laughter refills air with an encore of YES.

And now I get it. 

I have been blessed with an extraordinary group of friends. They plotted and schemed to make this special gift personal and poignant. OMG, my friends all chipped in to buy me a new bike. I still don't know what to say, so I mumble some thank yous and you shouldn't haves but cannot seem to find the rhetoric to express the warmth, joy, gratitude and camaraderie I am feeling. 

With as much sincerity as I can muster, I thank everyone for extreme generosity. And congratulations on what may have been the best surprise party ever, or at very least the last 61 years.

Now I get it.

Pic: The new Felt 54 SL might have come complete with nickname. Test ride this afternoon should confirm our suspicions about flying capabilities. Results shall be well documented. Thank you again.

211

One of my favorite random acts of remembrance (RAR) is to grab a book from wherever I happen to be and fan through the pages stopping with total randomness somewhere between the opening sentence and the dramatic conclusion. I have been doing this for years, and yesterday I did it again. I was moving boxes out of neighbor Pat's house, with clear instructions as to what went where. This gets tossed, this gets recycled, this goes to Good Will, etc. The boxes destined for Good Will contained books. I took a quick peak and grabbed one that I had read many years ago. The Art of Happiness, by HH The Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler.

This should be interesting, I thought beginning to execute the page fan with left thumb, to see if I remember anything.

The fanning stopped on page 48. I read with interest:

"Even in conventional terms, in our everyday lives, we consider education as a very important factor for ensuring a successful and happy life. And knowledge does not come by naturally. We have to train and we have to go through a systematic training program and so forth. And we consider this conventional educational and training to be quite hard, otherwise why do students look forward so much to vacation? Still we know that this type of education is quite vital for ensuring a happy and successful life."

I closed the book and smiled.

We are at the re-testing point in our six week Training by Power (TbP) sessions. The twenty minute all-out FTP test is demanding. All it asks is all you got. Several of our participants have re-tested with dramatic increases, from 5-25%. Others, having already earned a high level of fitness in the past, are witnessing another training and testing phenomenon, that of the law of diminishing returns. Simply stated, this rules says that the fitter you are the smaller the gains. You get one, maybe two big jumps, and then one must continue to work one's butt off for significantly smaller gains. Sometimes no gain at all. This is about as far as you can get from failure. But it is a difficult sale to many. I wish I could better apply the big picture metaphor. 

So to frame this law contextually within the bigger picture today, I remembered the story about water boiling. Water, as you know, is hot at 211 degrees Celsius. It boils at 212 degrees. That one degree makes all the difference in the world. Same with our training, testing and racing. You remember the story about my missing a Kona slot in 2004 by thirty seconds? Thirty seconds over the course of 140.6 miles and eleven hours is a pretty small fraction. But that was the difference that day between me spending another Ironman World Championship in the CompuTrainer booth or being out there on race day sparring with the absolute best in the world. Anybody trying to tell me that day that thirty seconds is meaningless would have ended up in ER. So our gains can be small and HUGE simultaneously. 

Let's get the take away right. The first step towards happiness is understanding what makes us happy and the components necessary to achieve them. There is a systematic program that we must undergo to reach this. That program entails suffering, hardship and dedication. If you are not willing to give an additional one degree of effort your water will not boil, turn to steam and power your performance. 

Many people are fine with just having hot water. Many people mistake possessions and power for happiness. I am not among them.

I am very grateful for the water that I have and the level of happiness I have developed. I want for nothing. I do, however, have a goal. In the journey towards that goal I will not stop at 211 degrees just because the water is hot.

It has to boil.

Watch the 212 video here. 

The Old Man & Two Cs

We talked about going to sea this morning. Actually I talked and everybody else did 6, 6 minute hill repeats with alternating 60 second seated summits and and 6 second explosive power sprints. 6 of those puppies to celebrate the day, 6.6.2012. The sea reference came as I attempted once again to illustrate the importance of a couple of sea words, C words actually, CONFIDENCE AND COURAGE. 

We build confidence indoors through a dedicated adaptation program designed to push both your aerobic and anaerobic fitness to greater levels. We build base, balance, leg and core strength, speed and endurance. What you do with them is then of your choosing. You can race, you can ride, you can tour, you can run your dog in the park, makes no matter, what does matter is that you accept the responsibility of your health and fitness as your own doing. There is nobody going to do it for you. What we do today, what we did this morning, will contribute to our quality of life when the going gets tough. As we age. As we retire and as we start the eventual decay that will lead to having someone else care for us. Please trust me when I say that the going WILL get tough. Let's be prepared. The confidence that we build today will serve us tomorrow as our ability to remain self sufficient we long as possible. I, for one, do not want to be a burden on anyone when I can no longer tie my own shoes. And I certainly do not want to be a burden on my community or my state. There are others with greater needs. The greater my confidence, the lesser my needs. I think it would be a terrific eulogy to have my great nephew say that Uncle Kevin was still racing long course triathlon when he was 100. Don't look now amigo but that is only forty years away.

Courage is to confidence what the Old Man was to the Sea. One defines the other. Courage builds confidence and vice versa. Papa Hemingway would not have had such a tale to tell if his Santiago had stayed on the couch instead of heading out in his skiff to fish. He faced his fears (and bad luck)  much as we do ours. When we fish, when we train, let's bait for big. Let's have the confidence to set lofty goals and the courage to do whatever it takes to get that fish ashore. It will assuredly drain our energy stores, it will test our resolve, it will provide a fertile testing ground for our evolution and growth. 

At the very least if will go for a good story.  

Tea

We all know the Zen story of the empty cup. Student thinks he knows everything and master overfills his cup spilling tea everywhere, adding that much like the cup it is hard to learn anything new if there is no room in the porcelain demitasse of our minds. Empty your cup, grasshopper, of dated (sometimes cherished and defining) concepts, bias and fear in order to refill with truth, beauty and compassion. You might even need to close your eyes to see. Your limitations are all of your creation. You are the Mary Shelly of these monsters. Rewrite them. Change the story. 

This takes courage. The courage to act. Often to add by subtraction. Jettison those things that no longer serve you and embrace the new that do. Refill your cup with the things that you see now, today as wholesome, positive, energetic and, yes, impossible. Michael Jordan once astutely commented that he missed 100% of the shots he never took. You gotta have some huevos amigos. E amigas, as this is not limited by gender. I know some ladies who have ten times the brass of many men. It is a verb. An action word. Do what you fear. 

When we train, it needs specificity. It you race bikes, train on your ride. If you swim the 100IM, you had better do some slippery laps, if the 26.2 distance is your bag, better drop some acid*. However, and this is huge, we must stay cognizant that we are not doing this for our livelihood. We, with rare exceptions, are not pros. We do this for other 'big picture' reasons. Fun, optimum health & fitness, stress management, balance, competition, sport, camaraderie among them. Life has its ups and downs, as Frankie Blue Eyes once crooned, it can be like flying high in April and shot down in May. We must deal with the hubris of high altitude success as well as the doldrums of defeat. Be humble when we win, score high, or hit a benchmark, and find the lesson when we stumble, underachieve or miss our race goal. Should I be decimated because on a given day somebody has the audacity to run faster them me? Should I quit training because my power progression isn't as upwardly linear as others? 

We need to match our metrics with experience. Graph the numbers as well as the firing of nerves. Feel the change and appreciate the journey. We are all, regardless of stature, works in progress. This allows us to fine tune our individual adaptations. To know our strengths and to use them in training and in battle. How long does it take me to recover from a hard effort? At what intensity does my current physicality best respond? What duration? What type of carbohydrate works best for my body chemistry, GI and sport? How much sleep do I really need? Can I manage my stress with less trauma on my liver? Do I understand electrolyte depletion well enough to be able the strike when the iron is red hot? When to back of and when to charge? The beauty of indoor training is that we can test all this, practice it, enhance it. Experience it in the laboratory first instead of on race day when the variables can be devastating. 

That is how I structure my taper. How i juggle the peaks and valleys. I want to come into my key workout, my race and my big day (today) with a full tank, a tuned motor and a keen awareness of the big picture. I want to accomplish all this with joy and without fear, knowing that failure is, thusly, impossible. 

And of course, the big picture means that nobody is going to care about any of this. When the history of man is once again recorded, the effort I put into training, how I race, and the thoughts I share about them will not be included. I am pretty sure of this. Making my sole responsibility the enjoyment and experience, not the outcome. In other words, I need to make sure that my cup is perpetually empty. 

Tea anyone?

*here the reference is to long, slow distance, not lysergic acid diethylamide. 

Truth vs The Facts

Frank Lloyd Wright is credited with saying that the truth is more important than the facts. I like that quote almost as much as I like his designs and approach to architecture. Functional, harmonic, soulful. Fact are very useful but they are do not always serve our higher needs. 

It is factual to say that we lose muscle mass at a very steady rate eatery year after the age of 40.

It is factual to say that the older we get the slower we become.

It is factual to say that we lose our range of motion at about the same rate as losing muscle. 

It is factual to say that we are of the nature to become sick and die. 

It is factual to suggest that sarcopenia, osteoporosis, colon cancer and obesity will eventually run us down and devour us.

Facts say a man cannot outrun a horse.

But is it the truth?

While it might be true (and factual) for a huge segment of the population, it is not my truth. Nor is it truth for the folks I surround myself with. You might say that we roll to a different drummer. Basically because we don't care much about the facts. The very thing that the facts suggest I should no longer be able to accomplish, are the one's square in the cross-hairs of my scope. It is not impossible. Improbable, perhaps, but not impossible.

Take yesterday as an example. Just another day at the local races. The North Olympic Discovery Marathon snakes it's way from Sequim to Port Angeles, WA. We ran the half under a cloud covered gray day. I was on a mission. So was Stephanie. I wanted to test my fitness (remember it is June already, with Ironman Canada now 10 weeks away) and see if I could run a half in less time that in 1997 when I ran a 1:38 in Seattle. Stephanie was gunning to best a 1:58 performance set in 1983 in San Diego. We were out for some half-marathon truth, not a age-tempered factual spin on loss of muscle mass. 

I won't kid you, I went hard. Sometimes the truth (or the attempt to find it) hurts. There were the usual dramas and stories compiled over the course, along with the requisite physical and physiological gamesmanship. It was fun, as it always is, chasing the truth. At kilometer five I had it at max and remember wondering if I had the confidence, courage and cadence to keep it for much longer. I was able to maintain that output for the duration and benefited from the effort in myriad ways. Another slice of truth revealed. 

Stephanie found it too, matching my comparative time reduction from other races, other age groups, she taking the gold in her AG convincingly. The truth is that my truth was delivered in the form of competition against self, or against my former self from 15 years ago. The facts say that I am supposed to be slowing down. 

Truth reveals otherwise. 

Pics: Top to Bot yesterday in the Great Northwest (Sequim to Port Angeles): An interesting take on the tree of life, Stephanie posed with the RD after her stunning win, the magic cat busker and a snapshot of Kiel Reijnen of Bainbridge Island, WA, the feature of the video-interview we conducted last week after his bronze performance at the USA National Road Racing Championships in Greenville, SC.

TRUTH. 

NDD

I am all for ritual. I still put my left shoe on first and pat my helmet before starting every ride. I believe in starting every day with a exercise session and ending it with reading and meditation. In between the am ramp-up and the pm cool-down lies the opportunity. To find new rituals, ones that, perhaps, better suit our present circumstance. How rituals differ from habits is an interesting comparison. They share many commonalities, with ritual adding an element of awareness and intent. A ritual begs involvement and presence, reverence for the act itself, while a habit, is just done, often with little interactivity of mind and body. A habit, after all, can have serious negative side effects, and if its a serious habit, we try not to think about it at all. If, however, we are, as many have suggested, the culmination of our habits (good, bad or vanilla) the better the habits, and the more they honor the ritualistic, the better our chances of tasting some esoteric flavors. 

It was with perverse delight that I began a new ritual yesterday. As most of you know, yesterday was National Doughnut Day. The first Friday in June has held this titular distinction since 1938. Some outlets go as far as to hand out free doughnuts in ritualistic celebration of NDD. No matter how you spell it, dough or do (either is accepted), deep-fried, fat-sweetened dough is high on my list of things to avoid while in training.

And I am always in training. Hence the ritual. Here, today, a mere 74 years after the initial NDD, I hereby create the RCVmanNDD, consisting of the following ritual protocol:

On the first Friday of June every year henceforth, or until I win my age group in Kona, I will enjoy a doughnut (not FOUR like yesterday). This in remembrance and respect for the Salvation Army, the veterans of WWI, and my body fat percentage. All other days of the year I will abstain and add the good habit of not badmouthing Homer Simpson, the obese, or Policemen on the beat as they partake. 

Call it ritual. And call me glad that there is no National Beer Day. 

Pic: At the SoDo Krispy Kreme yesterday to pay my respects. So many choices, none free, however. DOH!

Miles and minutes

Sometimes I get the sense that we are overly obsessed with measurement. The scientific need to analyze. How far, how fast, what size, what degree, what ratio. And please, before I waste another nano-second in contemplation, I very much appreciate the opportunity to use data as a tool. I simply refuse to become a slave to it. Consider: How much is too much fun? How big is your love? How far is eternity? Where, exactly, are we? What time is it, really? 

We spend enormous amounts of our precious time (careful), as athletes, in training towards the improvement of  elements of our sport. We break it down to details that will, hopefully augment the whole. We ride hard, run fast, add resistance, increase cadence and endure the requisite suffering necessary to brig about muscular adaption. Of course we measure all of this with a zeal that borders fervor. Indeed it becomes our religion (easy fella). Our hard wiring also contributes some voltage in the form of comparisons and competition. We like to measure how we match up with so-and-so, and we are, by nature, always cognizant of the survival of the fittest theory. I conducted a telephone interview yesterday with a Pro cyclist from our tiny island hamlet, and held my breath as he paused in thought while considering how most diplomatically to answer my question in regard to his functional threshold power. How close was it to mine, the subconscious racer in my mind wondered, ego already heading towards the podium. 

This is all good. We could be talking about handgun control, same-sex marriage or inflation, instead we share notes on a scratchpad, intrepidly seeking positive change on the path to, well, wherever we envision ourselves going. Even in rock n roll it is a long way to the top. We might as well enjoy the ride. Embrace the journey. Support each other (instead of shooting, condemning, judging and/or stealing from each other). So we measure. Try to make some sense of it. Another day, another dime says the data paradigm. 

Where is all this heading? That is part of the mystery, 'cause we really never know. What happens when your best isn't good enough? Will you be happy only when victory is proclaimed? Does your quest for more upset the applecart of your franchised BalanceMart? Is Pythagoras the ala mode on your apple Pi? Are you disappointed when your race efforts do not meet your projections? Is the point of all this a decimal? 

Try this my dear friends, if like many of us, if you are in the midst of a multi-sport, cross-training, time crunching balancing act, pick one workout next week and spin, ride, run or row by feel. Let yourself go. Breathe and relax into the movement and sync to the motion. Run childlike simply because if feels good and is fun. Hear the sounds that accompany you, try some nasal multi-tasking (the olfactory as well as the inhaling), feel each foot strike search for proprioceptic security, balance and grace. Dial it up. Work your lungs. Level it off just short of implosion. Set the cruise control for stunning. Feel the salt flow on your brow and your quads beg for mercy. 

Just once. See what happens. You might scare yourself a little with the level (watch out) of your personal power (in the abstract). 

I have a theory about all this that can be summarized in one, somewhat pithy, adage:

Train with head,

Race with heart.

Meaning, of course, train using the best equipment, the best tools, with the best partners that your can afford and find. If metrics increase your motivation, great. If hey help you understand the methodology or testing protocols, terrific, if they keep you coming back with the goal of continual improvement, fabulous.

But when you toe the line on race day, let it go and let it flow. The work (measuring and managing) has been done, now it's time to turn that knowledge to wisdom in the manifestation of the most powerful energy system known to man: The synergy of brain and brawn. Science and art. The real and the feel. 

Go get 'em (OK, go ahead and use your chronometer or HRM)

With all due respect to Calvin and Hobbes.