Lake Meridian Tri and the Object Lesson

First, the tri.
The Lake Meridian Triathlon is an awesome venue -- the lake itself is pristine, the cycling course is rolling to awesome, and the run is f*cking tough. And the people putting it on are super friendly. It's a great race. Unfortunately, I did not have a great race:

• Swim: felt bad. questioning the effort 100 yards into the race. Tired, slogged through it.
• Bike: felt better, but not able to really dig deeply. avg 20.4 mph, hr @ 155-160.
• Run: felt crappy. really not able to push it. HR flatlined around 155 or so.

To summarize: I was tired and it showed. Why was I tired? Because I had pushed my mind and body past where they could bounce back via a combination of hard training and overwork. The frequent travelling didn't help, but I can't make up for that travelling by pushing hard when I'm home. I'm too old to recover from that kind of approach.

I think it's time to pull back, way back, and take an honest look at why I do these things. Placing is irrelevant, it depends on who shows up. I'm not elite and so placing just doesn't matter.

Effort is everything. If I can cross the line knowing that I went beyond what I thought I could do, then I've succeeded. I've only had that experience a couple of times this summer, most notably the Hood River weekend with Jay, where we did 90 miles on the bike the first day, 14 miles trail running the second. It was a great way to push myself further than I thought possible.

The olympic tri I did last summer -- the Lake Meridian tri -- was a breakthrough experience because I had such a positive day. I don't race a lot, and so I want every race to be a breakthrough experience, where, regardless of how I place, I cross the line fully fucking spent.

In order to do that I need to do the following:

1. I need to be fully connected to the purpose of the race. Which is to push myself past what I thought was possible.
2. My head needs to be fresh and capable of focusing past the pain in order to get me past my limits.
3. My body needs to be fresh and capable of responding to the huge requests my head is making.
4. I need to swim, bike, and run my own race, using other people as motivation, but not going head to head with them, because basically they're part of the challenge of the course.

In the last several months I've lost my way. This happens a lot with me :) I mistake the miles, the workouts, the intervals, the checkboxes, for signs of progress. I fried myself hard this time, I've got an achy achilles and a twingy back, and nothing to show for it except kind of a numb feeling when I think about the races I did this year.

I'm going to step back and redefine how I get to the place where I can have these breakthrough experiences at will. I think its going to require mental conditioning to accept discomfort, physical conditioning to maintain a greater pace over significant distances, and nutritional conditioning to make sure I'm as efficient as possible when it comes to fuel consumption and excess body weight.

The lesson of the past year is to cultivate patience, and to keep the real prize, the prize worth fighting for, worth suffering for, first and foremost in my mind. In this day and age it is possible to go from cradle to grave never knowing what you are capable of. I do these races for the same reason I spent a lot of time climbing, windsurfing, snowboarding. I want to redefine what is possible, and take myself past the limits that I've shackled myself with. To get there, everything has to line up. My head, my heart, my body, all have to want the same thing, at the same time. The goal of training is to show up on race day with everything aligned, ready to go, regardless of whether the outcome would be seen as success in anyone elses eyes.

Success is in the effort. If I leave it all in the lake, on the road, and on the trail, then I've succeeded. Anything less is a failure, even if that lesser effort leads to a high place.