Inactivity, Insanity, Irritability

This past week, I hit the wall. Hard. How hard? Hard enough to leave a Ryan-shaped, splayed out impression cracked into the mortar. I could say "you should see the other guy," but frankly the wall, despite my mass and near-terminal velocity, steadfastly withstood my assault. I didn't take it very well, either, and while I've picked myself up and begun the process of cleaning away the rubble, I have to say sorry to Veva, who got stuck at the aid station with me on Saturday. It was a bad morning.

That covers irritability, on to inactivity and insanity.

As you know, I've been hurt. Still am, actually. Starting with the bruised ribs that I keep trying to train through and graduating into a case of plantar fasciitis. For the last couple of weeks all I've really been able to do is modified duty, holding back on swims and not running. It makes me crazy, having to watch the team training while I stand still. Add to that a severely sub-stellar week at the office and off the reservation I go, down into a deep dark hole. It doesn't take much brain power to see that this is an untenable situation.

So I stopped, took a good long look at my season and realized that I am in serious danger of wasting my trip to Kona. This simply will not do. I'm still hurt, only time and rest can fix that, but with only about 6 weeks to race day, time is in short supply. If I can't follow the program, I have to make my own. So tonight I started my own rehab program. Two hours of spinning, balance, and body work, to be followed by Aleve and sleep. On top of that, I'm going to try and cut booze and soda until race day, which is going to hurt, probably more than my ribs and foot together, but I've got to hit a race weight and be in the best shape possible, given the deadlines and physical constraints.

I need to get my head in the game, and the only thing I can do is to attack the problem straight on and push through it, maybe around it, but definitely, unequivocally, past it.

Today's Sermon

Tonight, another reading from "The Book of Stupid Things Ryan Has Done," 2008 edition. Chapters 45-49.

It's official, I am a moron. I was trying to get better, to let my bruised ribs heal and the heels stop throbbing every time I run. I went to the doctor and got myself checked out, got my pills. When the doctor told me not to work out for a couple of weeks, I told him that wasn't going to happen. He warned me. He did. None of this comes back on you, doc. You warned me.

He told me that every time I moved the bad spot, I was basically re-injuring it.

To be fair to myself, I tried to take it easy. I did. I took a few days off from training and when I came back, I held back. I ran flat pacing at track instead of doing the interval workouts. I got into lanes away from other swimmers and took it easy.

Then this week happened. I figured I was feeling better and hopped into the pool. i managed 2200 yards or so, but when the session ended, I couldn't pull myself out of the pool. I had to dig my right arm into the ladder handle holes in the concrete and haul myself out one handed like a rock climber. It took until Tuesday morning before I could move my left arm without seeing stars.

I don't know why, but I decided that running would be easier, so Tuesday I tried to set up a run with the team. I was the only one who showed, so I bagged it and went to the gym. I did a mini-brick, alternating between stationary bike and treadmill for about 90 minutes. It felt okay, but I was still really sore on Wednesday.

I took Wednesday off to go to a fundraiser. Beer, pizza and no exercise. Good for the body, good for the mind.

Tonight, we had track at the boardwalk. We were supposed to do sand intervals, but out of deference to my ribs, I figured I'd run on the boardwalk only. I did 2 miles easy, no big deal, so for mile three, I decided to try and hit my time trial pace. I ran flat out for a mile and made it in 7:35, missed by 20 seconds. It really hurt. I had to hold myself up against the seawall with my good arm for a minute or two.

No fool, me, I figured I'd done something stupid, so I started walking back. I covered half a mile, feeling every step and for some reason decided to try again at the half mile point. Now, my time trial was 7:20 and that means a half mile should be about 3:40. I made it in 3:21. And nearly passed out.

This concludes the reading. I think that maybe Coach G should institute a new mentor job: What Not To Do Mentor. I'd be good at that.

So it's Valentine's Day...

...and I went to track practice. Like the song says, this single life, it sure is fun.

Booth Babes, Cracked Ribs, Sleep Deprivation and Climbing the Walls

So you can tell by the title that this is going to cover some varied terrain. First things where they belong, this is my training blog, so I guess I should catch you up on that a bit.

I mentioned it in my last post, but I have messed up ribs. I bruised/cracked/broke one or two of them in Tahoe a couple of weeks ago. Not hucking myself around in thigh deep powder, no, but screwing around at slow speed on a cat track. I'm not going to say more, it's too painful, too embarrassing, too bloody stupid. So, the doctor said it isn't broken. He poked me and I didn't scream. He gave me a big Motrins. Works for me, when I take them.

So I had to skip training this past weekend to go to NADA in San Francisco. That's the National Auto Dealer Association trade show, for those of you who don't know. We spent days in end in the west hall of the Moscone Center, which was, as it turned out, the red headed stepchild of the show. I don't know, we got a good reception for our stuff, both from the company we were showing with, and the people we brought by to see it. Now we'll see what we can do with it.

This brings me back to the title. One of my favorite aspects of the convention was booth babes. Now, don't get me wrong, it's not because they're hot and wearing skimpy clothes. If that's all I need, then I can go down to PB or the Gaslamp on any given evening. What I love about booth babes is that they are both the most obvious manifestation of fluff marketing and the most effective traffic generation tool I've seen. I saw more pudgy, middle-aged and old white guys standing in line to have their pictures taken with scantily clad blondes than I had expected at a show where you can buy oil additives, frame aligners, websites and dealerships. I'm not sure any of them knew what the girls were selling, but hey, they were in the booth.

I just have to wonder at what point the girls start to wonder why they signed on for "stand still, look pretty, hand out brochures and get groped."

So we finally got back late last night, and here we come full circle. I couldn't work the show without the Motrin, so I was looped half the time and hurting the rest. Even so, I had run gear with me to try and get in a few miles in place of the team workout. I never made it, between beer and long days and pain, but I was climbing the walls not being able to train.

So tonight I went for a short, relatively easy run. I made it three miles without too much nastiness and I'm not in screaming agony now, so that's good. Maybe it wasn't as bad as I thought. Gonna try swimming tomorrow. That didn't go so well last time, but hey, maybe I'll get lucky.

More later.

Lessons Learned

Tonight, a reading from "The Book of Stupid Things Ryan Has Done," 2008 edition. Chapter 37, "Swimming on Screwed Up Ribs."

Don't do it. It's a bad idea. I woke up this morning with a little twinge in my side where I took a snowboard binding under my lower left rib. I had full range of motion, no visible bruising. Two Aleve and a Power Bar, on with the day.

So tonight I figure I can go to swim. I knocked out a little over 2000 yards. Sounds like a lot, but there was a lot more to go. Thing is, I lost all power on my left side and now deep breaths hurt.

So basically, I'm an idiot. Oh, well, at least Tahoe was epic this last weekend. Three feet of fresh powder and my first ever successful deep-pow tree runs. Thank you triathlon for making my legs strong.

I may have more to say later, but I won't get many workouts in this week. I have to go out of town again, but for work. More reasons not to train. I'll have to find ways to get something in. I hear there's good running in San Francisco.

So I've got a little catching up to do...

So, it's been an eventful couple of weeks. So much so, that my blogging has been more internal than recorded, but I'm here now, so I might as well write something down.

We had a party to watch the Chargers/Colts game at my buddy's house and I picked up the Martian Death Flu, which sucked. It knocked me on my butt for three solid days. So what did I do, besides mainline dayquil and robitussin? I blew off a weekend of training and went snowboarding, which was awesome. The only drawback was that I stayed sick for the rest of the following week.

I couldn't train to save my life. Every little bit of exertion brought on a coughing fit that could've snapped my spine. I took it as easy as I could but I was going stir crazy doing less than I knew I could. Saturday rolled around and I felt good enough to ride my bike.

I took off on the team ride and knocked out the thirty miles coach assigned, including the three times up Torrey Pines hill. It took more out of me than it should have, but hey, I'd been sick and hadn't trained for two weeks. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

But here's where it all catches up to me. After the ride, a few of us ran up to Carlsbad to get our race bibs for the Carlsbad Half Marathon, right before we hauled ass back to La Jolla to make the team's first ocean swim.

The team looked a little shaky, but enthusiastic, as they waded into the 50-something degree water (hooray wetsuits!) but the spirit took hold after a while. Despite the shivering, everybody tagged the kayaks and actually looked pretty happy. We just had to keep reminding them that the water in Hawaii will be way warmer than this, more like the pool we train in.

Anyway, after the swim a few of us Carlsbad runners grabbed a carbo-load dinner and went home. Early to bed and out to the starting line for a 7:30 gun.

Now for the race report, dissecting my first half-marathon.

My overall time was 2:24:25, with my 6.6 mile (halfway) split happening at 1:08:29.

My mile splits for the first half of the race came in at 10:23, but my overall average mile pace was 11:01. What does this tell me, apart from that I ran out of gas part way through? Don't run sick, or shortly after being sick. My body rebelled at mile 7. I had to stop and walk away the nausea a couple times, but I finished, and I ran probably 12 of the 13 miles overall. I'll take it for my first one.

Now, if only the stupid Chargers had won. Or at least the Packers...

Now I have to dig deep into the well of self-denial and root for the Patriots come Super Bowl Sunday. I pledge here and now to hate myself while I do it.

Said the Dolphin Girl to the Man in the Seal Costume

It seems a bit self indulgent, but I wanted to post this because, well, I can. I haven't written much fiction in the last year or two, so this was a fun exercise for me. I hope that you take the time to read it and let me know what you think in the comment section.

This is an early draft of a story I wrote one night after a pool session. It stems from an offhand comment, a leg cramp and an unconfirmed news report about a twenty foot shark in La Jolla. I hope you like it. -- Ryan

I was a half mile out, my tinted goggles turning an already leaden sky into a drunkard’s charcoal Rorschach blot, when I lost the use of my leg. The spasm hit hard, starting in the base of my foot and curling my toes, then moved upward, constricting my calf muscle and pulling the right half of my lower body into a fetal position. This is an exceedingly inconvenient situation in which to find yourself while swimming.

I rolled over on my back and willed my leg to loosen up. When that didn’t work, I alternated massaging it and stroking to keep my head above the surface. In the distance, sea lions barked along the cliffs, their yelping rolling across the water like a badly damaged car alarm.

The day started out simple. It was easier than normal to park at the beach, probably something to do with the late November cold. It was breezy and grey, but otherwise unremarkable. The Pacific was way too calm to surf, which was why I chose to swim.

I had the beach nearly to myself as I zipped up my wetsuit and licked the insides of my goggle lenses. I waded into the tiny breakers and shivered as the water I pulled into the suit warmed to body temperature. Satisfied that my goggles were staying dry, I stroked for the buoy.

Which brings me back to my leg, locked up and dangling, leaving me unable to swim as the wind and chop picked up. I kept trying to straighten out my leg, but the muscles just wouldn’t release. They stayed tighter than coiled pythons and struggling only made it worse. I looked back toward the shore, at the closed up lifeguard tower, knowing that in the off season, even my hot pink swim cap wouldn’t be enough to bring the cavalry.

Rolling over onto my stomach, I breast stroked the last few yards to the buoy, my leg poking up through the growing swell like Nessie’s neck in that hoax photo. I grabbed hold of the buoy with one hand and went to work on my calf with the other.

The water at the half mile point is deep, but not so deep that on a clear day you can’t see the bottom. Today was not a clear day. Every time my head slipped below the surface, I could watch shadows playing in the depths. Large and irregular, they were probably rocks, or stands of kelp that at lower tide would be lying across the surface. Probably. In the chop, the shadows wavered and swayed, dancing like phantoms shot in night vision. When my head came out of the water, I heard the sea lions, and the theme from Jaws. Which is when I saw the dorsal fin.

If I had to make a list of all the stupid things I do that could get me killed, I have to say that my weekend buoy tag would not be on it. Maybe some of my more harebrained hill descents on a bike with only an inch-thick collection of foam stripping around my head, sure, but not this. I’m normally perfectly at home in the water. Normally.

The fin, a few dozen yards away, disappeared behind a peak and didn’t show up in the trough. Forgetting my leg, I spun in circles, searching. Rising and falling with the ocean. Waiting to feel the brush against my leg. The sharp pain and the tug. The coppery tang atop the salt taste of the Pacific, like licking a battery. The water filling my lungs…

The fin came at me straight on. I grabbed at the buoy, but it was useless to me, a big plastic cue ball bobbing on a chain. I couldn’t climb it. The fin got closer, black and roughly triangular. Closer and closer in the warped out time as I wondered whether the wetsuit really would aid in the return of my body to my loved ones.

Closer and closer until I could just about touch it. I shut my eyes and waited. Nothing. No sharp pain. No tug. I opened my eyes.

The fin angled away and I could see the arched back of a dolphin.

That’s when, a half mile out, I lost control of my entire body. I spent several minutes with my eyes closed, doing a solid jellyfish imitation and listening to the sea lions.

Something brushed my leg. My eyes opened. Something tugged my foot. I looked up.

“Oh good,” she said. “I really didn’t want to have to report a body in the water.”

I gawked, unaware of the million witty responses arcing through my brain. We bobbed there, eyeless behind tinted and mirrored plastic lenses, nondescript beneath day-glow swim caps that advertised past events and companies we’d never actually heard of.

“Hello?” She splashed water across my face. I coughed and sputtered. “Anyone in there?”

I coughed out some more water and promptly took a swell in the face.

“How the hell did you make it this far?” She looked at the beach options in front of and behind us as though she’d just realized that they were on the moon. I could swear I had a solid joke on the tip of my tongue.

“Did you see the dolphin?” It was funny in my mind.

“There are dolphins out here today?”

“Just saw the one.”

“Then there won’t be any sharks.”

“That’d be nice.”

“What were you doing?”

“Impersonating a jellyfish.”

“Why?”

“I thought I saw a shark.”

“Have you ever been out here before, or did you pick up that wetsuit on the way over?”

“It was actually a dolphin.” As I spoke, she cocked her head and looked me square in the lenses. The swell picked her up and for a second she hovered above me, an aquatic angel sitting in judgment of my mental capacity, and clearly unimpressed.

“Lucky you,” she said and turned away, dolphin kicking through a wave. “You should head in before anything else happens.”

And like that, she was gone, under the water and behind the swell. I caught sight of her a dozen yards away before I turned and headed back the way I had come.

I stroked hard in, body surfing the rising swell as often as it would carry me, until my hands finally dug into the sand. Running across the beach, I stripped off my wetsuit and grabbed my gear bag. I blew past the showers and made straight for my car. Sopping wet and salty, I tossed a towel down on my leather seat and climbed in. I headed for the far shore of the cove as fast as I could, parking in a red zone and jogging into the park at the top of the stairs. I went to the rail and looked down onto the sand, hoping to spot a gear bag, which was when I realized that I had no idea why I had come this way, or what I would say if the girl with the mirrored goggles, who had saved me from my encounter with the dolphin, had actually been there.

Christ almighty, man, you don’t even know who she is, what her swimsuit looks like, shouted the voice at the back of my mind that tells me when I’m being an idiot.

Shut up, I fired back, I do too know.

Then what color was it?

And I froze. I was right, or rather my subconscious hall monitor was. Would I even know it if I saw her here? Why did I even care? She was just the girl who came after the dolphin. The Dolphin Girl, now that I had made the connection.

And so, standing there, bare arms freezing to damp metal and staring out to sea, I saw her again. I hadn’t seen her approach me in the water. I hadn’t seen her suit. Still, I knew it was her.

It wasn’t that no one else was in the water. It was the movement. Something in the serpentine grace of her stroke, even at this distance, failed to allow for any other possibility. I’d spotted her. Now what? I walked down to the sludgy sand at the waterline. The cold Pacific sucked at my toes. I curled them under my feet and shivered.

From the water’s edge she was lost and I poked around the cove. If she had any gear she’d left it in her car. I walked into the water. Calf-deep, seriously considering going after her. To what end?

Hey baby, you’ve seen my jellyfish impersonation, wanna see my…what? Shark? Eel? Garibaldi? What was there to gain by going out again? What was there to lose by staying shorebound?

“You’d better head in,” she’d said, “before something else happens.” And like that, I’d headed in, miles before I’d planned to stop. What else was going to happen? The fin had been a dolphin. Flipper. Not Jaws. What else was going to happen? I kicked at some beached kelp but my only answer was slimy toes. I climbed back up to the park.

Sometime later, a wicked swell pounding the cove and spraying the tops of the west-facing cliffs. My toes squishing through damp grass. Wondering where my flip flops went. No sign of her. How long had I been there?

The chalk grey sky bleeding ink black toward rain. Night. Night and rain and no sign of her. I fed quarters into the pay as you go binoculars and scanned the breaking waves. Whitecaps even half a mile out, where my leg stopped working. Where I saw the fin. Felt the brush against my leg. The tug on my foot. Where I jellyfished.

Panning and scanning, time ticking away in my ears as the irises ratcheted closed and I spotted her.

Stroke. Glide.

Stroke. Glide.

Up the face. Down into the trough.

Lake swimming in a late winter swell. Surrounded by whitecaps and black…fins. Shapes like disembodied teeth circling and crossing. Irises shut. Ticking stopped. More coins into the slot. Eyes open. Pan and scan. Before something else happens.

What else could happen? What else could possibly happen?

A flash as mirrored goggles turned shoreward into an unnoticed patch of sunshine.

A smile and a wave as the fins circled and crossed.

A breath and under. Fins across the open water.

The ticking stops. The irises shut. Out of change, out of time.

Squinting into the grey horizon, only black shapes sliding across the water.

“Better head in,” she’d said, “before something else happens.”