Vordy Laps

When I started competitively swimming around the age of 12, I had two former Russian olympic swimmers as coaches, Olga and Eugene. I can remember the majority of our workouts consisted of them just repeating over and over “Vordy laaps Vree” for the whole hour of practice. At the time I thought they were either nuts or didn’t know any other words in English, as it turned out it was a fair mix of both.

At that time I was swimming after school on Monday, Wednesday and Fridays but according to Eugene 3 days was not acceptable. After each practice I would see him sitting with my mother and grandfather (who used to drive me) gesturing and slapping the top of his thighs, I remember as I got closer his hands and their thick meaty fingers starting to flail and point my way, I knew that it was a matter of time until I would be doing Vordy laaps 5 dimes a veek. As predicted I started swimming five days a week and did not stop for the next 10 years. Morning practices in freezing cold pools, afternoon practices where I would come home and eat by myself at the table while I attempted my homework at 8:30 at night. Swimming took over both mine and my family’s life. Meets would last hours and hours and with the sheer volume of workouts someone was always arranging their schedules to pick me up.

Swimming wasn’t all bad back in the day;  during my formative high school years I had the opportunity to hang out with half naked girls every morning and night, summers consisted of sleeping on the beach as a lifeguard making nice cash and also chilling with half naked girls. Swimming got me some money to go to college and swimming landed me a gig as a masters coach when I was out of Law School.

So why do I (and others) hate swimming so much now? My friend Liam who I swam with in college refused to swim in preparation for his first 2 triathlons even though he had not swam in over 4 years, he says he has “horrible memories of waking up at the ass crack of dawn to jump into freezing water for 1.5 hour drill sessions”. My buddy John says “what goes on just before the swim…sucks the most, I gotta motivate myself to drive to the gym, then I gotta put on my suit, take a shower ext. ”,  later in the same day he texted me “man i am looking at my speedo….I want nothing to do with the pool right now.”  Is it the isolation? When I asked my good friend Jeff he said “it’s the number 1 reason [he] doesn’t [swim] more often and for longer distances each session”. Maybe it is simply the fact that whether you are a good swimmer or not, when you are out of shape, nothing hurts more than swimming.

I’m sure any athlete will tell you that there is no better feeling then when you are feeling strong in your particular sport. The last time I felt great swimming was 3 years ago at the Cross Island YMCA training with Elik, Don, and Andre. Going head to head with Andre every workout made me super strong and I remember one workout when I felt like I was literally floating on top of the water coasting and knocking off 1:05 100s like clockwork. Needless to say those days are over (for now) and with no team to train with I am on my own battling every one of the sentiments above every day I am scheduled to swim.

As I type this I am stinking like chlorine. I died after 1,000 yards and have some work to do but for what it’s worth I swam the 40 laps.

Re: Bike for Liam

I hate writing regular race reports, and was planning on writing a story on traveling and racing with friends and family with maybe a few lines on the race. The race however wrote the story itself and I would love to look back and remember this event for what it was.

After a friday night of playing ball with Tyler’s kids and eating some awesome chicken cacciatore over (two choices) of pasta that his wife Jen made, we sat on the couch to watch a little mixed martial arts. It was then that 3 (out of 4) of us received a nervous email from the race director. He  said that he hoped the weather would hold out but it was not looking good and the determination would be made game time as to whether it would be safe to race or if we would have an old fashioned foot race instead. As we spoke more about the email there was a consensus that we wanted them to run the whole race but there was a better than average possibility based on our prior experiences that race directors usually cancel the bike portion if there is even a hint of rain.

The next morning it looked overcast from the window but once we got outside it was raining full on and we were positive it was going to be a run. In the parking lot we rendezvoused with my Dad and agreed we would leave the bikes in the car. I ran to the bathroom with Ken and I saw Marty Schiavone,  the race director, he asked me what I thought about the weather. I told him it was a go and would be awesome, he mentioned that he paid extra for an ambulance to be on site and lo and behold be careful what you wish for, because in less than 30 minutes we were pumping tires and I was racking Honeydew in the pouring rain.

Everyone except Liam that is, it looks as though the evil genius had struck again. When getting our packets it just so happened that he “wasn’t registered”, and while this explains why he didn’t get the email the night before it also gave him a plain and simple reason not to get in spandex in the cold like the rest of us. I could not say I would not do the same thing but this “coincidence” allowed him to chill under an umbrella and in warm clothes. He did take some good pictures though.

Now I love a foul weather race, but even I was thinking at this point things were getting ridiculous. As I started the first 3 mile run I had to keep shaking my hands because they were going numb and thought about ditching my long sleeve since it was getting heavier and heavier due to the persistent rainfall. I decided against it because I knew I would need as much protection as possible on the bike.

After a pedestrian 3 miles I took my soaking wet socks off and jumped on the bike, this is a great course since it is flat and super fast. I was a bit hesitant for the first 50 yards but then got a feel for the bike and my own (bike handling) limitations and settled into a nice pace. With the rain and my refusal to wear glasses, I was squinting a ton but managed to catch a glance of Tyler, Ken and my Dad and they all looked super strong. Ken gave me his trademark yell, Tyler gave his trademark stone face and my Dad was beaming.

When I entered T2 I quickly threw my top shirt off, and it felt like I was throwing a 30 pound weight off my shoulders. As I started the run I quickly remembered what a Brik workout feels like and I shuffled the first mile until I got my legs back, I passed Ken (again) he was smiling broadly as he yelled “I ain’t heard no bell, Rock”.  It was then that I put my pain management skills into good use, as I concentrated on a static object, a tree or umbrella, and lock onto it with tunnel vision focus, the only thing I am aware of is my cadence and breathing and everything else is secondary. I broke this focus when I passed my dad and gave him a quick low 5. Little did I know he was on his way to running the second 3 miles only 10 seconds slower than his first (the guy is automatic).

When I finished my body was still warm and it felt great to have the rain hitting my face, I chatted a little with Liam and Jeff and learned that although Tyler ran a great race he was suffering from mild hypothermia. Ken was starting to chill and shake as well and I knew I had another 5 minutes before it hit me. I quickly changed up in the back of the Jeep and caught my dad finishing which was awesome.

All in all a great race I have to give it to Marty the race director as he not only had the balls to let us bike (something many RD would not do) but he put on a fun race and everyone had a great time. For the team we brought home 2 pieces of hardware (my dad and Tyler each placed 3rd in AG). Epic race and another step in the right direction. I know I need to step up my distance now that my body feels solid and will start to prep for Mooseman.

Sandbaggery

If you performed a half assed search of “Sandbagger” in the dictionary you would find synonyms such as Deception, beguilement, deceit, bluff, mystification, and subterfuge. For those of you who don’t know a Sandbagger, they are the guys who are always saying they “never have time to train” and are never “in shape” for any race. The problem is that you have proof that they don’t only train, they are waking up at 5am to ride 56 miles, then they run 12 miles at lunch, swim 3,000 yards at night and can be found doing crunches during the commercials of their favorite show before eating a carb light dinner and passing out in their altitude tent at 8:00pm. My friends, I WAS that Sandbagger.

With the first group race of the year coming up on sunday, the sandbagging is upon us. I have my buddy Liam saying he has been eating cookies all winter, Ken is IMing me that he just hopes he hits a certain time but will be happy just to finish. Mind you, this is a Duathlon of 3 miles, 10 miles, 3 miles. My grandmother could finish and she has two speeds, slow and stop. We decided to break down the 6 of us in teams and the lowest time will take it. I decided to post the projected times so we can compare after and see who the real sandbagger really is!!

Ken:

“i am going with 1 hr 17 minutes and 30 seconds
 3 mile – 24 min
10 mile – 28 min
3 mile – 22.50 min
transition – 3 minutes”

Tyler:

19.5, 25.5,20 with 2 min trans – 1:07

Liam:

“I can put down 3 honeybuns, a box of cookies and a half gallon of milk in under 7 mins”

Matt:

RUN1 – 27:58
BIKE – 34:00
RUN2 – 29:00
Transitions – 2 minutes
Total – 1:30:58

Joe:

18, 27, 19 with 2 min trans – 1:06

Ben:

None Given

Tales From The Midpack

 

So here I am at about mile 2.2 of a 4 mile race that I do every year in April. I am going steady but far from strong, I hear two girls behind me talking to one another about going out, and the “perverbial” old man with a headband breathing heavy over my left shoulder.

FLASH BACK

2 years ago to the day, running strong and fast in torrential rain to an age group victory, my legs were sore from having placed just the day before in a 5k but I was feeling awesome and reeling off the adrenaline of taking home hardware in back to back races.

I am almost positive the old man is going to take me down, but I try to concentrate on my cadence and getting over Prospect Hill without blowing out too much steam. I cross the first mile marker in 8:30 and have a common racing experience, the one where you can see up the road at everyone in front of you, calculate the effort and energy to catch them, and recognize that it is insurmountable. It is then that you feel like you are basically at the ass end of the field and will finish last, and while this isn’t true, you are however…… in the Midpack.

FLASH BACK

Last year I started running well but right at mile 2 felt IT band symptoms creeping up. I proceeded to walk/run/limp a miserable 2 miles (also in the rain), to the finish. I was not able to walk or stand for the next 4 days and was plagued with IT issues the rest of the season.

I kept plodding along concentrating on my new style of running and knocking off the 8:30 minute miles I was hoping for. As I continued to run my mind shifted from my bruised ego and position in the Midpack to my spirits being raised. While it did suck to be slower than you were, at least I was running and not limping and when it is over I am sure that the pain in my back will be soreness and not a slipped disk. 

The morning concluded with me cheering my dad on to the finish (He set a PR running 9:30 min miles at 60 years of age) and enjoying brunch and drinks with close friends. As a welcome change I was told, for the first time ever, that I looked good coming into the finish.

FLASH FORWARD

Two days later and I am not limping or hunching. I feel great and stronger for my effort and while I did race with a cold and was spitting a ton (take that old man!!), I am getting over that well and am ready to hammer at a duathlon next weekend. With a ton of my friends and family (My dad’s first multisport event) racing I would prefer to be in the Midpack, than not racing at all, because in all fairness I much rather be trying to take them down then cheering them on.

What’s Done is Done

As I got out of bed this morning and made my way to the dresser, I looked over my shoulder at my wife laying amidst ruffled sheets and strewn about pillows, it was then she looked over at me and sighed “your really good babe”. This in theory would have been a great scenario if in reality it wasn’t 4:53am, I didn’t just trip on a chew-toy, and wasn’t rummaging through my closet for the appropriate spandex to layer my body against the cold before my 5:30am ride in Central Park.

There are morning people and then there are people like me and Ken. We are the guys with great intentions at 6pm but not 6am. We have cancelled more early morning swims and bikes then I care to remember and it always goes something like this.

K/M: (4:45) are we still doing this
K/M: (4:47) don’t know, what do u think.
K/M: (4:48) up to you…I can skip it
K/M: (4:50) fuck it, we can do it tonight, I am tired as shit

Not only does this conversation take place frequently, but we laugh about it later like we got one over on the universe or something. Anyway, on this occasion, separation anxiety got us out of bed (Ken has been traveling a fair amount lately) and we met..in the dark…and the cold..at engineers gate.

5 minutes into the ride ken drops a bombshell, “I went for a 13 mile run the other day”. Where I appreciate the effort I don’t understand where it is coming from. He explains that he is afraid of the Ironman run……7 months from now. I laugh to myself because Ken is starting to show some human traits and I appreciate that especially this early in the morning.

As we motored around the park at a good pace we were getting passed by a ton of triathletes riding in a pace line. Now I am all for riding a pace line if I am a road cyclist or even practicing certain skills, but come on, if I am waking my ass up to ride you best believe I am getting the most for my money.

As I rode the downhill home I was freezing and gunning it in hopes of catching Katie before she left for work. I was rewarded with the perfect end to my story, when I got to see my girl and as I took a shower Bev rubbed her face in the chamois of my bike shorts,  similar to what she does to dead animals and discarded fish. http://www.school-for-champions.com/behavior/dogs_roll.htm

In sum, it was great to catch up with Ken, and in all honesty I would wake up an hour earlier if it was the only time I could ride with him, however there is a good chance I would text him to cancel.

Over the Hump

Long day of work, tired, cold outside, no food all day. I get home and I am famished, I make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (not my favorite meal) and wait an hour to give it some time to digest. I then text Ken to see if he wants to go out for the run and he says he is tired from the week (perfectly understandable). After procrastinating I put my shit on and head out at 8 o’clock. From my apartment to Central Park is a bit of a climb and my lungs are killing, I wonder “what the hell am I doing out here?”. As I enter the park, already feeling like I am an hour in, I make a promise to myself that I will time my run perfectly to wind up at Key Food to pick up some Guinness and chicken. Central Park at 8:15 on a Friday on the East Side is DEAD and I have to say I feel a little wierd being there so I cut out and run down past the MET. I love running past the MET because I remember going with my parents (many times) as a kid and wanting to live in the city so I could go whenever I wanted, it brings me back. Ok, so now I am getting thirsty and not for water or a recovery drink and I have planned it perfectly, I will hit the Key Food at exactly 45 minutes. I am running down in front and hit my watch, I go to open the door…. CLOSED, WTF. I run back up the hill because my dumb ass thinks there is another store at the top…. WRONG. I run another 10 minutes to the C-Town because I refuse to take a 20 out at a bodega. Finally, I make it in and get my reward. When I looked at my watch and the distance I get another reward, my longest run and my fastest to date.

Training is intense but you can’t take it to seriously or you will burn out (see Swimming for 18 years), I learned that awhile ago and I was happy to exercise that as well as my body tonight. I didn’t want to train at all but I toughed it out and made it over that mental hump. Anyway I am 3 Guinness’ deep and about to watch Housewives of NYC and pet my puggle, life is good.

Up On A Plane

On my way to Tampa by way of Atlanta for my best friend Liam’s bachelor party and I am reading a book called “The Fighters Mind” and while the focus is mainly on MMA fighters and there thought process in training and in the ring it got me thinking (and reading) more about Paul Theroux the great travel writer and novelist. Theroux touched me when he stated that “when an adventurer gets back from some hellhole he will inevitably be ask by his peers ‘why?’ and upon being asked the adventurer will do whatever it takes to avoid the question and instead try to flip the question to ‘why not?’’

Nonetheless in 1993 Theroux was giving a friend a hard time about rowing a boat across the pacific with “enormous personal risk” as Theroux predicted his friend avoided the question of “why?” but after much pestering, his friend answered and Theroux recorded that answer;

“Only an animal does useful things… An animal gets food, finds a place to sleep, and tries to keep comfortable. But I wanted to something that was not useful, not like an animal at all. Something only a human being would do.”

I remember 2 years ago sitting at brunch with my soon to be wife and our close friend Kristy in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Kristy was grilling me on why I would ever want to do triathlons in general let alone a 24 hour race in Colorado. Now Kristy is a very smart girl, and I respect her on many different levels, so when she was throwing out reasons for the insanity, they made complete sense and the rationality was coming through loud and clear. I on the other hand decided to revert to the age old machismo defense, explaining the concept of suffering and asking why someone would not want to experience such a great feeling blah, blah, blah. As our conversation progressed, I could feel I was losing my audience, no matter what I said about the joys of killing myself her conviction remained and I could tell she thought I was nuts.

I think many of us who have sacrificed to get to a place where we have the possibility of achieving a goal (any goal) have many internal feelings as to “why” we do It. Personally, I  think of those reasons during every training session and for the majority of us (I think) some of those reasons are very personal. However, getting back to the quote above, I would contend that although an animal would never think of such a ridiculous event like Ironman, What I am trying to do is to BECOME an animal through my training. I do not want to be made numb by “human” activities, activities such as watching TV for hours, always expecting instant gratification, and spending hours a day sifting paper or shoveling shit (whatever your mode of paper chasing), I want to seek something other than pleasure, and hate the feeling of pain unless it comes from my own hands

Looking down from this plane it is evident that we are just ants in this universe. If that is true we have a choice we can either accept our insignificance and carry on as usual, or we can accept that fact and look at it as a perfect opportunity to hold the ones we love drop the fear and pretense and go after what we desire because in the end we are all not as important as we think we are.

So in the end I guess it does begin and end with the “concept” of suffering but it has very little to do with physical pain and a lot to do personal transformation. There is an old Celtic proverb that reads “See Much, study much, suffer much is the path to wisdom”. I have no clue I what wisdom is and I don’t think an Ironman is going to deliver me, but I think a life of challenge and introspection will get me closer.