The Aftermath

It's been a week and a half since the triathlon and my body is beginning to forgive me. I learned a lot about things like overtraining and eating right, especially the timing of proper eating. I also lost 10 pounds. I'm still swimming and running, and I'll start biking again this weekend. I'm beginning to develop better eating habits (Believe it or not, triathletes have a different perspective on food than most others. This really hit home the other day in the supermarket when I looked at a package boasting its low carb content and I asked myself, "What's the use of eating it?")

There's a few more triathlons in this region over the summer, but I re-awakened an old injury to my knee, so I'll be taking it slowly. The plan is to get myself ready for next year. I need to change a lot of things in my life, but something that's made me feel this good - even when it made me feel so terrible - is worth it.

Sounds a lot like love, doesn't it?

I got a tremendous amount of research done, not just into the action of the race and the descriptive details of training and scene, but also into some of the philosophical issues that race through your mind when you're running like shit along a pristine trail through the woods with the angriest, biggest, and meanest horse fly in the world chasing you.

Canoeing on the Eel River, John Heinstein and I came up with the idea of a quadrathlon which would include a kayaking event, but I learned the other day that it's already being done in England.

Mostly, I came up with some insights on my own humanity and came into touch with feelings that have been on my life's back burner for much too long. Somewhere along the line, I stopped listening to my body. I stopped taking it seriously. Maybe as I aged, I didn't want to think about my body anymore. I didn't want to know about the newly formed wrinkles and the places where hair was beginning to grow where it had never grown before. The gray creeping into my hair. I didn't want to listen to my body moaning about a lifetime of injuries and abuse.

But while training for the triathlon, I became aware of my body's voice once more, and now I feel like I've rediscovered an old friend.

I have a year to prepare. I'll be a year older. I'll have more gray hair and wrinkles. Hell, I'll probably have hair on my eyeballs. But when I'm standing at the starting line in the midst of that pack of energetic triathletes half (hell again, a third) my age, I'm going to be feeling better than I've ever felt in my life, and though I won't win, my new-found friend and I will be giving the others a run for their money.