I’ve always said that the only way I would leave a race without finishing is if they carried me out feet first, which they did at Ironman Wisconsin. I’m not a quitter, but the pool got to me. I QUIT. I’M DONE. I GIVE UP. NO MAS. I’VE HAD IT. I swam Monday morning as usual, and the itching started at around 9 AM, again as usual.

By noon I was covered (except for my hands, the bottoms of my feet, my head, and my privates…thank goodness) with red spots that eventually turned into welts. So I guess I can’t swim in the pool again. The itching was so bad that I was looking for a brick wall to ride my bike into head first so the sweet “Angel Of Death” could bring me some relief.

I’ve attached some pictures, so if you’re eating, you better wait to look…they aren’t pretty. My apologies to any of you who are offended. What you see shows only the body parts fit for viewing (before you send back a response, I know…none of this body is fit for viewing by anyone other than a doctor, nurse or understanding wife).

The picture  reminds me of one of the funnier Seinfeld episodes. It was the one where Elaine had her picture taken by a photographer and used it for Christmas cards. Jerry or George or Kramer, I don’t remember which, pointed out that her nipple was showing. She was mortified because the cards had already been sent out to family and friends. The battered nipple from the Vermontville Syrup Festival run snuck into the picture, but not on purpose. Jean was the photographer, so blame her.

I’m looking for a swim buddy to swim in the lake with me. I need the workouts and I want to keep the swim endurance going, but not at the expense of safety. I’m not even very comfortable swimming in cold water alone near the shoreline. If the weather would ever cooperate the water would be warm enough. Maybe in a couple of weeks…???

Just (Hit The Showers…You’re Out Of The Game) Jack

 

It dawned on me that some of you aren’t runners, so you don’t really know what “runner’s toe” looks like that I wrote about last week. Attached is one ugly foot with the big toe in the process of turning from dark pink to black in one week. Today’s run was a relatively short 8 miler but was hard on it and it may get a little darker before it starts its year-long recovery. I didn’t realize it until I took the picture, but my middle toe has an ugly blister on the right side. I rarely get blisters, so this one is a surprise, but not the only one I’ve ever had.

Ironman Wisconsin training is going well with 6 weeks down and 18 weeks to go ’til the “big dance”. The workouts aren’t all that long yet, but will increase in the third six week period. The swims aren’t getting any easier as far as the “contact dermatitis” is concerned. Right after the swim I’m just fine. In two hours I start to itch in a few spots. By four hours I’m itching almost everywhere, and by eight hours I say I’ll never swim in an indoor pool again. This last Wednesday was the worst it’s been and I thought I would go crazy itching all night. Luckily Jean was really tired and slept all night so I didn’t make her mad. Friday was a forced day off, so the swims will resume Monday morning and I’ll continue to whine until we can get out into the lakes.

I can’t let this one go. I try not to pass on every little thing that friends say when we’re together for fear they’ll stop saying anything. Yesterday at coffee, one of the guys (I won’t say who it was but he has the initials Bill Bradley) said “Now that us four are all together…” and I looked around the table and there were five of us. Either one of us doesn’t count any more or he can’t count any more and he’s an educator to our children. What’s this world coming to?

Daughter Sara was out to the cottage the other day and was asking the same question that many of you have asked about what Wildlife Wranglers LLC does with the raccoons it traps from the attic. I told her they take them to a farm and let them run and play with lots of other raccoons. At night they set out hundreds of garbage cans filled with good things to eat, and the raccoons dive in without fear of being shot. It’s right next to the farm that the dogs and cats that disappear from homes go to when kids don’t feed them.

Jean, Larry and I went out yesterday on a 2 to 3 hour heart rate 1 ride. Jean and I whined all morning about how cold it was and we should have just hopped on the trainers inside. We knew Larry didn’t know any better than we did and would show up to ride, so we were forced to go. According to Jean “Once we got out there it wasn’t really that cold”. According to Jack “I was cold from the time we left ’til the time we got back, and I’m still cold”. I guess perception is everything.

Not much else is happening so this will be a shorty. Good luck to all the runners doing the Fifth Third River Bank Run next Saturday and congrats to those who did the half marathon at Indianapolis yesterday. Race season is upon us!!

Just (Thermostat’s Still Set At 58 Degrees) Jack

 

It seems like in these e-mails I whine a lot and this one’s no exception. Ever since I swam a couple of weeks ago, I’ve had a spot on my skin where my leg meets the rest of me (no, not there…in front) that has been irritated. I blamed it on the chlorine, but now I know it’s more than that.

Down here it’s humid and on our bike rides we sweat a lot. Well, I sweat…Jean “glows”. Anyway, my bike shorts have seen better days and the only other pair I brought are worse, so I hang them on a rack to dry and wear them again on the next bike ride. I wash clothes once a week and figured that was enough but have noticed a distinct odor when I walk by the rack and now all my work-out clothes have taken on a “life of their own”. Now I think the spot on my leg isn’t a rash from contact dermatitis but a fungal infection from those blankety-blank bike shorts.

It’s easy enough to treat, but when I went to Walgreen’s to find something, all the tubes of cream had, in big bold letters CURES JOCK ITCH. I was so embarrassed to take it up to the counter, I might as well have been buying Preparation H or Depends or an 18 year old buying his first condom from a clerk who plays bridge with his mother.

Jean flew back up to Michigan on Wednesday to go to Mary Youngs’ funeral. The week before she left, her phone, which was on its last legs, bit the dust. We went to the Alltel booth at Wal-Mart to get new phones and, after an hour, we had two new ones to learn how to use. We got them home and spent time transferring our address books to the new phones and learning what all the buttons did.

Jean had her land line turned off for the winter so she’s stuck calling me with the new phone. When I talked to her Wednesday evening, I told her I would be going over to Bob Stack’s house at 2 the next day for a cocktail get together so some of the park people could meet Duane O’Conner, the newest Hastings person to move into Club Wildwood. So she called me at 2:30 and wondered why I wasn’t here and would I please call her back.

Somehow, after we got the phones home, she set hers on vibrate (I’m not going to ask why…that’s her business). I called her when I got home and she didn’t answer, so I assumed she was at spinning. When she got home she called me and I was gone again, so she told me she would be home all evening and please call her back. I called back three times and didn’t get an answer. She finally called back at around 10 and wondered why I hadn’t called. I told her I did, but apparently she couldn’t see the phone vibrate from across the room.

She didn’t know how to change it to ring, so I told her I would call her back on the land line, have my phone in hand and tell her which buttons to push. I did call her back and walked her through how to make the change. She said she would hang up, make the change, and call me back. She did, and then asked me to call her back to see if it would ring. I did and the call seemed to go through but no one was there. All of a sudden I heard “Oh crap” and the call went dead. I called her back again. Apparently the phone rang but it wasn’t as loud as she wanted, so instead of saying hello like you would expect, she was fooling around with the volume control and accidentally pushed the button to disconnect the call. Sound like Jean?

I need to have Jean come back and keep an eye on me. I’ve told you that I’ve been trying to lose some weight and have been going about it by trying to eat healthy and lower the calorie intake so I could lose a pound or two a week. Even with the holidays, going out to dinner at least twice a week, Jean’s birthday, Valentines Day, etc., I’ve done pretty well. From the time I came down in early November to early January after the holidays I had lost 9 pounds. I haven’t weighed myself lately but I know I’ve lost some more since then.

However, Friday night was a disaster. I had done well throughout the day, ate salmon and asparagus for dinner, but when I looked at the calorie intake, I was short of where I should be by about 400 calories. I didn’t have much else to eat so I thought I would have some saltine crackers with peanut butter. Somehow I lost consciousness when the universe went through a time warp and when I “came to” there was an empty sleeve of saltine crackers and half the jar of peanut butter was gone. From the inside I felt like a drunk who passed out in an alley off skid row in Chicago with three bottles of Muscatel scattered on the ground nearby.

The attached picture is the latest batch of “Irish Red” going through its final stages of fermentation. If people knew that’s what beer looks like while it’s being made, they probably wouldn’t drink it. I’ve heard it said that if you saw what went on in a restaurant kitchen, you wouldn’t eat out any more, but knowing that the FDA allows a certain number of rodent hairs in a box of cereal, I wouldn’t want to eat at home either. Sometimes not knowing is better than hearing the truth.

Just (Happy To Be Me And Not FEMA’s Michael Brown) Jack

 My son, Matt, came to Florida for a few days. Why he would want to leave San Francisco, a medium sized multi-cultural city with hundreds of great restaurants to stay in a trailer park…oops, I mean mobile home community…where Jean and I bring down the average age by several years, I don’t know.

He got here last Wednesday evening. Mom left on Friday to be brother Bill’s office girl up in Michigan so we decided to go out to dinner (Mom, Jean, Matt, Bother Bob…you may know him as Bobbie Butane…and me). Matt brews his own beer and loves to go to “brew pubs” so we decided to go to St. Sebastiaan’s, a Belgian brew pub about 6 miles North on US-19.

They have great food and some excellent beers but, for the first time, the service was lousy. We got there at 5:45, just in time to get the geezer early bird prices. Our waiter took our drink order about 10 minutes later. He finally got back to us with our drinks at about 6:10 and was ready to take our food order, 10 minutes after the early bird prices ended. We asked him about the early bird prices and he said it would be no problem.

Our food showed up at 7. The drinks were to be two for one and we didn’t have the second one yet, he had forgotten to bring us bread or rolls and, when he finally brought the second drinks, he forgot mine. One of the beers was a specialty brew that changed periodically. When Matt asked him what the current selection was, he said “Read to me what the menu says”. When we read it to him, he said “I think it’s called Specialty Brew”. Duh!!!

Brother Bob had gone outside to have a smoke, ran into a couple from Mt. Pleasant, Michigan looking for property and, since Bob sells real estate, it wasn’t all lost time. When the bill came, I looked it over, and the three meals that were ordered from the early bird menu were at regular prices, a difference of about $7. I could have just paid the bill and taken the $7 from the waiter’s tip, but his tip was going to be meager anyway, so I complained. That sent Bob out again for another smoke.

The bill was changed, the tip was embarrassingly low, and we left. Oh, well, the food was good, the time spent with family was great, and the beer was good. I said the food was good, but found out from Brother Bob that he awoke at about 2AM with severe stomach pain and barely made it to the bathroom. As he sat there unable to leave, he felt the urge, grabbed the wastebasket, and barfed up his Seafood Fettuccini.

Matt and I brewed beer in San Francisco the day before we swam the Tiburon Mile. I got a lot of brewing equipment for Christmas so we decided to brew a batch here. Matt looked over my shoulder so I could do it by myself when I get back to Michigan.

We needed a brew pot and used beer kegs (half barrels) make great ones, but are often hard to find. Many stores have them but they’re the property of the beer brewer or distributor and can’t legally be sold. We called around and found one in Brooksville, about 25 miles away, that the distributor wouldn’t take back. It’s perfect for what we need. All they wanted was the normal keg deposit ($20). Regular brew pots average around $150 so we felt lucky and it was legal, so I could sleep at night. We (Matt) cut a hole in the top, drilled a hole in the side for a spigot, and were ready to brew.

One of the attached pictures is the keg on top of a gas stove in the last few minutes of a 90 minute boil. The contraption sticking out of the top is a chiller, one that Matt and I made last summer. It’s coiled copper tubing with plastic tubing that hooks up to a hose, and more plastic tubing to drain off the hot water. It’s not pretty, but it does the job.

The other picture is of the 5 gallons of beer fermenting in the closet. It will stay there for a week or two until it is ready to be bottled. Once the bottling is done, it should be a couple of months before the beer is ready to drink. The recipe is for an Irish Red. It won’t be exactly like a Killian’s, but hopefully will be better. I’m finding out that it would have been cheaper to sit in a lounge chair all day, go to the ABC liquor store, and buy a six pack of Killian’s, but where’s the fun in that.

Get ready to hoist a few!

Just (Not Ready To Compete With Budweiser Yet) Jack

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

I hope you all had a nice New Years Eve and didn’t party too much. Jean and I went to a friend’s place here in the park. It started at 5:30. Jean won the bet. She said we’d be home by 9 and I said we’d be home by 10. We got home at 9:10 (yes, PM–I have come home at 9 AM New Years morning, but that was in my much younger days).

As to the title of this week’s e-mail…it doesn’t mean that I think mobes are the best thing going. That would be “Mobes Rule“. Jean and I have lived in larger homes than the mobe in Florida and, with tight quarters, there are some unwritten rules.

In the master bedroom we have a closet with sliding doors. If she leaves her side open, that means that in order for me to get anything out, I have to go to her end, close her side, go back to my end and open it. Mobe Rule #1 – Close you side of the closet when you are done.

In the bathroom, above the sink, we have one of those old medicine cabinets that is short and wide. I keep my things in one side and Jean keeps her things in the other side. If Jean leaves her side open, and I want to get out my shaving cream for my every other day de-whiskering, I have to close her side before I can open mine. Mobe Rule #2 – Close your side of the medicine cabinet when you are done.

In both of the above cases, I occasionally leave my side open just so she can see how aggravating it is.

The mobe has a fairly small kitchen that is enclosed on three sides by walls and is partially blocked on the fourth side by an eating bar that extends into the room. I eat differently than Jean, and usually make my own food if we don’t go out to eat. If two people are in the kitchen at the same time, you are constantly bumping into each other. When I go into the kitchen, it seems to be a trigger that brings Jean in to do something. Most often it has nothing to do with food preparation and may be rinsing out the coffee pot, emptying the dishwasher, etc. Mobe Rule #3 – The first one in the kitchen has priority. All others KEEP OUT.

The refrigerator is a fairly small one with one shelf for large things and a couple of shelves and spaces in the doors for smaller things. I can reach in to get a pitcher of Crystal Light or water from the Brita water filter and, before I can get it back, Jean has put something short in the only space available for something tall. Besides blatantly abusing Mobe Rule #3 by being in the kitchen the same time that I am, she’s putting something short on the tall shelf. Mobe Rule #4 – Only tall things go on the tall shelf…short things go anywhere else.

I won’t bore you with Mobe Rules #5 through 16. You get the idea. It’s a universal truth that order must prevail. If the Mobe Rules aren’t followed, chaos ensues, and I feel lost.

On a different note, but also a slap in the face of science, I just don’t understand the differences in the same temperature. If you read last week’s e-mail and didn’t delete it by mistake, you may remember the picture I sent showing me watching television in Michigan. Remember the temperature was 57 degrees. The other night something strange happened and I don’t quite understand it.

It’s Jean’s house up North, and I don’t change the thermostat. So if it’s 57 degrees, I bundle up to keep warm. Jean seems to be quite comfortable and laughs at me if I have gloves and a jacket on. Down here, it’s my mobe, so Jean doesn’t touch the thermostat (Mobe Rule #12). I keep it on about 66 degrees. We were watching TV and it was my turn to sit in the chair (we don’t have much furniture yet so we have to take turns) and there was Jean on the floor wrapped up in a blanket. The picture is attached. She says that 66 degrees down here is much colder than 57 degrees up North.

There will be times up North when she’ll say something like “It really looks warm outside. Why does the heat keep coming on?” It may look nice outside but that doesn’t mean that it’s warm. And, in the winter, unless the outside temperature is above 57, the heat will come on. Granted, I do understand thermal heating when the sun is out, and the house cooling off faster when the wind blows than when it doesn’t blow. But 66 degrees is the same temperature whether you are in Moose Pass Alaska or Key West Florida.

Just (After 16 Years I Still Have A Lot To Learn) Jack

 

Merry Christmas to all. Also Happy Hanukah to our Jewish friends. To the rest of you, Happy Retailers Solvency Day.

As to the title of the e-mail…No, it’s not a person. If you know me well, you’re probably not surprised when I tell you it’s a toenail. Many of you will remember, but for those who don’t, last year in February I was running on my Sunday long run when a car came up on the curb right at me. I kept my eyes on him to make sure I didn’t get hit, failed to see a raised part of the sidewalk, and stubbed my toe.

The big toe on my left foot turned black after a couple of days. I got used to it and it was my “runner’s toe”. It’s a badge of courage among runners and tells real runners that you too are obsessed by running. They say it takes about a year for a toenail to grow out. This last week, I clipped the last of the black nail. I’m no longer in “the die hard runner’s group”. I feel like I’ve been booted from the club. It feels like I’ve lost an old friend. Who Knows? Maybe it will happen again and I’ll be in the loop.

Jean and I ran this morning…I went six and a half and Jean went just enough more to say she ran farther than me. It’s that competitive spirit that she has and I don’t. It was warm (mid sixties) and humid so we whined just a bit about the weather. I’ll turn Jean into a “weather pansy” before you know it.

I’ve attached a picture of me watching TV on my last trip to Michigan. I looked at the thermostat through my frosted glasses and it was set at 57 degrees. It’s fine if you’re working up a storm, but you get a little chilly just sitting. Jean says if you dress appropriately you won’t get cold.

When she got down here, it was about 60 so she took a chill. She had me turn on the heater in the car on the way back from the airport. I was so hot I thought I’d pass out. Apparently her heat threshold changes depending on who pays the bill.

Ta Ta

Just (Maybe The Last E-Mail of The Year) Jack

 

You probably remember the ramblings from last week about our struggle searching for the retirement home of our dreams. It was probably obvious that we didn’t know what we really wanted and was also obvious that Jean and I didn’t necessarily agree with which direction to go.

I’ve attached two pictures to show you all (that’s the collective you…not the hillbilly y’all) what our choices were. Since I bought the “cottage” at Crooked Lake, our budget for a third home has been substantially reduced. Jean was leaning toward a house, while I was leaning toward a trailer (sorry…a mobile home). The homes we could afford, as you can see, needed some work. Most realtors trying for a sale would call them “fixer-uppers”, but I know Ron Lewis and Brother Bob would call them “tear-downs”.

We decided that we would buy a mobile home to spend our winters in until we stayed more than two or three months, then would decide what we really wanted and make a change at that time. We may decide that we like trailer park life and stay there until we have to move to the old folks home or in with our kids (we’ll start out with the kid that caused us the most trouble and work our way to the kid that caused the least…kid’s, decide among yourselves who’s first).

We made an offer on a place and, after a counter offer back, agreed to buy a place in Club Wildwood. There are eight Hastings families there…Larry and Lorrie Blair, Jan Kietzmann, Bob and Dorothy Stack, Dick and Ann Welton, Ted and Clara McKelvey, Dick and Lucy Palmateer, Bob and ??? Branch (I don’t know them so I don’t know what his wife’s name is…it isn’t really ???), and Duward and Pat Cain. Former Hastings residents include Dick and Joyce Guenther, Lenny and Marge Burns, Larry and Betty Kornstadt and probably many others.

I wanted the “Pumpkin Trailer” in the attached picture, but it was on the water and was out of our price range. So we settled on one in the park on Homer Avenue (named after Ron Lewis’ father). We are now officially trailer trash.

Jean and Jan Kietzmann (Jean Walker…not Jean Kietzmann) went shopping for furniture yesterday. I had to stay home and watch paint dry, so I wasn’t able to go. After 3 hours of peace and quiet, Jean called and asked if I would come up the road a few miles ‘cuz she found a table she liked. When I got there, we looked at the table…then she punished me by making me go through the entire store and look at a couple of chairs. Apparently I’ve been a bad, bad boy.

This week’s long run was not a thing of beauty, but then again, it never really is. There isn’t a good place to “drop water” so I did the entire run with one bottle of Gatorade. It wasn’t enough. My schedule shows this long run day at 120 minutes (a rest week). After last week’s blister/ankle fiasco, I decided to run the 120 minutes, but then added a one mile walk to make up for the 9 miles I ran last week when I should have gone 135 minutes (13 to 14 miles). 

Jean’s getting bored running alone, getting bored with running flat, and there isn’t any food to eat when we get done (I won’t let her buy things at the bakery ‘cuz I know I’ll eat them after she goes to bed). So we’re coming home in a couple of weeks. We don’t know exactly when, but Jean will probably ride back with Robert and make sure he stops and rests every hour since that’s how often she wants to stop for 5 minute bathroom breaks that turn into 30 minutes of buying coffee and waiting in the quick-mart for people buying lottery tickets with change from their kids piggy banks, but don’t get me started. 

Jean wasn’t feeling well yesterday. She get’s mouth sores from laying out in the sun (no, not from talking too much), so now she’s down laying in the sun today because the medication is making her feel a little better, but don’t get me started there either.

Just (Now We Have A Place To Live) Jack

So the “Big Race” is history and many of you know I MADE IT! For the second time, I AM AN IRONMAN. Many of you also may have heard that I didn’t have the best of races, but that depends on what your understanding of “the best of races” would be. Here’s my take on the ordeal.

A week before the race the weather channel predicted cool temperatures with a high of 65. That would have been ideal for me. Two days before the race, the high temp had been raised to 70. The day before the race, the high temp had been raised to 74. On race morning, the high temp had been raised to 83. My son Matt tells me that the temperature reading on the car thermometer hit 89 at one time but was consistently around 87.

The only way the day could have been worse for me was wind. It had been in the 10-20 mph range Thursday through Saturday, calmed down to 5-10 on race day, and went back up to 10-20 on Monday.

I am not a hot weather racer as many of you well know. My body just doesn’t fit that pattern. I have a high sweat rate (OK-that’s enough of the “you don’t sweat much for a fat guy” jokes) and my digestive tract doesn’t absorb the fluids fast enough.

So after setting the conditions, here’s the way the day went from my perspective.

The race started with almost 2,200 swimmers, the most in any Ironman Triathlon ever. It was a madhouse the first half mile and was still crowded the rest of the way. I was constantly being hit by other swimmers. One had a watch on that scraped along the top of my right foot and left a one inch cut. One guy hit me in the butt so many times I feel like we’re engaged. I knew my swim time would be worse than last year and it was by 9 minutes. Apparently my body knew it needed fluids so I drank several mouthfuls of water from Lake Monona.

I made a smooth enough transition to the bike and I was off. When I got to “the spot” on McCoy Road I was strangely calm. Most of the bad spots had been fixed and I was careful to watch where I was going. All the way out to Verona I felt like I had won the race and, to me, the demon was history. On the long hill going into Mt. Horeb I had a flat. First of all, it was my first flat in any race. And second of all, why was it on an uphill? Luckily it was the front and was easier to change. I wasted quite a bit of time trying to find what caused it so I wouldn’t flat the spare tube when I put it in. I couldn’t find anything so I inflated the spare with the CO2 cartridge and it held. I just checked the tire and it has around 20 pounds of air, so maybe I just got lucky it didn’t go flat all the way again.

The hills on the bike course are relentless, but there are three in the latter part of the loop that are killer. One is called Old Sauk Pass and it is a long tough climb. Not long compared to Lake Placid, but long when you consider all the other hills you’ve already done. The second one is shorter but steeper. The third one is long and steep. I rode them all but both quads cramped on the second loop on the third of those three hills. Part of it was just the hills and part of it was dehydration/salt intake. I had been drinking Gatorade, carbo pro and taking 1 salt capsule per hour. I increased to two salt capsules every 30-45 minutes about an hour before when the signs of cramping started and it helped me finish the race, although it still wasn’t enough. In addition to the two carbo pro bottles, I consumed several oranges, bananas, some Hammer Gel, several Ritz Bits (peanut butter flavor), two 50 ounce camelbacks of Gatorade and four bottles of water.

I was nauseous after the first 35 miles of the bike and stayed that way until the end of the race. So the run went from a run to a run/walk. I could run about a mile at a time and then would be so sick feeling I would have to walk. At each aid station I would either drink defizzed coke, Gatorade, or chicken broth (Swanson’s…cold…poured right from the can). I sucked the salt off pretzels and spit out the rest into garbage cans. Not to be any more crass than usual, from 7AM race morning until around 2AM the next morning I peed once. I estimate I ran 1/4 of the 26 miles and walked the other 3/4.

So I saw Larry on the run who was also in some distress but at least an hour ahead of me. He asked me how I was doing. I said (I’m doing my best to quote myself) “I feel like s***. I had a flat at Mt. Horeb, I’ve been nauseous since noon, I got leg cramps just past Old Sauk Pass and I’m having a blast” and I meant it.

I know it sounds strange, but time didn’t matter to me (except that I was going to finish before the midnight cutoff no matter what). Maybe I just rationalized my misery, but I couldn’t help thinking about the past year. I wrote about the demon that lives out on McCoy Road, but we all know the “demon” is inside us all. It’s the little guy (or girl) dressed in a devil suit with a pitchfork that sits on our shoulder and tells us to eat that Hershey Bar…you can work it off later, or tells the alcoholic to take another drink, or the drug addict to get high just one more time.

In my case it could have been:

1) You should sue the City of Madison. those craters in the road shouldn’t have been there. You can make millions.

2) You should sue the helmet manufacturer. That helmet shouldn’t have broken into three pieces. You can make millions.

3) It’s Ok to blame yourself for the bike wreck. Just have a couple more drinks and you’ll feel better about it.

4) Those Doctors in Madison never should have released you that early. They have plenty of money. You can make millions.

I could go on and on, but I won’t. I listened to the “goody-two-shoes” guy that sits on the other shoulder and says “It was just an accident. Nobody did anything on purpose. Just try to make the best of a tough situation”.

So if I had my choice of whether to do the race in 14:00:00 or to come back and try the race again to prove to myself I could do it; write to family and friends through 24 weeks of training (I enjoy writing these e-mails as much as many of you enjoy reading them); have family and friends supporting me every step of the way with good thoughts, prayers and encouragement; have people that heard about last year’s bike wreck give me hugs during the run telling me I can do it; have family and friends at the race screaming, yelling, and giving me more encouragement; have the satisfaction of helping a young man and his family when they need help (of course that’s a two edged sword…they don’t owe me anything…they just need to pass the kindness on to someone else later); adapt to tough race conditions and do the best I could under the circumstances, but do the race in 16:18:54, I would choose the latter.

But then again, having it both ways wouldn’t have been too much to ask, would it?

For those of you interested, the underpants run down State Street on Friday evening raised $427 for Eric’s Fund. I am attaching a couple of pictures Bill Bradley took with my camera. I gave the female participants physicals to make sure they were in good enough shape for the run. I’m not a doctor, but I did stay at the Holiday Inn Express. Several of the men were stopped and searched by food police…it appeared they were trying to smuggle bratwurst from other states into Wisconsin. None were arrested, but many were given stiff warnings.

Just (What Isn’t Numb Is Sore) Jack

 

The e-mail this week is a day late (and you were hoping I’d forget) but here it is. I attended the Ironman Wisconsin training camp put on by Multisports this last weekend and didn’t get home until 8:15 Sunday evening. That’s the company owned and operated by Roch Frey, Paul Huddle, Heather Fuhr (she wasn’t there-she’s doing Lake Placid next week) and Paula Newby-Frazier. For those of you not into triathlon, Paula has won the “Big Race” at Kona at least eight times with another 22 or so Ironman wins around the world (she’s married to Paul Huddle). Heather has won at least eight times around the world (she’s younger and married to Roch Frey).

In addition to them, Chris Legh (3 Ironman wins with Ironman Cour d-Alene the most recent and he was also the cover story on the most recent Triathlete magazine) was there leading the fastest group on the bike and adding comments about his training experiences. The guys called him “Penny” because his middle name is Pennington. Also there helping was John Duke, CEO and co-publisher of Triathlete magazine. The guys called him “The Devil” and Paula said the only reason he works out every day and does Triathlons is so he can justify his 3 martinis in the evening.

The camp was great and I learned a lot about all aspects of Ironman racing. Now all I have to do is be able to put the knowledge to work during the rest of my training and on race day.

Have you ever walked into a room and thought you shouldn’t be there. Every person in there looked fitter than me, which may not be saying much, and, with the exception of one guy who may be my age, I was the oldest. Most of the men were around 30 and all were “buff”. The women may have averaged a couple of years older, but nearly all were slender and athletic looking.

Only after the ride to the pool which included three falls (including one by Roch) and two flats (none of them, the falls or the flats, were me) followed by the swim workout (I was in one of the middle lanes with one side of the pool being slower and the other side being faster) did I realize I probably did belong and was, as always, in the “mediocre middle” of the group.

That night I asked to be put in the slowest bike group for the next day’s long ride for a couple of reasons. In the first place, I came to learn the group dynamics of bike rides. A large percentage of the men (at least at this camp) have two basic rules of the ride. Number one is don’t get dropped by a girl. For those of you who are not bikers, being dropped means not being able to keep up with the group or self-appointed leader of the group. For those of you who think the term “girl” is not socially acceptable, that’s the way bike racing is these days for that large percentage of men. Men are men and all others are girls. Not women; not co-riders; not co-competitors; girls!! If you ever get dropped by a GIRL, you might as well be castrated and become a monk in Tibet.

The second is much the same as the group dynamics in a wolf pack. All, at one time or another, strive to be the Alpha male. In riding, that means the fastest, the one who leads all the time. In the fastest group (remember it was led by a 3 time Ironman champion) the ride started at a comfortable 22 mph. As time went on, those animal instincts jumped out and testosterone filled the air. At the first stop, all the groups were called together and were reamed out by Roch, Paul and John for riding all over the road like a–holes. When we broke back apart, Paul told us our group was doing fine but the guys in the two fastest groups were jockeying for position constantly. The average speed in the fastest group increased to 27 or so. The story went around that one of the guys tried to drop Chris Legh, but couldn’t.

So, I didn’t want to get in a group that pushed so hard to be “MEN” that they lost sight of the purpose of the ride and that was to learn the best way to ride that 112 mile hilly course and still have legs for the 26.2 mile run. Just as big a reason for riding slow was that I was petrified. As you know by the e-mails, I’ve been riding plenty of miles around here and have been very comfortable, at least most of the time. But the thought of riding that course and going by the exact spot of the wreck of 2003 made me very nervous. I hardly slept at all Friday night and was trying to think of ways to get out of the ride and still save face.

As it turned out, riding it this past weekend with that group was the best decision I could have made. Yes, for much of the time I was coasting because the people ahead of me were not riding very fast. But it taught me to ride more in the small chain ring (easier gears for you non-bikers) and spin up the hills instead of power up in a big gear like I’m used to. I finished the 72 miles (we only did one of the 40 mile loops at Verona) with legs that felt great and I have lots of confidence for the race.

I did have a tense moment or two when I went by the accident site. I’ve attached pictures that don’t do the road justice. The spots where the chunks of cement are missing are at least 3 inches deep. I have faint recollections about being there and forced into a spot on the road I didn’t want to be in. It sounds weird and I don’t know what it means since I still don’t remember the wreck. I’m still convinced that I either caught the front wheel in one of the expansion joints or cracks, or I hit one of the holes which threw me out of control and I lost the bike.

At any rate, I can’t change anything now and it doesn’t bother me although, on the way back, I got up out of the aero bars on the bike as I rode by and gave the demon that lives there the international one-fingered salute (sorry, Mom-I really did).

Until next week-good luck to Jean at Lake Placid on Sunday.

Just (The Happy Camper and I Didn’t Wet The Bed) Jack