Weinstein and Trump.
This kind of thing persists because people protect it. Specifically, because we men protect it. Because, at a deep and important level, many, perhaps most, men admire men like Harvey Weinstein. He had wealth, an eye for film-making, power. He worked hard and rose to the top of an industry. And yes, he was constantly surrounded by (seemingly) fawning beautiful women.
Very, very few men don’t envy and admire that. Most of the men loudly condemning Weinstein today admire that. Most, three weeks ago, would’ve traded places with Harvey in an instant. Not that the average happily married man would necessarily give up what he has now to trade (though many would), but if given the opportunity to go back and take that path? Yeah. The average young man, unattached, starting out? Yeah.
The same is true looking at Trump: a serial sexual abuser, an accused rapist, a disgusting and stupid man, who nevertheless has the thrall of a third of the country. Because he has wealth, power, and spent his life surrounded by beautiful young women. Nothing more. He has no moral center. No ideas. No competence. But he is admired.
Men have basic, base instincts with regard to sex, violence, and power which we almost all share. It’s at a hormonal level. One of the most enlightening things I’ve ever read about it was a first-hand account of a trans-man taking testosterone for the first time. Similarly, the brilliant trans-man comic, Ian Harvie, shares about the experience in his special. Men with normal hormone levels think about sex regularly. We are incapable of sequestering sexual (and other) thoughts to so-called “appropriate” times.
What we are capable of is learning, preferably in late adolescence, to isolate those impulses and thoughts to the background when they are inappropriate. To refuse to act on them. To create a barrier between those thoughts and the resulting actions that we might pursue if we were barbarians.
Being a socially adept male within a community means spending the time to look at ourselves, and the effort to change how we behave. Often this process is very painful for us. Routinely, it involves being physically dominated by other men when we act out. Express too much interest in a woman with a boyfriend? As an adolescent (even later), that will often result in a beating. It is incredibly difficult for us to learn these lessons in a non-violent way.
But it is long past time that we men started having the conversation about how to be men in a constructive way that honors the fundamental nature of manhood without allowing it to be enveloped with victimization. There is nothing wrong, inherently, with male sexual aggression. Many women are highly interested in that*. What is wrong is when male sexual aggression is expressed outside the context of an explicitly consenting interaction.
There is also nothing wrong, inherently, with the male penchant for violence and physical domination. It needs to be put into a proper context. We need a military. We need police. And we need sports. I have channeled that need, the need for physical mastery, into endurance athletics. It’s not violent, how I manifest it. But make no mistake, it’s fueled by a need to express myself as a man. It’s about dominating a challenge.
In order to participate in civilization, men need to teach men not just how not to behave (and we need to start doing that immediately), but also how to channel our base aggression, testosterone, violence, and sexual impulses into productive, positive environments and expressions. This consists of several simple concepts:
- The principle challenge in being a good man is in self-mastery.
- Conquest is appealing: conquer yourself first, then the world.
- Sex drive and aggression are only good things if you use them productively.
- Other people are humans. Don’t victimize them.
- Stop enabling and covering for men who don’t respect 1-4.
This may seem like an inexpressibly simple list. But they are incredibly difficult, especially for young men, to grasp. Going beyond “I want” to “I am” is a stunningly difficult upheaval in the paradigm we boys are just naturally born with.
Teaching boys to be men, fundamentally, means teaching boys to reframe what feel like external struggles into internal struggles. And internal struggles are astonishingly hard. Confronting them requires the willingness to take ownership of our failures, our wrongdoing, and our outcomes. No externalizing blame. No excuses.
But, when we do that, we find we become what we have always wanted to just take: content, successful, desirable, and accomplished.
___________________________________
*But the ones who aren’t have the right not to be – and all of them get to choose the situations in which they are or aren’t.
My First Spartan Race.
Saturday, BB and I joined three members of my work group at MECMC and competed in the Spartan Race up in Philadelphia. Held in the baseball stadium, it was a lot of silly fun and a brutal 90 minute workout. There were 21 or 22 “obstacles” we had to negotiate over the course of about a 3.5 mile “run” which was really a lot of stairs and jogging up and down ramps.
Some of the obstacles were legitimate obstacles: walls anywhere from 4′ to 8′ we had to climb over. A rope climb (I couldn’t do it) and swinging monkey bars (I couldn’t do them). I failed at three obstacles: the above two and the spear throw (I misjudged the length of the cord and came up short). Each obstacle you fail you can circumvent by doing 30 burpees. The first two times on concrete or asphalt, the third time on the outfield grass. I don’t know how fit YOU are, but for me, 30 burpees is a lot and takes a while.
Some of the “obstacles” were really just strength or cardio or endurance challenges. We carried a 40 pound sandbag to the top of the stadium and back down. The same with a 40 pound jug of water. We did 20 box jumps and 20 medicine ball slams with a 25 pound ball. I needed a boost from a teammate to get over the 8′ wall. But I had a fabulous time, and despite being about 15 years older than some of my teammates, I did great and really enjoyed it.
BB had fun too and thinks she’d like to do it again. I would too. I’d like to try one on a course where they get you wet and dirty, which they couldn’t do at the stadium, of course. I need to work on my upper body strength, big time. Rope climbs are crazy hard, and I just couldn’t do it. Not a chance in hell. My arms and shoulders were sore yesterday and still are today, but not awful. I just need to lose weight and increase strength.
A lot of the people there were current or ex-military. There was a team of West Point cadets. My starting line group included a female Marine who looked like she could finish in 30 minutes and not break a sweat. I see the appeal. The course looked and felt like a slightly easier, slightly shorter version of the boot camp you see in movies.
It was a lot of fun and we’ll definitely do it again. But for now, I have to get back to running. Half marathon in six weeks. Time to go get fit.
The Promises.
Last night in my men’s meeting, the chair talked about the promises. AA has a passage called “The Promises” and they’re among the most widely cited words in all of the program. Even non-alcoholics have often heard of them, or recognize it:
If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.
Alcoholics Anonymous, pps 83-84
As I know I have many non-spiritual readers, I always like to remind people reading this that “God” as referenced in AA is always “as you understand him”. Many people in AA are atheists or agnostics – and always have been, going back to the earliest members. “God” is short hand for “a power greater than yourself”. Whatever that means to you.
Talk to anyone with some time in sobriety, working the program, and you will almost certainly find they agree that “the promises come true”. They certainly have for me. There are times I regret the past. There are times I am still baffled. There are times I feel useless. But they are the exceptions now. Most of the time I feel happy and confident, I am not afraid of people. I am able to devote myself to causes that support others. And the things I could never do for myself are somehow being done – I am capable in ways I never was before.
But the promises belong in a specific place in the program, and they’re there for a reason. The promises are introduced in the book during the explanation of how to take step nine. Step nine: “Made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.” (“Such people” refers to step 8: Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.)
Step nine is a step that most alcoholics dread. And some few are far too eager for it. Step nine is the last of the action steps prior to the “maintenance” steps of 10-11-12. When you finish step 9, you should be ready to enter into your long-term recovery. But there’s a lot of work to do before you get there.
When we talk about the promises, we should be careful to let those new to sobriety know that this is the result of long and hard work, assiduously done, over months or years. It’s not a quick fix. Yes, when we get sober, most of us see dramatic improvements in our health, wellness, and circumstances rapidly. But not all of us. And not in a complete way.
Walking through the steps – trudging through – is required. We learn how to manage. We learn how to cope. We learn how to help others. And we become people worth trusting and investing in and relying on. I worry sometimes that prematurely introducing newly sober people to the promises without context might discourage them when they don’t see results immediately. Well, results are rarely immediate. They’re the outcome of work, time, and diligence.
A Letter to my Coach.
Hi Marcy,
I just wanted to sum up my thoughts about the past nine months. It’s been an amazing challenge, in a challenging time. And one I don’t think I could have achieved without your guidance.
One of the principal core aspects of my self that I’m proud of is my ability to just keep going. When things are hard, or boring, or frustrating, or confusing. This is, I think, why endurance sports and ever-increasing distances appeal to me. I have never been fast, or agile, or graceful. But I can suffer and persist.
This has always served me well. As a child of a broken and occasionally abusive home, I have always needed to be able to put my pain in the background and trudge forward through whatever comes. As an alcoholic in recovery, I have had to proceed steadfastly through often difficult emotional territory to maintain my sobriety.
But until the past four years, I never applied this innate gift to the field of sports or fitness. Because I wasn’t dextrously gifted, I assumed that sports were outside the realm of potential achievement for me. But as I grew in sobriety, I learned something crucial from my experience:
The only thing it takes to be good at something is the willingness to be bad at it.
And so I started being bad at running. And being bad at cycling. And even though I was bad at it, I kept doing it. Sometimes ashamed, sometimes demoralized, sometimes injured, sometimes ambivalent. I kept on being bad at it. Until, as time went by and my education flourished and I met people who knew more than I did and I learned and grew, I slowly got better.
I have to make regular conscious decisions not to be ashamed of my ignorance and inadequacy. I tell myself: it’s ok not to know things. No one ever taught me this before. And then I go learn.
But some challenges are too big to just go take on alone. And half an Ironman is one of those. And so I decided to look for someone who knew more than I did, who’d done it before and would be willing to teach me. And I found you.
This was one of the biggest challenges I’ve set for myself. And yet, strangely, I still had a sense of shame about lacking the education I needed to accomplish this. I felt as though I should somehow just know what to do, to be able to muddle through the way I have with so many other things.
So there was a weird false pride I had to swallow to hire a coach. And I made that conscious but difficult decision to expose my ignorance, to be vulnerable with the truth of what I didn’t know, and rely on you to lead me the right way.
Few times have I ever placed my trust so well.
As Milton wrote, long is the way, and hard, that out of darkness leads up to light. But the way does lead, and I had a leader in you who knew the pitfalls of the trail, and understood the difficulty I was attempting, and respected the distance I had to go. Rather than frighten me with the length of the way, you inspired me with your passion for the journey.
And so when I stood on the dock, excited and afraid, there was one too-constant companion that I did not share a starting line with that day: doubt.
And after a day’s worth of pain and effort, now I have something that can never be taken. After a year’s worth of dedication and commitment, I have become something that will be a part of me forever.
I still see myself in the mirror sometimes as the fat boy. The smoker. The drunk. The child. The quitter. The loser. The cutter. These are faces staring back at me that I do not get to expunge. But they are joined by new faces you helped me shape.
Athlete. Finisher. And slowly, as the long work of my rehabilitation from fear and abuse and addiction and obesity and self-harm is slowly done, I am renovating myself, that face in the mirror, into the face I’ve always aspired to see: the face of a man.
Just that. I don’t have lofty goals. I only want to be a man in my own eyes, instead of a boy. This is all I’ve ever wanted. Finishing a race doesn’t make me a man. But committing to something daunting, being willing to admit my ignorance, to be vulnerable, to work and work and work, to stumble and cry and then get up and work again – that gets me closer. Closer than I’ve ever been.
I know you only signed up to coach me to the finish line of a half Ironman. But you did so much more.
Thank you.
– Dr. 24hours
The Lingering Goodbye.
My father survived his brush with death last month, and has now largely recovered physically, and even mentally. He’s capable of listening and engaging in conversations. He’s not slurring nearly so badly. And he doing less in the way of what I can only think of as “recent hallucinationing”. Meaning, he never seems to actively hallucinate, but he often would talk about conversations that he’d “recently had” with doctors or other people who he imagined told him things. Conversations that never happened.
He’s been moved to a secure wing of a nursing home in Tucson, because he keeps trying to hurt himself and escape. He’s completely unaware of how helpless he is. He thinks he can take care of himself, or that his partner or my sisters could take care of him. It’s delusional, in the extreme. But it makes him very depressed, because he doesn’t understand why he’s in the place he’s in.
And as long as he’s incapable of basic physical tasks like transferring from a bed to a chair, or a chair to a car, he can’t be moved. And he won’t try to do those things, because he thinks he can already do them. He won’t engage with physical therapy. Now that he’s not drunk all the time, he’s doing a bit better mentally, but it took a long time. The last month or two has to be a bewildering, Kafkaesque nightmare. I feel terrible for him.
Now, he’s become convinced that he is going to go live in a cabin in the woods at my little sister’s house. He’s further convinced that I am standing in the way of this. He wants to do this because he’s convinced that his partner is having orgies without him. My sisters are amenable (against my better judgment) to the idea of Dad moving to a nursing home nearer to where they live, but Dad can’t understand that they mean a nursing home and not this self-constructed cabin (it’s a nice cabin, but it’s in no way appropriate for anyone with any kind of special needs).
Dad is in a debilitatingly quixotic state of mind, and I’m convinced that within a month or two of moving to where my sisters live he’d be demanding to go home to Tucson again. I think my sisters are insane to entertain the idea, and I’ve told them so. I can’t in good conscience participate in that course of action, but I also won’t oppose it. I know they want what’s best for dad, and are doing what they think is right. They’re closer to it than I am. I’m allowed to disagree, but meddling or insisting would be inappropriate, and I won’t attempt to derail anything they choose.
So I’ve sort of come to a “on their heads be it” decision. Dad is in a place where he’s safe, well-cared for, and close to the woman who’s essentially been his wife for 25 years. He’s unhappy, but I doubt anything can be done about that at this point. Dad hasn’t been happy in years except in small and diminishing intervals. I feel terrible for him, and I kind of think the best thing would have been for the sepsis to kill him. He talks constantly of suicide.
This is all part of how we’ve turned dying into a long miserable slow cruel process. Half a century ago, my father would have died several years ago as a result of his stroke, and uncontrolled diabetes. But modern pills and treatment have kept him in a miserable limbo, existing in a state of semi-viability. The condition he’s in now could last a decade, with skilled nurses taking care of him. A decade of misery and depression, infirmity and rage.
What Now?
There is always a swale of emotion after a huge goal race. Especially, in my experience, a new race. Whether it’s a new distance, a harder course, new sport, or whatever. I felt it after the Pittsburgh half marathon, after the Marine Corps marathon, after my first Olympic triathlon, and now I’m starting to feel it after the half-Ironman. You work so hard for so long to achieve something you never thought you could, and then you do it. And then it’s over.
I have a few races planned. But I don’t have any specific goals. I’m signed up for a Spartan Race in about three weeks. And a 5km charity race. And BB and I intend to run the Philly half-marathon again. But for me, I don’t really have any intention for those races other than to run them and have fun. The Spartan Race is new, but it’s a novelty. Obstacle course races seem interesting and fun, but I’m not sure they’re in my wheelhouse from a “lifetime goal” perspective.
In some ways, I feel like I can quit a part-time job. I’ve been training about 10 hours a week for more than 9 months. Long runs. Long rides. Long swims. Speed work. Gym work. I still don’t look like Brad Pitt in Fight Club. Yes I somehow imagined that would happen. Yes I’m disappointed it didn’t. No I never thought it was a realistic outcome. But I’m pretty obviously in the best shape of my life.
Right now I’m fit, strong, and as capable as I’ve ever been. Not bad for a 43 year old man with my history of abusing my body. I need to rest but I don’t want to lose it. I’m definitely taking time off from long endurance runs and rides. But not too much. I have a half marathon in two months, and I’ll be ready for it. Even if my goal is simply to get to the end and collect a new medal.
My life is possibly going to be changing significantly. I’m starting to look for a new position, as things at MECMC feel like they’ve plateaued. I’m seeking. I always want new challenges. New opportunities. I don’t like sitting still for long. It’s not the right way for me. Routine can be good, but stagnancy is not. I need to keep growing.
Race Recap: I am Half an Ironman.
I did it. And I did it right. And I got lucky. Everything came together for a fantastic day. A couple of small curve balls like you expect in any race. I had a plan, designed by my excellent coach, Marcy Gialdo, and I executed the plan perfectly. Even though I’ve only done one other actual triathlon, where all three events took place. Even though I’ve never done anything this long, or this hard, or this complicated. I’ve always been good at learning and repeating what I’ve learned. And I got it right yesterday, and Marcy set me up for success perfectly.
I arrived at 0530. Set up my transition area. BB accompanied me and was the best pit-crew I could ever ask for. Helped me carry things, got my bike after the race, took pictures, and supported me every step of the way. I finished setting up at about 0610, and then had a wait of about 90 minutes before I got into the water. It was a smooth start, self-seeded, and so I just gathered with people expecting to take about 45 minutes for the swim.
I was among the only people not wearing a wetsuit. The water was 75 degrees, which is plenty warm for me. I just swam in my tri shorts, topless. Very few people were similarly outfitted, but I made a choice not to be ashamed of my body or embarrassed by being different. I was there to compete in a 70.3 mile triathlon, and I was going to finish. My body was going to get me from the start to the end and I would not be ashamed of it.
When it came time to start, I had no time to think. I stepped to the dock, and then the beep sounded, and I jumped in the water. My feet sank into some muck at the bottom, and then I bounced back up and started the crawl. The swim was essentially an out-and-back, and there was a very slight current. It helped me on the way out, which took me about 20 minutes, and made the return leg a little tougher. It was 28 minutes back in.
At one point I swam smack dab into a buoy, and at one point I switched to breaststroke to pee. The first curve ball of the day was that my right armpit chafed pretty bad in the water. 24 hours later, it still hurts, and is red and inflamed. I wandered on the course a little bit, and there was some jostling and kicking, but nothing too bad with regard to collisions with other racers. I passed through the final gates, and found the exit ramp.
The first transition went smoothly. I consciously chose to move deliberately, but steadily. It took me 7 minutes, but felt like three. Shoes, helmet, bandana, glasses, gatorade, and onto the bike. I saw BB and stopped to give her a kiss before heading out for 56 miles.
The bike course was basically three loops, about half on the turnpike, and half through countryside roads. There was great support, bottle exchange, and snacks. I had scratch-blocks, clif-bloks, Krave beef jerky, and a powerbar. I had my pump, and an inner tube, and felt like I knew what to do.
I found myself making very good time. My knee was cooperating, and I executed my anti-numbness campaign perfectly. Standing up in the pedals regularly, shaking out my hands. I was able to keep up a pretty steady 18 mph. Overall I averaged 17.4, on a course which was slightly long (my watch and the race app both had it at 57.1 miles). I actually even got off the bike twice – at mile 20 and 40 – to pee. My big hope was to average 16 mph, which is a 3:30 bike split. But at 17.4, I finished the bike course in about 3:16. The second curveball was a piece of beef jerky with habanero in it. SPICY and I feared for my stomach. No problem, though.
The bike will humble you. More than once I was passed by, for example, 60+ year old women who I would not have guessed were in better shape than me. They were. And because it was a looped course, the elites passed me too, blazing by on $10,000 bikes at 28 mph that sounded like being passed by a spaceship. I saw lots of people changing out flat tires. And I saw one woman, who I ended up running with later, who fell and had a couple of horrible strawberries.
Finally finishing the bike course, I came in to transition and hung up my bike. Changed shoes. I had planned to change socks, expecting to sweat like hell on the bike. But I didn’t. The weather was perfect. Day started at 69, got up to about 77. Humidity was high, according to the weather report, but it didn’t feel that muggy. There was a light breeze throughout, and it was overcast. I ended up with a lot of color from the UV anyway. I tend not to wear sunscreen, and so I’m glad it wasn’t sunnier than it was. I will wear some if I ever do this again.
The run started on the airport runway. I started a bit fast, and was watching my pace. Thinking I’d been running for a while, and was approaching a mile, I looked down and saw I’d gone 0.28 miles. I was afraid it was gonna be a loooong run. I stopped at 1.5 miles for a porta-potty, and then ran through downtown Atlantic City and onto the boardwalk. The slats of the boardwalk were flashing by and making this hypnotic illusion as I ran. I was starting to really think it was going to be a long day.
Then I ran into someone wearing a shirt from an organization I know in ECC, and started chatting with her. Turns out she works at MECMC too. Then that woman who fell on the bike course caught up with us and joined in. We chatted together as a group of three for about 8 miles – from two to ten. It saved my race. I got out of my head, out of my pain, and into a good run. We just started knocking down 11 minute miles, one after another.
Eventually, I couldn’t keep up with them anymore. I let them leave me behind as I faded a bit. But I was determined not to have to walk except for the water stations. I jogged slowly, even turning in a 14 minute mile at one point, but I kept jogging. My hip flexors were screaming at me, and my glutes were completely cashed in. As you go on in a long race, your gait changes to recruit muscles that aren’t as tired into the effort to keep going.
Except that after 68 miles, everything is tired. Everything is in pain. My core, my butt, my hamstrings, my quads, none of them had anything left to recruit. Until I finally saw the finish line. A shot of adrenaline made my legs tingle, and someone I was running next to said, “let’s go”, and I lengthened my stride and ran through the final arch at a real running pace, as they called my name, in six hours and fifty-two minutes.
The run itself took me 2:33. That’s five minutes faster than my first half-marathon, in Pittsburgh, three and a half years ago. And for that one, I didn’t swim and bike first for four-plus hours first. The change in my fitness is amazing. The capability I feel is amazing. The things I can do when I accept that they’re hard and just try to keep going are amazing.
I did it. I completed a half-Ironman triathlon, 70.3 miles, and maybe a touch more. I didn’t start to feel really gassed until mile 10 of the run. I trained well enough, for 8 months. I had setbacks, I had triumphs. And in the end, I performed better than I imagined. Initially afraid I would be in danger of the cutoff times, I actually finished with more than ninety-five minutes to spare.
I was almost perfectly smack-dab in the middle. Overall, I was in the 51st percentile (where the first is the best). Among men, I was in the 58th percentile, and the 62nd percentile among men in my age group. So I was in the slower half, but not by a whole lot. I was decidedly mediocre, and not bad. And the fact that I can finish in the middle of the pack among people who recreationally compete in 70.3 mile races? That’s amazing to me.
I feel like an athlete today. I feel proud. And sore. And tired. And a little hungry. And I think that’s exactly where I should be. Not bad for a formerly obese, pack-a-day smoking alcoholic. Not bad, really, for anyone, I think.
48 Hours.
In 48 hours I will be immersed in a salt-water canal adjacent to an abandoned airport in New Jersey. And no, I’m not a mob informant.
The triathlon kicks off in 46 hours and 45 minutes, so in precisely two days I ought to be swimming. Hopefully about a 50 minute swim followed by a 5 minute transition followed by a two hundred and ten minute bike ride followed by a five minute transition followed by a one hundred and sixty minute run. That’s what I’m hoping for. That gets me done in just over seven hours.
I think I can do it. I don’t know if I can do it. But I think I can do it. I’m gonna try like hell.
The Taper Crazies.
My knee hurts. Like, worse than it has in a while. My knee hurts a lot and I’m tired of it, but I don’t think there’s anything to be done about it short of surgery and I’m not getting that. Especially not before I’ve tried resting it. But I haven’t been able to rest significantly for the past two years because of training. So my knee hurts.
I’m tired, I’m sore, I’m worried about the weather, hydration, fuel. I’m worried about my bike. I’m worried about my competence if I need to change a tire. I’m worried about my swim speed. I’m worried about hyponatremia. I’m worried about the alarm clock. I’m worried about having to go to the bathroom on the course. I’m worried about getting lost.
I’m worried that this is all a big stupid vanity project and I should just be quiet. Half the reason I’m doing this is so that people will be impressed with me. Hell, probably two thirds. I want people to see this and admire me. I’m shallow, and I know it. I have this stupid need for people to value me.
Last night, my father called in the middle of the night asking me to pick him up from the nursing home, and bring him home so that he could commit suicide. He’s in a place, mentally now, where the moment he isn’t being attended to by someone he regards as family he is furious and pretend-suicidal. He tries to threaten suicide so that people will pay more attention to him.
It’s infuriating and sad. But am I really any different? I’m doing this thing to say, “look at me, pay attention to me, I’m amazing, be impressed!” It’s a need for external validation. A need to have other people celebrate me, instead of being content with being able to build the capability to do something difficult.
I think I’ve decided not to have a “ten years of sobriety” party. It’s just an excuse to have people tell me I’m great. Sure I’d love it. But it’s not good for me. It’s an ugly impulse and having the ability to look, myself, and the things given to me and be grateful and satisfied without being praised is a critical tool in my sobriety tacklebox.
My father was demanding external soothing last night. I tried to coach him into self-soothing. “You have the ability, dad, to decide that you’re being irrational and go to bed, and look at things in the morning again.” He just said, “Nope.” And then he hung up on me.
The most critical skill I have learned in sobriety is this: My problem is me.
So I’m going to go compete. And I’m going to try to do it for me. And not expect anything from other people about it. And when my ten years sobriety comes up, I’m just going to let it go by. I’ll mention it at a meeting. I’ll write a blog post about it. And it’ll be what it is. And I’ll be what I am.
Sunday, I have a race. It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be long. And it’s going to be mine.
Six Days.
Well, I have done all the things. This week I have small, short maintenance runs and rides to keep up my fitness and rest up before the big race Sunday. I’m fit. I’m as ready as I’m going to get. And I’m nervous. but not so nervous as to be concerned. I can do this, I think. It’ll just be hard.
And it may be harder than I’d hoped. Currently, the weather is projected to be about as bad as it can be for me on a race day: 70 degrees and 99% humidity. That’s the temperature and conditions I wilt in. And it’s a long day to risk wilting. I sweat too much, it doesn’t cool me because it won’t evaporate, and I overheat and dehydrate.
If the weather is like that all day during the race, there’s a good chance I end up walking a lot of the half-marathon, simply due to core temperature and hydration issues. If that’s what I have to do, then that’s what I have to do. It’ll be a long, ugly day. But that’s what it is. I can only be as good as I can be.
Infactorium 