The Chocolate Castle that Melted

prince pondicherry commissioned for himself a palace made of chocolate and so willie wonka set to work and built the most magnificent cocoa based structure the world has ever seen. the king's mind was filled with visions of choco-palatial grandness and everything that would bring to him. he was soon, however,  left in a chocolate sauce of melted dreams, victim of his own poor planning, hubris and the indian sun.

"castles made of sand...slip into the sea, eventually"...

ironman arizona did not go anything like i planned. it was a bust, an unfair gouge in my veins. a reminder that life isn't fair.  yet, my deepest wish was to be like charlie, open and aware to whatever the day would bring, open to the beauty and the danger in my ironman chocolate factory. so, if i feel like it was a failure, it must be something about the way i am looking at the experience, or not?

is it a failure to pull the plug at an ironman?: i was sick. my whole family was sick. i tried to resist all week but finally succumbed the night of the race, waking with a cough and feverish. some would say it was foolish to start. some would say it was wimpy not to finish, no matter the cost, no matter the hole that would follow. i fell somewhere in between. i started, never sure it would be a day i could finish, and as i felt worse and worse and worse, i eventually pulled the plug.

i would be lying if i said i am at total peace with that decision. horst reichel, an elite pro, finished, and walked 7m k's. so why would i drop out? am i some kind of macca-type prima donna?

on the other hand, when you are getting chills and goosebumps, and feel dizzy and sluggish, and it is obvious that not only will you not have the race you were trained for, but you will likely put yourself into a serious hole that will take a long time to exit, then it makes sense to just stop. i have two kids. a family. to push myself to the point of danger when i have a choice, is stupid, selfish and pointless.

 what about all those kind people who donated to my fundraiser?: don't they deserve an ironman finish? did they really care what time it took? wasn't my whole campaign based on the idea of survival, and wouldn't it have been the ultimate point to stumble to the finish line delirious with illness? haven't i let everyone down? i have no answer to this and i suspect it will bother me for a long time, but it is a lesson about making an endeavour so uncertain as an ironman such public a thing. nuff said.

did anything good happen?:  i got to watch the pointy end, the 9:30-10:00 group i so much want to be a part of come in. i saw how human, how at times awkward and downright chubby they looked in their racing kits, how human they seemed. and, i must be honest, i wasn't happy for any of them, except a guy from mexico who i cheered to finish right at the cusp of 10:00, i didn't resent anyone either, i just felt a deep inner longing to be where they were and a sense of how possible that can be.
yes, it hurt that a man 8 years my senior had pretty much exactly the race i hoped for and blew away his age group, but, on the other hand, i have 8 years to get where he is now.

how much pride can you swallow? it started at the airport with people asking me about my race. most of my few friends have waited and said nothing. the number of people who are aware that i DNF'd is just fucking ridiculous, and i can't quite articulate how it feels to face them. it is hard to acknowledge that you failed to reach your goal.  and doing it repeatedly is like walking down calvary and having salt thrown in your wounds.

failure is failure, it doesn't really matter why. injury, illlness, wimpiness, all the same. you just didn't do it. be embarassed. be sheepish. admit it. it sucks. feel the pain. DNF'ing sucks. end of story. no two ways around it.

is there a lesson here or is this just pure shit?: this is where the castle made of sand metaphor stands strong. (irony intended). just like sand, everything moves, is temporary, is doomed to end. no forms are there for long.

an ironman dream is more like a house of cards when one considers how fragile it can be, the number of purely random forces that can end it in a flash. so, this all brings me back to basics. why do i do this? i like the process, i love the training, i love the tech, i love the dreaming, the planning, the build. the outcome is never sure, and just simply cannot be the primary reward.

what is the silver lining? :it is cliche, but no less true, to say that it is difficult to express in words the depth of my disappointment. it forces me into a painful awareness of how much this ironman endeavour means to me. i wear many masks in life; father, husband, teacher, healer, but this 140.6 mask, this is what i often wear when i am alone, it fuels and informs my more social masks, and makes them better. inside this 140.6 mask i become a hero, strongman, survivor, endurer, planner, dreamer, an uber me. this all leaks back into my "normal" life, helps me function better, be stronger.

i train and planned the whole year for this. it has been difficult to return to the usual barrage of work that awaits without the post ironman glow to get me through. instead of greeting the off season with a tired sense of accomplishment and inner satisfaction paired with good memories and reflections from my race, i feel uneasy, sad, angry, empty and a bit lost.

my inner bhuddist says that life is suffering and i must be aware of my process, moment to moment, without judgment. if this is what happened, it is what should have happened and i need to be in the experience, allow it to effect me and maybe even make me better in the long run. maybe this will be the silver lining, an altered sense of myself as an athlete and a person, altered, maybe into a better version, maybe less anxious, more giving in to the experience, less worried in the weeks building up to a race,  about things happening which are out of my control.

on a more mundane level, i have a good, solid block of training in me. i don't need to recover as though i did a whole ironman. so, i can get back at it, in short order, once i get over this illness, and use the fitness i have to build in even more solid fashion over the next few months. Ironman Texas here we come!