Sucking the Marrow out of Life!

I often feel like Thoreau when he wrote...

“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die Discover that I had not lived.”

I was able to get out on the bike today. It's been a few weeks. Being the last day of October and a miraculously gorgeous day, I decided to ride up the canyon in search of some cold mountain air. I rode to Alta, surprising myself that I had that ride in my legs, since I'm really extremely out of shape right now. Alta is at the top of little cottonwood canyon, the hardest climb along the Wasatch Front. It's a full hour of suffering. It felt great to get out and breathe through every pore in my body, especially after a freaky stressful week at work and school. The temperature at alta was just over 40 degrees which made the descent marvelously cold. The pain makes me feel alive!
For me, there is nothing more purifying than riding up a high mountain pass or through a beautiful canyon and inhaling the thin mountain air and loving life. When I'm on the bike, it's like time atands still and the world temporarily falls silent as the only sound I can hear is the sound of my own breathing and the whir of my tires on the pavement. At that moment, the world is perfect. That's it. That's why I do it. It's something I will do until the day I die.

PS. Yeah, I also ride so I can eat anything I want. For example, I ate an entire box of chocolate dipped strawberry creamies today....no guilt, friends. No guilt!!

Rough Race

I raced in the Boise Half Ironman last weekend. The forecast was for scattered thunderstorms, but it looked like it was going to be a beautiful day until the starting gun fired. The water was marginally choppy as the wind started to blow across Lucky Peak Reservoir. Made it through the swim no problem, but the rain really started coming down on the bike. At one point, I thought it was hail because the rain was coming down so hard it was painful. Easily the most miserable and probably slowest bike split I've ever had...(I take that back. The bike at the Ironman in Hawaii was much more miserable. ) My brother, Brian, was also racing that day, and he posted a faster bike split than me. Off the bike, my running shoes and socks in T2 were already soaking wet. At the run turnaround, Brian was only about 1/2 mile behind me, which motivated me to speed it up. At the end, I posted a time of 5:35, just 12 minutes ahead of Brian. Overall, the race was a mild disappointment for me, but that's relative because any day I get to race is a great day. Looking forward to the Utah Half Ironman in August.

UTAH!

Since I've been out of school for my 3 week break before summer term starts, I've had the chance to get some good hard training in. Last Wednesday, I did the south mountain loop in which I ride south past the new Draper Temple, up and over the blistering Traverse Ridge road down into Utah County and back past point of the mountain on the frontage road into Salt Lake. It was a 2 1/2 hour ride with a brutal head wind the entire way back. I was pretty spent by the end of the ride when I flatted 4 blocks from my house. Since I was so close, I just decided to walk barefoot the rest of the way, leaving my shoes clipped to my pedals (it's extremely awkward to walk on concrete in bike shoes). No more than 30 seconds after I started walking, a nice couple pulled up next to me in a minivan and asked if I needed a ride. I thanked them and told them I was only a couple blocks from my house. After they drove off, I got to thinking what a great place Utah is. I've ridden my bike all over the world and the United States, and I can safely say that the people of Utah are the most caring and compassionate people I've ever been around. There have been times when I've been stranded in the middle of nowhere after flatting on my bike, and there is always someone willing to lend a hand. One such time was a few years ago on the west side of Utah lake. I flatted and couldn't get my flat fixed, so I started walking. Within minutes, a couple guys drove by in their pickup and offered to give me a ride all the way back to Provo. I have never experienced a kinder, more caring population in any other state of this great union. While I'm not a native of Utah, and home still means Nevada to me, I love this state and the people in it. So here's to Utah! The state with the best economy in the nation, lowest unemployment, most stable real estate market, and most charitable people on God's green earth. I couldn't be more grateful for the great people of this great state.

A Little Common Sense

A Patriots Manifesto

I attended one of 2 tea parties held today in Salt Lake. There were at least 500 people there protesting the Bush-Obama push toward socialism. There were about 2 dozen passionate speakers of all ages and backgrounds at the event. I stand here today to proclaim that I reject the reckless spending of Washington! I reject the inflation of our currency! I reject confiscatory taxes! I reject the federal government taking control of private enterprise and financial institutions! I reject the redistribution of wealth! I reject the fairness doctrine! I reject cap and trade legislation and "global warming" hysteria! I reject Obama's claim that we are merely a nation of citizens and not a Christian or Jewish nation. I reject socialism and central planning! Now is the time to stand up and be counted. Stand up for liberty and economic freedom over socialism and tyranny. Stand up for a strong national defense. Stand up for strong borders. Stand up for strong American and family values! Now is the time to stand up for these things. If we wait too long, there will come a day when we speak fondly of the days before socialism and government control. Call your congressman, read the Federalist papers, read Thomas Paine, and share the principals of economic liberty with your friends. It's time to put government back on the side of the people.

An Ironman's Manifesto

I was reading last month's issue of Inside Triathlon Magazine, The Ironman Issue. The Manifesto by TJ Murphy epitomizes what I've been unable (maybe unwilling?) to express to those who have been questioning my sanity since I started Ironman racing 7 years ago. Perhaps it's a "pearls before swine" thing which has prevented me from being able to adequately express to those who ask between gulps of 32 oz sodas and reruns of "The Bachelor" why I do it.


"One steaming summer day in Iowa a long time ago-I had just finished high school-I was running a six miler at a pretty good clip. The sun was burning me up, but as midwestern athletes can tell you, if you've adapted to hot, sticky weather, running in it is a tremendous feeling. If you haven't adapted, you suffer like a dog, but at the time I was over the hump of acclimating and loving every step.

I recall the run because while I was ascending a short hill, two friends of mine, neither one of them athletes, passed by in a car and screamed hellos. I waved back and continued on. Later they expressed their astonishment at my smiling while I must have been in pain. They lived with the assumption that exercise was agony. That someone could run, bike or swim for long periods of time and enjoy it was, to them, an unfathomable mystery.

Such assumptions are common from those outside the world of endurance athletics. Often I've listened to people as young as 20 or 30 explain how they could never complete a triathlon, a long bike ride or even the shortest of running races. With a mindset like this screwed into place, it can be a waste of time to tell stories about 70-something triathletes finishing Ironmans in less than 13 hours, or 60 year old triathletes recording Ironman times less than 10 hours, or all the other myth-busting triumphs over the myriad boundaries long assumed to be grim realities of aging and life.

Triathlon has become a place to escape the trap set by society that largely counts on turning people into television addicts and super consumers. Even in the TV broadcast of the Olympics, you sense the message directed at the citizenry, that being an athlete is off limits; you might as well give up and lose yourself in a Quarter Pounder. Let the Olympians fly in the rarified air; commoners should stick to pushing limits on credit cards and waistlines. For those of us clinging to it, triathlon is more than a sport. It's a refuge where we can cast aside labels and breathe in the fitness lifestyle. It's our sacred underground where everyone is welcome regardless of age, talent or background."

Amen TJ Murphy!