Make the Turn

17 days now.

The excitement is building - almost to the point of exhaustion. I just want it to be over. I can't think about the day any longer. It is consuming - the idea of 6+ hours and 70.3 miles. I'd lost some perspective and respect for the distance during my recovery period. That all returned last night.

I dropped of my bike at the LBS around 6:30. The 'helpful' associate found $125 worth of things that needed to be fixed or replaced including a new chain, new rear tire, full component cleaning, new rear brake pads. I actually left there thinking - "it's a wonder I didn't die on that death machine I call a bike". Then I got home, broke the news to the official sponsor and began to think about the pending work. Actually it is good timing and I hadn't taken my bike in for service in over 6 months. It hadn't been cleaned during that period either. It's probably good to get all this out of the way a few weeks before BSLT and have good equipment under me for 3 hours.

I headed out for a run (my second in about 3 weeks) a little later. Boy howdy did I feel the 3 week layoff. I was sucking wind after just 20 minutes. My HR was out of control and I just could not find a stride. At first, I whipped out my mental freakout list and began to assess the impact of this set back to my pending race. As I continued to run, I realized 1) it is about 15* hotter now than a month ago - I need to acclimate 2) I'm still healing - give it time 3) I suck at running anyway - what's the big surprise here?

I still have 2.5 weeks. Suddenly that time feels both very long and very short at the same time. I have this underlying belief that the whole world is cyclical. You know, like one big trigonometric curve of time and 'pain' (not necessarily in the literal sense). The comfort in believing in this is that no matter how bad something gets it will 1) get better at some point 2) always return to balanced state at some point 3) be really good some day.

This general theory seems to apply in some form to just about everything in my life. The amplitude changes as does the time. But balance does return.

Work: Sometimes it is insane other times I just can't get enough of a good thing.

My son was born: 1) the highest high I could imagine 2) no sleep for 6 weeks - a pretty low low 3) playing with him on the floor each night before bed - a pretty high high.

Injury: 1) Pain - Low 2) recovery - a balance (I guess) 3) New found strength - A high

The weather: It is supposed to be 101 in Lubbock today. Draw your own conclusions.

And finally in training. How many Triathlete Magazine articles have you read about some elite that just rebuilt everything from the ground up? The articles always talk about how they finally hit the low, turned that corner and came back to win big.

I went back and read through the last year of my BT workout log last night. High's and lows were all over. The fact that right now

• my running is crazy-weird,
• my swim stroke looks like I have water-wings attached to my ears and 50 pound weights to my toes,
• and my bike is clearly one pebble away from catching fire and sinking

means that I am about to turn a corner. I can only hope the timing is spot on for the big day.

You see, the only thing we can't directly control in the whole equation is time. You get no more than 24 hours a day and no less. If you withstand the pain and make the decision to bear down and perceiver the turn will come.

My turn is at hand. Until race day I'll make good decisions and prepare. Worst case, I'm closer to a balanced state, best case I'm beating my goal time by 30 minutes.

Form. Focus. Finish.

See ya out there...