January 1, 2009 marks the tenth anniversary of my only (to now) New Year’s resolution. I suspect that most such committments, especially ones that are meant to start on New Year’s Day, have little staying power. So I’m especially happy to report that, 3,653 days later, I am still carrying on with mine.
Jan 1, 1999. The previous summer, I had picked up a brochure in a bike shop for a triathlon at the local Army base, Ft Lewis. Since I’d never run a step, even the three miles tacked on to the end of a half mile swim and a fifteen mile bike (both laughably short, in my opinion) seemed out of reach. But, I kept the brochure, and allowed the idea to grow for six months. By then, doing the Triple Threat in late June, 1999 had become an obsession. I was biking to work three days a week, and swimming once or twice a week, so I clearly had to add running to the mix if I wanted to fulfill a twenty year old fantasy of doing a triathlon, even a short one.
I had bought some running shoes. I announced my intent ahead of time, and on 1-1-99, I drove our entire family, including dog, a half mile up the hill to the middle school track. The last time I had run was as a teenager, 3/4 of a mile for a Boy Scout merit badge. So I got on the track, determined to go three times around.
It did not feel natural. I did not want to look as if I was trying overly hard, so I concentrated on trying to run like I ski. I kept my head as stable as I could, with as little up and down motion as possible. This felt a little like gliding, rather than torture, and I stopped before I noticed any hint of suffering. Although I’d never done any running, I’d done enough other sports in my fifty years to have learned a basic lesson – do too much when you’re not ready, and things will hurt or even get injured. Rather, start out short and slow, and build intensity and duration over time. Like, weeks or months.
Ripping my shoulder by throwing a baseball too much and too hard at the start of the season. Wrenching my knees by skiing too much the first days out. Bicycling, swimming, weight lifting – the rule was always the same. So I applied it to running, going only 3-4 times a week, and adding little bits of time and distance over the first three months.
But I kept at it, not because I’d made a resolution, but because I had a tangible, specific goal at a certain time in the future. And I stuck with it because, at that first race, I finished second, got a medal, and hungered for that feeling of power again. My leap into triathlon coincided with an explosion of the internet/web as a tool for promulgating information about all sorts of things. I could look up when and where other triathlons might be, without having to hunt down brochures or obscure regional running magazines, or even be linked into the triathlon grapevine at all.
Now, it’s ten years later, and I still don’t really like to run. I’d much prefer to be doing what I’ve been doing the past five days – ski.
This has been a real vacation. Both Cheryl and I have not done the things we try to do on a regular basis, in lieu of getting out on the mountain daily, and bumming around at our second home in the evening. Cheryl had thought she would easily have time to work on the interview transcriptions she had backlogged on her prison project. And I thought I would add to this online journal more often. But apparently, we’ve been in vacation mode, and would rather just live life, than document it it, for now.
We’re at our house in Snowmass.