In my three-month transition between high-powered health care executive and humble front-line physician, I biked across the country with my family in tow. Cody drove the RV, Shaine and Annie rode behind me on the tandem when they felt like it, Cheryl rode alongside me 2/3rds of the miles, and I solo’ed a few by myself.
We’d planned the trip for almost a year, detailing route, nightly stops, and side trips with an almost frightening level of precision. We bought (not rented – bought) an RV to house ourselves and our bikes, made arrangements to pay our bills and keep our house safe, and secured assistance from family and friends along the way.
Our plan: drive East, to Plymouth Rock, and head back West with the growing nation. July 1 to the end of August were the dates available for the ride. Everything would have to click in synch, daily, hourly, to make it work. Keeping ourselves and our larder full of food, the bikes in working order, the vehicle full (and empty) of fluids, to say nothing of actually BIKING those 3,464 miles. There was little margin for error, disaster, or simple inconvenience.
I knew, if the rest of the family didn’t, that it was an all-consuming enterprise. There would be no room, at least in my roles as organizer, leader, and chief biker, for a diffusion of focus. For two months, I would have to be fully, and solely involved in getting us from point A to point B, without disintegrating as a family, and, hopefully, with everyone having fun along the way.
It was a burden I had gladly, and voluntarily taken on. But it was a scary one, and the night before we were to head out, I had distinct feelings of disjunction, of a schism in time and self. Much like one might experience, say, when being inducted into the military, or going away to college, and knowing that, the next morning, when you showed up, your life would no longer be your own, it would belong to some other, outside forces, about which you knew nothing, and over which you would have no control.
I was going through the looking glass, where the world would look similar to the one I left, but where all the rules would be different, and I would have no means of getting back, other than to just pull the plug and quit.
Yesterday, I started my twelve week push to the first Ironman of the year, Coeur d’Alene, on June 27th. This year’s training plan is new for me, involving a longer period of shorter, more intense workouts (the “Out Season”) of 6-12 hour weeks, from December 14-April 4. Followed by 12 slightly less intense, but longer 16-17 hour weeks, very clearly demarcated as IM Prep Phase, or “In Season”.
In order to make this plan work, those twelve weeks need to be almost monk-like. I would not have the 16-24 weeks of slowed build up I have usually taken going into CDA for the past 7 years. I would have to trust that not only would the shorter, harder weeks of the Out Season build my biking and running strength to a higher level than the more lack-a-daisical program I used to follow, but that I could develop that strength into effective long-distance racing in a shorter time than I was used to.
Each workout thus carries a higher impact, and the progression from week to week can be short-circuited with just one or two unforeseen accidents outside my control. It’s not really a high-risk plan – after all, I have two more Ironman races this year alone to atone for any flubs this time around – but it nonetheless carries that sense of dislocation and loss of control, or even self, that came to me when we rolled up to Plymouth Rock the morning of July 1, 1997.
This plan has no “down time”, no rest weeks or rest days, really. There are no “junk miles”; even within each workout, there is less warm-up and cool-down than I’m used to. It’s all business, all the time. The only way I’m going to get through it, I’ve decided, is to adopt several attitude adjustments.
First, since each workout is meaningful and useful, I intend to focus on and enjoy (as best I can) the work itself while I am doing it. Not look forward or back from that time, just be present in the swimming, biking, or running.
Second, since this is all arbitrary, and of my own making, just like that detailed route I planned for Bikrutz, there is no point in arguing with myself over the timing of each workout. I’m just going to set a day, and a time, and stick with it as best I can, given weather and life events swirling around me.
Third, there WILL be opportunities to enjoy myself, and find out something new. I intend to seek those out, and enjoy them in the present as well. For instance, this weekend (our birthdays) Cheryl and I will visit Cody and Angela up in Bellingham. I will take my long, hard ride up there, around Birch Bay and along the border roads in the flats of northern Whatcom County. I’ll have a couple of races at the end of this month. I’ll have my two weeks in Snowmass. And I’ll have some weeks when Cheryl will be gone, to Arizona and California, when all I’ll have to keep me going will be the plan. I hope I have as much fun in these next three months as I had on Bikrutz, and as I had reading Lewis Carroll.