Back to life, Back to reality

It's not a question of 'Why'. But 'Why Not'.

Welcome back :-)

It's been 4 long months since I crossed the finish line at Ironman Canada. And lots has changed since then. During my year away from reality, I was forced to look deep into myself and ask myself those grander questions. I found out what is truly important, and what is not. 2011 was had its ups and downs, so I am looking forward to its close and starting fresh in 2012... So I just wanted to write a quick blog about my Post Ironman life and where I'm at, and where I'm going!

 My Post-Ironman story is I'm sure much the same for a lot of people who choose to take on such a challenge. I got the e mails from Ironman saying "Congratulations and Thank you for your participation. We hope to see you back in the Ironman arena soon." And in the same e mail, a link on how to deal with P.I.D.S.(Post Ironman Depression Syndrome). The Cure: More Ironman... I got lots hugs and congratulations from friends and family over the following weeks after the race. And I felt like that in itself made it all worth while.

 I took some time off from training and racing to let my body and mind heal. I did not realise how exhausted I was until I tried to go for a run about 2 weeks after the race. It was almost laughable at my performance. I did a hard 25km trail race about a month after Ironman. I felt like I had recovered enough, but it was not until I started the race my body told me otherwise.  It was still a fun day spent with friends and family, and a great way to end my race season.

Come around to October, and something changed. Day to day I felt really restless and anxious all the time. Some days I would even say I felt a bit lost in a way. I knew it had something to do with that fact that instead of training anywhere from 12 to 20 hours a week, I was now doing 8 to 12. I felt like I never had anytime to get anything done. Yet I had more time than I had in the last year. And it was not until I sat and had coffee and a discussion with a friend One afternoon, that I think I figured it out.

 You see, when you first sign up for an Ironman. What is hard is the idea of the training you will commit to. And your day to day routine is just that. It's what you know and what comes easily. Then your start date for your training program comes along, and what becomes hard is the training itself. But you still have your life to keep up on top of your new training program.
Slowly, but surely, what starts to happen is you barometer of self starts to recalibrate. You make sacrifices. You say 'No' to things. You stay in when your friends are going out. And what was once easy, becomes hard. Your day to day routine and life are what start to become hard. And the training and endless hours of Swim, Bike, Run, repeat are what become easy. And I think as humans, we have a little bit of programming in there somewhere that always wants to find the easiest way to do something. So you adapt to survive. You do what becomes easy.

So fast forward to the present, and that's where I am. What I started to realise back in October is that coming back to reality is hard. All those months of distraction and dedication from my training, have led me down a path to where I forgot how hard life can be. Trying to fit back in where I once was has been in many ways, harder than Ironman itself. My fight and flight mechanism keeps telling me just to sign up for another Ironman and forget about all this life stuff. But to me, it almost seems shameful to do what now is the "easy way out." Running is a huge part of my life. But running from life has never been a goal of mine.

The start of 2012 will kick off my new training program and a whole new set of new challenges. I am looking forward for the distraction once again. But for now, it's been nice just living in the moment. No matter how hard it's been.

To quote Alexander Pope's poem 'Eloisa to Abelard' - "How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot." The poem is about the story of a tragic love affair, where forgetfulness became the heroine's only comfort. And this specific quote from the poem, Eloisa is praising those who forget or are 'forgotten'. And where upon 'they' are the lucky ones. They can just move on without consequence... Ironman and I had our love story. And on August 28th, 2011 at 7:48pm. We had our breakup. But the last thing I would ever want to do is forget the great times we had... And besides, Ironman and I always had an ellipsis at the end of our breakup. We knew we would get back together soon enough ;-)

Feel it. Love it. Live it.

Happy Trails everyone