Week 14-"Reality"

“The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.”
Robert A. Heinlein

Two weeks ago, I wrote about how life is not fair and how you should deal with it and move on. Well, life has delivered me a piece of unfairness lately and I have to say, “It stinks”!

Since I wrote the article in reference to Matthew 20:1:1 on being dealt a wrong hand in the game we call, “Life” I have been battling with an archenemy of mine. This evil doer of pain and misery has cloaked itself upon me again, sciatica.

I am familiar with the debilitating darkness that plagues my L4 & L5 in the lower spin on a daily basis. But ever so often, usually during the cold winters, sciatica decides to wreak havoc and come out of hibernation and stop me in my tracks.

Now, I usually can handle the chronic numbness, soreness, muscle loss and uncomfortable feeling that my shoes are constantly too tight, through “Pain Management” but this year is different. This year the pain has affected my ability to training at my optimum level. Right at the end of Week 16, it hit and since then almost at the end Week 14, I am at its mercy.

The thoughts are popping, well it is only Week 14 and you have 14 more before April 19th. Better now than in Week 3 or 2 or 1, right? Well, you are correct sitting in your comfortable chair sipping coffee pain free. However, it is like buying a new car and crashing it the first week you get behind the wheel. Well, it can be fixed, right? What is the big deal? I think you get the point.

However, this is not about me crying over spilled milk. It is about taking what life has to give you and doing something about it. (I could of used the spilled milk, blah, blah and making it into butter, but I think that has been used too much)

I decided to move on and readjusted the training for the interim to mend the body and not say, “why me?” I have eased up on the running and actually have tried an Aqua Run workout in the pool the other day. It seems lame to be running in the pool waist deep back and forth, back and forth but I had to say, it is arduous. The goal was 20-1 minute intervals with a 30 second RI in between. The first couple of intervals were not bad. I thought to myself, as people from the hot tub, the windows in the upstairs workout room stared at the crazy dude in the pool, “this is not so bad”. I was able to run 4.5 lengths of the 25-yard pool with little effort. After the fourth interval, I noticed that the distance I was covering was a bit shorter. By the seventh interval, I was sweating; breathing hard and my quads were on fire. As I stopped for the 30 second RI and got a drink I said, “…man…(heavy breathing)….this..is…t..o..u..ff!”

I was determined to finish all 20 intervals since I opted out of the track workout that morning with Bob, Jay and Susan. This way I was keeping fitness, minimizing the stress and pounding on the spine from outside running, which worked. The Aqua Running was as challenging as any high-speed interval track workout I have done. The only thing I need to remember for the next go around with pool running is to wear an old pair of running shoes in the water. The bottoms of my feet where ripped to shreds like cabbage in the La Machine. All the blisters and calluses on the bottoms of the feet wear ripped off leaving raw skin. If I was walking funny from the back pain, I am currently walking like a male Empire Penguin holding its unborn chick’s egg on the tops of its feet. Think about that analogy…

There. I have gotten the burden of my setback off my chest and now to move on. I will come out of this alive, well and maybe back to my original speed. After a couple of weeks, I will reassess my goal time for Boston to see if it is realistic and if not, then the obvious decision will be to change the goal time. I will still need to qualify at Boston in 2010 for the following year, 2011 with my wife, Sarah, Ann Marie, Bob, Jay and my sister, Tracey running that year’s event. I would not want to miss this for the world.

Onto today. The awaken brought me a sense of rejuvenation after a good night’s sleep. Sarah made awesome potato chowder last night for dinner and I put on another coat of paint on the mudroom. I know what you are recollecting, “this project is taking forever!” Well, it is, but with owning a home there is always more than one thing that breaks or needs attention. With this room being off the kitchen that heads to the garage and is behind a closed door, there is no rush. The way it looked before the remodel project believe me, there is no rush.

Later that night, as a family after the girls completed their homework then we all gathered on our bed and watched American Idol. I am not the biggest fan of the show, but I do enjoy the family time so I go along with it.

The morning was tempered for me. I did the morning laundry list of things; woke up, gathered clothes in bag, got dressed, negotiated a path around the cat who dodges in and out of my feet as I walk down the blackened hallway and stairs, coffee was perking, started car, put stuff in car, made my lunch, poured the coffee and drove off. Half way down the street from my home, I stopped and reassessed all of my stuff. This is when I realized that I had forgotten my clothes for work and actually, I had not even put out clothes for work the night before! I reversed direction headed back in the dark house, renegotiated my way upstairs and quickly figured out garb to wear and I was off.

I guess with Life’s little punches lately and my focus on other things something is bound to be left behind occasionally.

I made it to LTF, changed and got to the pool deck on time. This was a good thing because looming on the pool deck benches were the “barracuda’s”. Not only was Susan and Michelle their but out of the corner of my eye I saw the most fierce one of the all, Carmen (swimming wise, Carmen is actually a nice person. I know you are reading this Carmen). The first thought that crosses my mind was, “oh crap.” I then discerned that I needed to jockey for a lane before I was tossed in the swirl of these mighty fish. I almost can handle Susan and Michelle at an anaerobic level for over an hour, but when you through Carmen into the mix, well, the game changes.

These three women (though are very nice) are all very competitive swimmers and when you mixed their upbringing of pool time, competitions and downright awesome swimming abilities together in one lane, the dynamics of the water are altered. The lane water heats up A mere age group swimmer will be eaten alive in the same channel of water with them.

I got in the outside lane to much of Brian, Melissa and Seth’s chagrin. Jeff, not so much, because Jeff and I have been swimming together for years and have a respect for each other. In our eyes, it is what it is and you just deal with it…

Coach Mike’s Workout

200M EZ
150 kick-no fins
200M Drills
10 by 3:00 minute swims.
The object was to cover as much ground as possible in the 3 minutes
200 EZ: Breath-5
5 X 100M with the first 100 all out. The remaining sets were to be at a good pace, but we did not figure that out until after the 3rd 100M trying to keep the time.
100M Race against the other lanes
100M cool down

Jeremiah, who was late to the pool deck, was thrown in with the barracuda’s. I glanced at him a couple of times and saw a look of confusion and an overwhelming thought in his eyes as to what has he gotten himself into. He did make it out alive from this Life's little twist, but maybe he will get his behind out of bed and get there on time next swim.

After the swim, most of the swimmers congregated in the hot tub to “shoot the poop”. This is always a fun time because during the workout there is little time for conversation, so we tend to catch up with everyone’s going on’s. Face-to-face talking beats Facebook hands down!
Tomorrow will be an attempt to run a tempo run on the treadmill. Life will throw its punches and I hope I can at least duck a few times.