Tri, try again

You won't lag behind, because you'll have the speed. You'll pass the whole gang and you'll soon take the lead. Wherever you fly, you'll be best of the best. Wherever you go, you will top all the rest. Except when you don't. Because, sometimes, you won't. ― Dr. Seuss, Oh, The Places You'll Go!

 We interrupt our regularly scheduled blogging to bring you this special announcement from the Urgent Gloomy Headline (UGH) system:

Sometimes life sucks.

Sometimes all the positive thinking and planning and prepping and goal setting and pursuing and efforts to overcome and be victorious lead to… Failure. Derailment. Disappointment.

And in those times, all you can really do – the only thing I’ve found that’s reasonably healthy, anyway – is acknowledge it and allow yourself to mourn the loss of that perceived, potential victory and the time and effort already invested in aiming for your goal.

I’m feeling every bit of this right now. My third triathlon is coming up next week and I had all kinds of plans to kill it, to PR, to learn from my previous disaster-of-a-race and prepare to experience success like never before.

I need to take a moment here to concede that the subject of this post can only be classified as a first-world problem. In the whole scheme of things, this is no biggie, really – and many, many people are suffering greatly, dealing with much more impactful, important issues at this very minute.

Nevertheless, as we adventure and pursue our dreams and face our fears together, I think it’s helpful to note that despite our very best efforts, we don’t always win, conquer and overcome. And it might even be beneficial to share some real stories that won’t ever be social media contenders for most-shared or even posted at all.

So back to that story.

I was off to a good start. I began swimming periodically way back in February when I joined a gym, getting a real jump on training for my most challenging event of the three. I dedicated months of gym time building muscle so I would have more body mass to work with when training really ramped up, and more strength to power each event in the race.

As the summer began, I started biking and continued to run and swim. I bought a “tri suit,” a sort of shorts-onesie that’s quick-dry for the swim, has compression and a nice little crotch pad for the biking portion and comes with a jog bra for the run.

By the end of June, I’d worked myself up to a respectable number of laps in the pool – still with much need for improvement -- and made plans to get one swim coaching session in before the race.

And then…

After two weeks of travel (read: no real tri training happening) I got sick with a nasty virus that, because I have asthma and allergies, quickly made its way into my head in the form of sinusitis and my lungs as bronchitis. Within 3 days, I couldn’t breathe at all and had to resort to steroids and antibiotics.

The illness and the medication made me feel so lousy that I’ve been out of commission for any work-out -- much less triathlon training -- for three weeks. Add that to the previous 2 weeks of travel and it’s over a month of training lost!

Now, here I am, a week away from the race and after leaving a breathless phone message for a friend while walking the dog the other day, I realized – I still can’t breathe! I went to the pool the next morning to test this further, because of course the additional evidence of my becoming-regular routine of getting up in the middle of the night to suck on my emergency inhaler was not enough to be conclusive.

Let’s just say that swimming even 50 yards was enough of a struggle breathing-wise (not to mention the 750 meters required in the race followed by the 13.9 mile bike ride, finished with the 5k run) that not only is the dream of a successful race next week vanishing into mist before my eyes, but even finishing the swim without medical intervention from a rescue boat seeming seriously unlikely.

I am SO bummed!!! It feels like insult added to injury. It’s already a drag to feel lousy and not be able to breathe. But it’s just down-right unjust to have to miss something I’ve waited two years to do and that I’ve invested a good bit of planning, time, energy and money into doing well.

Wah, wah, wah – I know, you’re probably wanting to offer me some cheese with this whine, but I actually hate whining (especially my own!) so my true intention is to get a little vulnerable here as I hold a high value for realness and authenticity. And since we’ve started down that road, here are a couple more steps in that direction…

A couple less-than-stellar qualities I’m discovering in myself through this:

• I tend to think I can power through just about anything and eventually conquer. This includes illness. At some point all my regular exercise and good eating and vitamin-taking and attempts to sleep 8 hours a night and limit alcohol and caffeine and manage stress will pay off and I’ll just get better and back to normal, right? Doctor, schmoctor! Who needs them?!

• With an out-sized aversion to quitting anything, I’ve actually considered just going ahead with the tri – despite knowing how unwise and even potentially dangerous that could be.

Ridiculous, seeing that in writing. But also good. I’m almost 50 years old and still learning things about myself – the good, the bad and the ugly.

So here’s what I’ve decided to do instead of the triathlon: I’ll sit in the lousiness of it for a bit longer and then I’ll start making plans. Not for my next triathlon, but for doctor appointments to help me breathe deeply again and also to, hopefully, if not find the cause, then at least determine a remedy for increasingly frequent chronic migraines that are either the latest symptom of the larger issue or a whole new adventure in health.

And then, by God’s grace, I’ll move on. And I’ll start going after goals and surpassing limits again. And I’ll tell you stories about how I did it and I’ll ask for your stories, too. I’ll keep inviting you to join me and we’ll keep moving forward together.

And will we succeed?
Yes! We will, indeed!
(98 and ¾ percent guaranteed.)
Kid, we’ll move mountains!

This concludes our special announcement from the Urgent Gloomy Headline system.