Reflections of the past couple of months.

I have used a analogies writing these blogs.  Reading through previous entries one that is prevalent is how we as triathletes train and how musicians train.  Train, practice, rehearse are all verbs that describe what we do to prepare ourselves for the big day.  It is fair to say that whether you are an athlete or a musician you spend much more of your time preparing for that big day than the event itself.

I may compete in one ironman event per year.  Along with that maybe 2 or 3 half ironman distance races and a handful of local sprints or Olympic distance races.  For a musician who does not derive his or her income from playing music may have a similar number of gigs throughout the year.

What I am leading to is that as a non-professional we really have to love what we do.  Why would anyone spend as much time as we to training and preparing and practicing if we truly did not enjoy the actual day to day toil?  Not to say that professionals do not enjoy their work.  Of course they do.  It is true as well that they usually have contractual obligations to fill.   Athletes have to finish above a certain spot to continue to receive performance money from sponsors.  Musicians have to play well enough so that customers enjoy the music and return to listen to them again (In that way I think musicians have it much harder, much more subjective than a first or second place finish).  So professionals do have other motivations.

Back to us non pros.  What motivates us?  This is thought has been in the back of my mind lately mostly because I have hit one of those rough spots in life where other things became much much more important than training.  Especially the concept of what is important in our lives.  There is probably no better indicator of what is important in our lives than that little day-timer that sits in our heads.  If we had a constant log of how we spent every minute of every day we should get a pretty good indicator of things that are important in our lives.  In the end we are the ultimate decision maker in how we spend our time.

Even work, if we feel that our job is taking too much time away from other things we are free to look for another. So if I was to look at that log I would have to say that I have chosen to make training an important part of my life.  I could make a “magazine list” of reasons (a magazine list is a collection of generic items that most anyone could come up with).  Health, focus and wellness are some of the magazine list items.  How about companionship; I have met many people that have become good friends.  You get the idea of a “magazine list”.  Maybe I should update the term to “internet list”.

The obvious danger to any hobby is to have it become too important.

Back to the rough patch that has derailed my recent training.   I guess my log file got radically altered for a month or so.  Just hit the low points.  Imagine sitting around with part of your family anticipating the trip of a life time.  The vacation was booked and paid for.  Not only where we going to Hawaii but the rest of my family was going to meet us.  I was especially excited to have my wife, both children, their husbands/boyfriends and best of all my grandson under one roof for a week.  My oldest daughter and her husband are stationed overseas.  It has been close to two years since we were all together.  I was pumped!

Beginning about 2 weeks before the trip the wheels started to come off.  My mother in-law has been ill since the New Year and her condition deteriorated rapidly.  She passed away the week before the trip.  While this was going we received news from overseas of a serious medical condition that was affecting my daughter and her pregnancy.  These 2 events caused many changes in plans.  Changes that were altered and then altered and altered again.  My daughter and her family were not able to meet us in Hawaii.  They were to proceed immediately to the states.   Along with these events 3 other deaths occurred that impacted my family.

My wife and I decided that I would go to Hawaii with my younger daughter and her boyfriend.  My younger daughter and I had less flexible work/vacation schedules so we had to take the week we requested.  My wife had a more flexible schedule and was able to alter vacation days.  My wife made plans to go to Houston and help our older daughter's family get settled in Houston.

Hawaii is a beautiful place but it is hard to enjoy while part of your family is flying half way around the world for medical reasons.  Each morning in Hawaii I walked from the Hotel to the local Starbucks to get on Facebook and e-mail to get status updates as to where everyone was.  With missed flights weather delays etc.  It took my daughter and her family about 4 days to get to Houston.

Through all this it was very difficult to train.  Logistically you are flying, sitting in airports.  You are in locations where you may not have access to all the right facilities.  It was definitely more to it than just logistical roadblocks.  The focus was just not there.  I remember telling my coach that I was so distracted mentally and emotionally that I did not think I could ride my bike safely.  I could easily see myself getting lost in thoughts and riding off into a ditch or worse a moving vehicle.  

So many training sessions got put aside while we dealt with things.  I did a few runs here and there mostly because I really did not know what else to do.  These runs were merely distractions from the events around me.  They were not focused training sessions.  I did some beach runs on the in Waikiki and enjoyed them, like I said a beautiful place.  I returned from Hawaii  ready to focus on training again.  

When we returned home my older daughter and her family were there!  SCORE! it was grandpa, grandson time!!!!  My daughter was still needing surgery but now we were all together and would be able to face it together.  In the next 36 hour period the 3 other deaths occurred and it was separate cites again.  We were all afraid to ask, "What next".  My desire to train again was instantly derailed.

Training to me was always something that conveyed a sense of living.  Both in the physical sense (strong and healthy bodies) and the spiritual sense (I feel alive when I train).  It was difficult to train and approach this living sense when you feel surrounded by death and fear.  Fear is one of the most limiting feelings. Fear of failure, fear of the the future, not knowing what is coming next can all impede our growth.  In fact it can all out stop it.

I am not a psychologist and I have never been a bar tender so I am not trained or predisposed to dispensing wisdom.  All I can tell you is what happened over the ensuing week and month.  There was not great lightening bolt from the sky. No great cathartic event.  Just a slow and deliberate desire to train.  No inspirational background music, no "rocky" speeches (it's time Rock!).  Just a family working to get its feet under itself.  Slowly getting on track after life throws it a few (or more) curve balls.  We had a lot of support from friends.

During this I made a conscience decisions to return to a training regime.  Not because i needed to train for a race not because I wanted to maintain my level of physical fitness.  I wanted to return to it because I felt a responsibility to infuse life into an aura of fear and death.  By training I felt I could in a small way face and help my family continue to face the fear and uncertainty of the current time.