Ironman Dreaming

 

 Ironman Dreaming: Plus 3½ hours session Turbo Training

 Last night was a better night for me and I felt better for that this morning. Ready to face another long Sunday morning training with my husband/coach Stephen. Similar to last Sunday Steve had planned some exciting Winter sports to keep our legs spinning around for a rather long time for a pair of old timers like ourselves. He had recorded the 2-man bob from yesterday and we had taken care not to look at the results, so that nothing was taken from the tension of the event. Later we watched the 4-man bob event live from Innsbruck. We had been there to watch this World Cup event on previous years. Our GBR teams finished 8^th and 11^th in the 4-man event and would have done even better with us shouting at them for sure!!!!! We were still shouting at them at home today but they could not hear or feel our enthusiasm. We cycled for pretty near 3½ hours this morning. 

 

Between events, Steve found some cross-country skiing for us to watch and we had a peek at the news too. While we were not watching anything in particular in between whiles I told Steve that it was a wonder I felt like doing this long session because I had been racing all night in my dreams! Maybe, or more than likely the cause was that I knew what was coming this morning and my mind was on the sport that we hope we will be able to enjoy again soon, if not soon, it may start to be too late for me, since I have already lost all of last years many events. I just hope that with the long delay between racing that I have not lost anything form wise, or worse still my confidence, though I hope not.

 

In my dream, I was competing in a full Ironman event. It was a bit confusing at first and I was not sure which race it could have been. In my many years as a triathlete I have competed in 18 races that were Ironman or Ironman distance. The swim in my dream, could have been either Lanzarote which is breath-taking as it is beautiful with the millions of dazzling coloured fish but as I swam, I though sometimes that I was in Elsinore, Denmark and then again, it seemed to change to the more challenging swim in Hawaii which is no wetsuit and also in rather deep water. As I swam, I relived a moment when a dolphin had swooped diagonally underneath me, very close and I remember that it gave me something of a start and my heart jumped with surprise.

 

Then suddenly I was out on the bike course but his time I didn’t seem to recognise the course at all. There was very long climb close to a coast, though it didn’t make sense to me at all; how could I be out on an Ironman course that I did not recognise at all. Even if it was a new race that is entered, I would have still have gone out and driven the route or ridden some of it on my bike. This time it was completely strange and on thinking about it today, I can only think that I was thinking about the races I hope to be able to do this year, maybe Graz in Austria or Poreč in Croatia, or Zell am Zee in Austria at the end of summer. It could not have been the Venice-Jessolo race because that is pretty flat. This bike course climbed and climbed and climbed some more and I could see the writhing snake like road twisting and turning ahead, yet clear as clear as I rode on. The other strange thing was that looking down to my right side there was the deepest blue sea below. It was most confusing and yet I thought it might be in a Scandinavian country, maybe Sweden of perhaps Norway. 

 

 All the time I was trying to just concentrate on my riding but it was so mysterious, how did I get there even? I was mesmerised by the dark sea below the road and knew that it could not be the Hawaii World Ironman Championships because the Ocean would have been on my left side during the climb and my right side only after the turnaround at Hawi. I tried to check this in my mind because I has competed in the Hawaii race three times and on one occasion as my mind recalled, the movie Waterworld starring Kevin Costner was being filmed there and all the way up that long climb I could see the Atoll where a lot of the movie took place. I was certain the atoll was easy to see on the right side on the way up and on the left not far out from the coast on the return downhill, where it could be very windy, so you still had to be careful even in a long descent like that. Lanzarote also has a number of climbs and on one you can sea the ocean below but again it would have been on the wrong side of me. Ironman Austria has a lake on the right-hand side after a big climb but much further away.

 

I woke up before ever going out on the bike ride which was just as well because I would have been totally whacked if I had. I can’t believe that I didn’t wake Steve because I couldn’t have dreamed all that without some movement surely.

 

At the end of the Hawaii race, when they were making Waterworld, Kevin Costner was watching at the finish line at the end of my very long day when I finished shortly before midnight. None of my Ironman races have been early finishers. My time would be almost double that of the first rush of elite athletes finishes. Most of them were finishing as I went out to start my run. I remember in our early days that we did and iron distance race, not Ironman corporation. It was called The Longest Day run by Black Country Events and it was I think my fastest ever time for the distance 14.15.37 compared to most others that were nearly always 16 hours something. When I got to the finish line the race winner Chris Ray, who was a Royal Marine, was at the finish line to see me in and give me my medal. He said that he didn’t know how I did it, when he had raced as fast as he could for eight hours and had only been out there about half the time that I was racing as fast as I could. That was the nicest thing anybody ever said to me about one of my races. It was nice that he appreciated that it was still an almighty effort. 

This photo below is a really aweful photo of a photo in a frame, but it is at The Longest Day race.

 

 

 

A Question of Timing

I had had one of my two hour long ‘wide awakes’ in the night, when I got up for a while to make a hot chocolate, talk to the cat a bit and then read some poetry until I felt calm enough to go back to sleep. I picked out a book my daughter had bought me years ago for my birthday years ago. It was after I had told her by email what I was reading from the local library, whilst on a training holiday in Florida staying with one of my age group friends on the USA team. It had been recommended for me by my friend’s husband, who had taken me to the library with him that day. The Poetry of Robert Frost, it’s a full works book about two inches thick in paperback. I loved it then and I love it more than any other poetry book I have at home. It sits on the shelf close to my bed and my desk, fluffy with little coloured paper markers all through it for quick access to my favourites.

 

 

As I picked up the book in the night, I turned to poem called Mending Wall, that I have read so often, then instead of picking another favourite from a marker I read on from that point, the next work was titled The Death of the Hired Man. This is more a story than a poem, although it is line numbered, 166 lines in total. Frost can do no wrong for me, I love every word. This work is six or seven pages long and by the end I had lost any stress that may have woken me in the first place, and so I returned to bed and fell asleep immediately. Then the next thing I knew was that unusually I had overslept. Steve was up and watching TV.

 

After a short discussion about the weather and what form our exercise would take, Steve thought that we would still go and have a little run up in Angmering Park where we so often go. We had both looked out of the windows at both ends of the house and it did not look anything like the Carol the weather lady on TV had said, indeed, it was quite bright. We would be too late to catch the sunrise though.

 

Ten minutes later we were in the car dressed in our run kit, much the same as usual except I had decided not to wear a hat. I prefer not to, whenever possible, my argument is always that I have masses of thick curly hair so and being stuck indoors so much, it was nice to let the wind blow through my hair and freshen it up a bit. Steve and I were both feeling tired, he because he had had a hard day of work the day before, and me because I was awake half the night. So, Steve thought we had better stick to a brisk walk for a while and see how it went. When we arrived at the parking place the sky had clouded over and; believe this or believe it not, but the very moment we got out of the car it started to rain quite hard! We got back in.

 

Steve thinks that I am too long in the tooth to deliberately get soaked to the skin and I have long ago conceded to that idea. We both had a laugh about the rain and tossed ideas back and forth as to what the next move was. I didn’t want to just drive home. Steve thought we should listen to the radio a moment or two and see how it looked, maybe it would pass over. A little while later he started the engine, saying that it looked lighter over that way nodding his head toward Arundel, so off we went. He drove to the village of Burpham and it was dull but not raining, though only a few miles away.

 

We kept to brisk walk pace and strode onwards, which is also upwards from that point and had a really nice walk together. My husband is such an angel and to my never-ending joy, he actually seems to like me as much as I like him. We never stop talking when we are together and are mostly in agreement, although even when we do not agree, we don’t get into arguments we talk it through whatever it is. 

                      The church of St Mary the Virgin in Burpham. near Arundel
 

He asked me what I did whilst I was awake in the night; he knew about it because I told him, not because I had disturbed him, he sleeps the sleep of the dead. I told him that I had spent the time with my friend Robert Frost and went on to tell him what both of the poems were about and that although I was familiar with one, that I did not know anything about the second and so told him the story in my own, far less than perfect words of The Death of the Hired Man. 

 Our walk uphill and our gentle jog downhill that day began and ended in a tranquil church yard. The pretty, daintiest, though hardy snowdrops, were in flower.

 

 

 

 

 

Birdy and the Boiler Man

 

I was going to write one of my diary blog-pages yesterday, but whilst I was outside in our teeny garden doing a bit of trimming, with the secateurs in one hand and a carrier bag for clippings and the cat on her extending lead in the other hand, but the phone rang and it was the boiler man from the heating firm that we use. He was booked for the next day, but said that he knew that I was usually at home most of the day and wondered if it was convenient to call today. He has been our boiler man for many years, maybe twenty years. He is Kevin to me, but he calls me Mrs Belt even though he knows full well what my name is. On getting positive reply, he said he would be round soon maybe as soon as 45 minutes of that was in order, and to turn off the boiler please.

 

The company had called me to book his visit and at that time, they had asked me to stay away from him please and that I should not offer him a cup of tea during the current crisis. When he was on his way, he rang again to ask me how I wanted to cope with the visit and I told him my instructions from the company office. “Oh” he said, “You always give a cup of coffee and I wouldn’t say no”.

So I told him that I would leave the garage door open and the kitchen door and leave him a cuppa on the side but that I would stay right out of his way and he thanked me for being so helpful.

On my instructions he called out to me from behind the glass kitchen door to say he had arrived. I told him that I was doing the ironing up stairs and to shout if he needed to speak. At which he said “Oh”, again and then went on “I would have brought mine round if I’d known”. I laughed and told him to behave. In fact, I hardly ever see him whilst he gets on with working in the kitchen since he just gets on with his job, I never have stayed in the kitchen while he works. He is always the same, a bit of a cheeky-chappy, but not bad mannered, very pleasant. I like that it is always the same man.

 

He doesn’t live that far away either and when he had finished the job he called again and I spoke over the bannisters with my mask on and he shouted through the glass door with his mask on, all properly done. He told me what he had done, including replacing a hose and reminded me that when the oil is delivered next week, to turn the boiler off on the morning they state that they will deliver, and give it at least an hour to settle afterwards before turning it back on. He then asked how I was keeping, and if was still doing all my running and biking and stuff. I told him I was but that all events were of course cancelled last year. He also asked if my husband and I had had our jabs, before saying goodbye and thanks for the coffee, then he was off and away. He closed the garage door after him. There is never, has never been, any mess at all after his annual service. However, of course this year was different; I then put on my gloves and blitzed the kitchen surfaces thoroughly just in case, because it would not be sensible after almost a year of being very careful to leave anything to chance, since he was going into other houses all day every day.  I double cleaned everything and was glad then to have the next day clear of that saga.

 

I had shut Birdy upstairs, in what would to most people be the main bedroom. To Steve and I, it is a joint office, sewing room, ironing station. Birdy was not amused.  She was quite cross when I had taken her in there and she made it clear that she did not like this change in tradition. She had not like the rushing around that I did before Kevin the boiler man arrived, she was expecting trouble,  and did not intend to behave nicely. There was a lot of MEEOWING and tail juddering. So different to when we were outside a bit earlier which was nice and calm. She doesn’t do very much when I take her out on the lead, even though she would have been belly-aching at the back door to be allowed out, making the most alarming noises and shouting “Help, help, I am being kept prisoner”, to all my neighbours. It is true actually; she has been a prisoner since the beginning of last March, when since I went into stay-at-home mode, I elected that I thought it would be nice to have her as company; somebody to talk to.

 

 

She has got used to life with us after a couple of years to a level that suits her, since she was formally a stray; she knows that there is a food-on-demand system for her and that she gets fed whenever she asks me. During this time, I have begun to think that she will never be a big fat cat, since she rarely eats more than a spoonful at any time and more often than not, just licks off all the juice and leaves the rest, looking up at me in disgust, that it was not a small mouse, or a bird, and telling me that I can give what she has left of the posh dinner I have given her, to that big fat Robin in the garden.

 

She seems quite happy with the two people that she is stuck with; there also seems to be a cuddles-on-demand system too, when if I am working on my computer she will come along and head-butt me, or sit on my hand, or walk all over the keyboard, or nuzzle at me until my glasses fall off. This, I have found means that she wants a good fussing; head rubbed, chin stroked and good hard long smooth strokes along her back until her tail has been launched skyward into a stiff question mark leaving her sweet little spotlessly clean rectum as the ‘bottom’ dot, finalising the question. She will also let me know when enough is enough even of this fuss.