24th Week - Training for Ironman Texas 2020 - Revealing the Ironman

The last three weeks are the best group of weeks yet in my ironman training. My legs feel it.  My body and mind are fatigued like I have only experienced in endurance sports training.  I can say that I really don't know what is holding me up.  But that is not entirely true.  I just don't know how I am being held up to all this.  Truth is,  it is not a what is holding me up but a Who.

There may come a time in this journey when I can no longer go on.  Right now,   I am being taken farther and deeper into the abyss. If I come out the other side to the event:  great.  If I go as far as I can and it is not far enough to make the event;  I will be OK.  This journey itself is worth the effort.  The "going up is worth the coming down."  The very least I will get out of this journey is a sense of my own limitations.

In these 24 weeks, I have been taken farther into this journey already than my own abilities could have taken me.  Perhaps God has been found something in me worthy of bringing out; something only brought out through pain, fatigue, and discomfort.   Maybe through all this, there is a witness for others to demonstrate what God can do in their lives.  Perhaps we are all fertile fields waiting for the right challenge from God; that we might accept that challenge and push through the journey He has set us upon.  Perhaps, down there somewhere we are all an Ironman needing only the journey to reveal it.

23rd Week - Training For Ironman Texas 2020 - My Wilderness Experience

Last week was probably my best week yet.  I got in the long bike and long run and my best swim in a
while all within 4 days. And, I survived pretty much intact. Yeah, my vision for this ironman endeavor got a wider beam on it. I feel blessed.

Today, I'm doing something strange, that is, I am taking a day off.  I planned it and I am getting it done. I am on a roll.  Tomorrow I try my first HELL DAY.  It starts small as HELL DAYS go.  I swim for an hour, take a 90-minute break, bike for 3 hours, take a 90-minute break then run for an hour.

This is my own training plan I am on.  Who would be qualified to write a training plan for a 76-year-old?  The parameters change a lot with age and besides that, where I am at and where I am going is pretty much-uncharted territory.  A few my age have been here but not many. I love that.

When I bought this land I live on, it was a wilderness in the middle of practically a wilderness. The nearest neighbor was a mile or two away.  I carved this place out of the woods and built a home and roads and had a wilderness experience I still remember with relish. Now everything is built up here and I can see my neighbor not 300 yards away as I write this.

Things change and I seem to be at that wonderful age and ability time when I can traverse the wilderness of old aged training.  But that will change and there will come a time when  I will notice that I am not on a wilderness journey anymore.  Then I will look back with a satisfied grin that however this turns out, I had my wilderness experience in 2020 training for  Ironman Texas

22nd Week - Training for Ironman Texas 2020 - Quite the Journey

Weeks tend to go the same.  I hit a lull and training is lacking.  Then I have a few days of putting some good volume down.  Last week was no exception but, in the end, I had a good week in terms of volume. It seems my self-perception about training is generally negative.  It never seems good enough to be called good.

This ironman effort is so self-revealing.  That is, the raw nature of the fatigue that seems to come in on me at times has the effect of allowing me to be brutally honest about myself. Some of the camo about myself gets stripped away and there I lay exposed. And while it seems almost natural at these times to acknowledge my many weaknesses, I must take possession of my own strengths as well. I can see through the fatigue haze that I have come a long way over tough personal terrain, and somehow persevered in spite of my weaknesses.

This is quite the journey.  So many times I want to cave in and lead a normal life and at other times I fear not being on a journey.  This is an adventure in self-discovery and I would imagine I will be on some kind of journey until life's journey itself is over and I have gone to be with God.

The photo -My nephew is a physician with an orthopedic group and he sent me a suit that they had designed and produced

21st Week-Training for Ironman Texas 2020 - Cobwebbed Comfort Corner

Momentum- wish I had it.  Can't seem to get going.  "A body in motion tends to stay in motion and a body at rest tends to stay at rest."  The last part, yeah, that's where I am at.  I feel I have rested myself into a deep fatigue.  Motivation lull post-holidays - as much as I tried to avoid taking a hit from the holidays, it looks like I have been wounded and I am bleeding myself into training apathy. There is not much here for a kick start so if I am going to continue with this ironman effort, it will require getting myself out of the cobwebbed comfort corner and get focused.

Last week was mediocre which is pretty good for the training motivation state I am in.  But, mediocre in training is a recipe for a DNF or not showing up at all for the event.  So, here in this blog post, I have beat my lazy self up a bit with good reason. Now, will I go on, or has apathy metastasized to terminate this ironman effort altogether?  So, I will pray for a hand up and for the strength and the will to go on.