Commencing 1999 I wrote a column on Slowtwitch called "My Back Pages" and it amounted to my blog, right about the time blogging became a thing. I don't blog anymore but if I did this would be my current entry. If you choose to read on, please read it in that spirit.
Last week I bent over, grabbed my ankles, and endured the worst shellacking I've ever taken in age group multisport competition. It was my first-ever XTERRA race, the long course in Laguna Beach, California, and based on this performance I'm quite sure there is no sport for which I am less physically suited. I was humbled if not humiliated.
Consequently, I'm going to race at least one more XTERRA this year, probably two, and more if I can fit them in. It was quite simply the most fun I've had at a triathlon in a long time.
Why did it take me this long to compete in an XTERRA race? I don't know. I just never got around to it. Odd, since I attended (but obviously did not race) the first-ever XTERRA race in Maui. And the second.
I'm not the only one finally getting around to XTERRA. The Laguna Beach race sold out in this, its first year.
My forte is stuff that happens mostly in a straight line. Level. Uni-directional. This locomotive wants some room to stretch out, get up a head of steam, and then highball. The race I just did is the unstraightest, unflattest thing one can do without ropes.
Still, I had a blast. I left with a pair of impressions and maybe XTERRA racers can tell me if I sensed right or not.
There is less ego, and less seriousness, than in road triathlons. More laughing. It reminds me of the nordic ski race scene of my youth, where nature encroaches on sport instead of the other way around and maybe participants are impressed or calmed by the closer proximity to nature when you're away from highways.
Second, it's a little like bike racing in that people who show up to these things (at least the long course) tend to be pretty good at it. I suspect it's because a lot of less-adept people are afraid to ride their mountain bike on what they assume will be a technical course, and in the case of this Laguna Beach race I concede that while it wasn't black diamond it wasn't a green run either.
Yes, it was challenging and a little technical and very, very hilly and I have not been passed by this many people while riding up a hill ever. While I am by no means turning away from road triathlon, I enjoyed every minute of it even as I had my hat handed to me.
But something else might have helped my mood.
Two things happened during my week that don't attach to each other; puzzle pieces entirely unlike except for a keyway they share on one edge. The race was one of them, below is the other.
As some Slowtwitchers know who have visited The Compound, ours is a place where reciprocal rescues happen. Dogs, horses and people find safe haven and through this we – my wife and I – are ourselves rescued and renewed. Not by plan. Animals sometimes just show up and present themselves and, well, what are you going to do? (We're up to 4 horses and down to 3 dogs at the moment.)
Absorbing Laura into our household was qualitatively different than the animals that relocate to our homestead. Laura required my wife and I to count the cost. Laura is my wife's mother's cousin. She's 91 years old, childless, and all her other relatives had passed on. She is a spry, strong-willed, smart and cultured New York City woman who can do everything except, as of four years ago, safely live alone. Laura moved west to The Compound.
Dementia progresses and as of today Laura cannot tell you what happened 5 minutes ago, but she's still great at 5 decades ago. When she sits in the "sun room" in the morning with her coffee, she often asks what part of the Bronx this is, as she looks out our bay windows at peaks topping 9000 feet in elevation. "The hilly part," I answer and she seems satisfied by that.
I'm a morning person and Laura is too. When I'm up at 5:30, she's usually up and I make the coffee and Laura and I commence our days.
One morning last week, in the middle of her coffee, looking out at the sunrise on the hills, she said to no one in the room she thought was empty, rather to the Someone she was addressing:
"Oh, Dear God, thank you for everything. For all the goodness I'm surrounded by."
I'm not sentimental, but by this I was struck, and I ran to my computer so that I could type it out, word-for-word.
It stuck with me. "The goodness I'm surrounded by" occurred to me a number of times during the race, including while riding up that dad-blasted hill, on Sunday, for the third of three very long ascents on the bike, unflattering as it felt. There’s a song from my youth with a line, describing a man "Walking like his head's full of Irish fiddle tunes." I rode, inexpertly, and ran, ploddingly yet smiling to myself because I might have been slow but I felt like a man walking with a head full of Irish fiddle tunes.
This is what happens when you spend time with someone who must live with the terror of not knowing, ever, where she is or who she's with (I introduce myself anew to Laura every morning), yet has the grace and wherewithal to say, "Oh, Dear God, thank you for everything. For all the goodness I'm surrounded by."
In two years I'll celebrate my fortieth year in multisport and you write down on the calendar the very hard or humiliating days, the average, the weak and the sore days. The boring days. The days when it's a slog and a struggle. You also write down the great days, the strong days and the sublime moments. It's the perspective that comes with tenure, the humor gliding you over the bad days, the knowledge that good days lay ahead, that see us through.
That, along with the gratefulness for every day, of which Laura reminded me.
[All photos except the last one: Daniel Lane]
