Starting lines
By Alison Colavecchia
9.30.03 (www.slowtwitch.com)

I am about 15 pounds heavier than I was before my first Ironman in 2002. I have not been in the water for more than 40 minutes in well over a year. I have been on my bike exactly once for over a couple of hours since the second week of June. I am only just now creeping my long runs over the 80-minute mark. This is a far cry from the comfortable 3-hour rides, two-hour runs and 3700-meter swims that characterized my training prior to and following the Ironman.

This was the kind of fitness you take for granted while you have it, always preoccupied with how to climb a bigger hill, how to go faster and longer — more preoccupied with what lays ahead and not so appreciative of how far you have come. It wasn’t until I tried to do the same things and failed that I finally came to accept that the fitness I had was temporary. The body of evidence became so compelling it could no longer be ignored. With quads literally quivering, I struggled to get to the top of hill I danced up last year. I had to walk in the heat last week after 20 minutes of running. I have for the last two weeks been unable to do a flip turn for fear that I would again put my back out.

Over the last few months I have been endeavoring to start up again, to get back to a comfortable regime of swimming, biking and running, to get back to feeling fit again. I have instead done the familiar start and stop, start and stop. I have gone to bed believing that the next morning would bring renewed vim and vigour only to sleep through the alarm yet again. In the end, starting and stopping in this way has brought me nothing but aches, pains and discouragement. I have finally figured out though where I have erred and know that I must revisit an old lesson.

I have been trying to start where I stopped.

I have finally come to see that I am not where I was. I tried to sneak one by myself. I tried as long as I could to hold on to the notion that “Once an Ironman, always an Ironman.” Spiritually this is true, apparently from a fitness perspective this is not. I am having to revisit one of my earlier lessons and must again accept that I must be where I am.

The fact is, every starting line is different. This is as it should be. For if they were all the same then there would be no need to do more than one race, or at the very least no need to do the same race more than once. After completion, you could move on, you would have that finished feeling, be satisfied and move on to another goal. Year after year, race after race, though, I still get excited. It is still a thrill to do races for the fourth, fifth or even sixth time because each and every time I have made my way to the starting line it has been along a unique path. With the passage of time things change, there have been few constants. Everything from my sense of self, my body shape, life circumstances, training partners, route changes and equipment have evolved. This is just the way of it.

Over the years I am proud to say that I have made it to the finish line of every race I have started, even if it meant walking in. I have not on the other hand started every race I have been registered for. On some occasions I have been injured along the way while with others, the demands of family life were of greater importance than another race day. Still others have been skipped out of fear- fear that what I had in me just wasn’t good enough, wasn’t up to snuff and wouldn’t be sufficient to get my fanny to the finish. At the time, toeing the start line seemed too great a personal risk.

With a reasonable degree of frustration and fear hampering my progress of late, I have had to take a good hard look at why I still want to do this triathlon thing, why I am still in pursuit of starting lines. I have come to this: of all the things that starting lines do for me they, above all, commit me to combating my fears and give me hope. They say to me that I am prepared to deal with and overcome all of that which is thrown my way while on my way to race day. Over the years, starting lines have helped me to understand commitment in the face of fear, they have given me license to take risks and see what happens. They afford me the opportunity to regroup, set priorities and figure out how to get myself where I want to go. In essence, they provide me with direction and hope.

I am signed up for Ironman USA 2004. I understand now that getting to this starting line must of necessity be completely different than all the other starting lines that have preceded it. You can never do the same race twice.

This time I am older. I am a single parent, have more grey hair. I am back now to the weight I was when I began my journey six years ago. The physiotherapist who held me together with such care and skill on my way to my first Ironman is about to go on maternity leave for a year, and I will resume my coaching with Joel only on May first. My children are older and have more demanding schedules of their own, and their needs continue to be accommodated first. All around me there is no shortage of change.

Change, though, is no reason to stop. In exchange for facing all that might feel uncomfortable comes a body of growing wisdom. While I may not have been down this particular path before, I have been down others, some rougher, some easier. I am still standing.

So here in black and white I am committing myself to working towards getting to the start line of IM USA '04. Indeed there is the comfort of knowing that things like consistency, patience and a willingness to work will get the job done. They are enough to get me to that big starting line.

Still Tri’n