Desert Classic Duathlon Race Report

This race was originally created by the Phoenix Triathlon Club, of which I am a member. I knew a lot of the people racing, so I always have someone to commiserate with about the race. It’s a social event, like a lot of local triathlon races. The problem is that it also attracts some really talented people. Not only does the terrain make my run and bike times slow, the contrast to other people’s time makes me feel even more inadequate. I have gotten truly depressed in past races knowing I was sinking into suckdom of mediocrity during a bike portion. This event is not great for my ego. I accept this.

A duathlon is by nature a snarling beast of pain. It doesn’t let you go easily and is more likely to eat you alive. The Desert Classic Duathlon is in McDowell Mountain Park. It is a 3.65 mile trail run, a thirty mile road or nineteen mile mountain bike and another 3.75 mile trail run. This is my fifth year doing the race. The five times I have done it, only one race has gone well. I have learned to lower my expectations. Two last years in a row, the weather was horrible. I froze to death, got pounded with rain and ran through four inches of mud. This year I chose the option of mountain bike rather than a road bike. I suck at mountain biking, but the park is primo for mountain bike trails. The road bike course is just a sufferfest of hills. As long as I suffer, I might as well have fun.

My strategy for the first run was not to got out very hard and to conserve energy for the rest of the race. It started on the road going uphill, then wound through the lush desert terrain of Saguaros, Creosote and Cholla cactus. It was a lot of up and down and twisting and turning, but nothing drastically difficult. I did a 10:07-10:17 minute per mile pace. It was just enough to hurt my legs.

Mountain biking was next. I was nervous about this, not knowing what to expect. Mountain biking takes a lot of strength and finesse. Climbing a hill involves muscle power; trying to keep your pedals moving fast enough to kept your balance to avoid falling over. Sometimes going up a hill involves maneuvering around or over rocks that shift around. Turning a wheel too quickly in loose gravel or sand can result in the rider slamming into the ground. Still, it is engaging, because it involves thinking about what I am doing and where I am going. But an element of uneasiness sometimes plagues me.

I started to ride my bike and immediately noticed that the gearing was bad. The chain had been slipping shortly before the race, so I took it to a bike shop. It still wasn’t fixed. I was faced with riding the mountain bike nineteen miles with a slipping chain that was grinding on the gears. It was a distressing realization and the ride wasn’t fun anymore.

The trail started out going backwards on the Long Loop, which is an eight mile challenging route. The Long Loop was built to go the opposite way. It was wrong to go against the natural order of it. It had steep straight drop offs that were very difficult to ascend, especially now that my bike wasn’t working well and I had already done a trail run. I ended up walking at least three times. I hate walking on a mountain bike trail because it seems like a failure to give up to my weakness.

I got to the service road, which was boring, then to the Pemberton trail, which was a gradual ascent for another seven miles. I watched my heart rate climb higher than I wanted it. It didn’t bother me. I actually passed two people, otherwise, I was alone. I ate energy bars to keep up the effort, but I stopped entirely too many times. My chain kept slipping and grinding on the gears. Climb a hill, hear the chain skip and grind, curse. Repeat many times. The last part of ride went downhill, so that would hopefully save my legs for the run.

The back side of the trail was pretty. It was like a wilderness because the mountains on the horizon blocked the view of any homes. Lots of boulders and wild flowers lined the trail. The weather was cool and sunny, perfect for hurting myself. I finally started seeing other riders going the opposite way.

I saw some horse riders coming down the trail. F##k! Really? I had to stop and let them by. Horses and horse riders are unpredictable so they own the trail. I finally hit the paved road. This was boring especially when the road went uphill. Finally I went downhill again and my heart rate finally dropped. I ended up riding for almost two hours with sixteen minutes of stopping and/or walking. Too bad all the stopping and walking counts. I actually didn’t feel too tired for all the strenuous effort. Maybe I was fueled by irritation with the damn bike shop.

I got into transition and people were milling about since they were already done because they were faster than me. This made me cranky. Luckily for them, they didn’t get in my way or I might have knocked them over.

The second run of a duathlon is where the pain really starts and the legs beg for mercy. It was supposed to be 3.75 miles, but I measured it at 3.89. I felt okay until I hit the first aid station, when fatigue hit me. I ate part of my double latte gel, which helped. It tasted vile, but it has caffeine. This trail was much hillier than the first and the carnage was evident. It wasn’t going to stop me. I passed at least six people walking. I walked on the ascent of the steepest part of the trail. It was a vertical wall of dirt and rocks which was part of the Expert trail. I couldn’t see descending it on a mountain bike. I had thought about riding it before, but now I knew what it was like. It was dangerous. It was evil.

Finally, the trail got easier and I could do something actually resembling running to the finish line. My total run time was 43:19. Not a great time, but okay.

The process of training for this race was interesting in that I could actually see the results of struggling through the terrain on foot and by bike. I was surprised that I could make it up hills on the mountain bike that I never could before. My heart rate would soar, but it was tolerable. I got beat up and exhausted running trails, and I would fall and hurt myself, but the trails got easier to run. Speed didn’t matter as much as conquering the hills, sand, rocks and dirt. It was a fine line between fear of hurting myself, and the exhilaration of swooping over undulating earth.

This race at least, I held the beast at bay. I had energy most of the time. The pain of exertion was bearable. My legs didn’t scream at me. They didn’t cramp. My mind didn’t tell me how much I sucked, at least not too much. I didn’t trip or fall off of my bike, so no bodily injury. My mood was cranky, but it manageable. And I didn’t get eaten. I survived.

Valentine's Poem

ODE TO VALENTINE’S DAY

Hearts and flowers aren’t my friends anymore
They gnaw on my soul.
Feeding on lies and betrayal.
Little rat teeth, their maggoty bodies grow fat.
Squirming.

The bloated corpse of Romance regards me
Empty eye sockets that never saw.
Hanging bits of flesh
Vultures nibble
The future is unknown. Will Romance arise again anew?

I stab Cupid with his own arrow, disemboweling angel flesh.
It trembles in death throes. The promise of love dead.
Feathers of wings scattered on the ground.

I fling both corpses over the cliff.
The vultures scream out into the cloudless blue sky.
Circling in the air and then pouncing once more to feed.
On despair.
The stench is gone.
The pain is dulled.
I walk away.

I rarely read poetry, let alone write it. But my irritation over the "holiday" inspired me to write this poem. I was tired of reading other peoples' sappy sentiments about Valentine's Day. Romance? None in my life.

So, while riding my bike, I thought of what images would be the most vile to counteract the claptrap that I was reading on Facebook, seeing on television and hearing on the radio. My mind was so immersed in images of death and decay that I barely noticed that I was training.

It turned out that writing this poem was wonderfully cathartic. My depression about being alone was eased. I could express the deep pain I felt in an acceptable manner. The words seemed to come out of nowhere. The darkness of the images surprised me. It was different from my usual blog writing in that it was freer and more raw emotionally.

Best of all I could immediately kill off Cupid without the effort of developing a story. I wrote a short story about a murder and it took me months to figure out how he would be killed and who would do it. In a poem, Cupid can be disemboweled in a single sentence. It's utterly wonderful. It takes whining to whole new and violent level.

I am going to visit this medium again. The range of subjects is endless. Divorce, depression, triathlons, loneliness, empty nest? Or maybe a Christmas poem, though disemboweling Santa might be a little too much. Reindeer meat?

P. F. Chang's Rock n' Roll Marathon Race Report

I have a bad history with marathons. I tend to avoid them. They HURT. I haven’t done any races where I thought I was doing well. They turn into death marches where my legs and feet turn into sticks of burning pain. They make me want to cry. Two of the three that I have done have been in ironmans, after 2.4 miles of swimming and 112 miles of biking, so I had an excuse for mere survival. The first stand alone marathon I did was a debacle that took over six and a half hours. I wanted a different outcome.

I was determined to actually race P.F. Chang’s. Somehow, a great half marathon race in 2009 gave me the delusion that I could actually do this. I perfectly executed the half marathon, keeping the same fast pace for ten miles, then speeding up for the last 5k. It felt awesome. Marathons are a different matter. A marathon is a snarling beast, that is difficult to tame.

It’s nice to have a goal and to see what I am capable of. I thought I could do better than I had in the past and that I could have a personal best, since my best time was an ironman marathon. They are always slower than a stand alone marathon. It seemed like a crazy, stupid idea but doable. Maybe I could exceed all my expectations of what I could do.

Training wasn’t all that difficult. I did a lot of running in the summer training for an ironman and it wasn’t that big a stretch to do it again. But then, I reached the magic fourteen mile run mark. My feet do not like running more than fourteen miles at one time. They complained bitterly and I ended up in moving a crippled hobble at the end. Making my long runs faster just made matters worse.

Ironically, running a lot makes you lazier. I would go out of my way to get a close parking spot so that I didn’t have to walk an extra twenty five yards. Any activity where I had to stand a lot was avoided. It was a good excuse not to do yard work.. Grocery shopping sucked because I shop at a large store that requires a lot of walking and my feet would ache non stop.

P.F. Chang’s is a big marathon that tends to be a hassle. But it’s in the middle of January, which is prime time for a long race, because I won’t die of heat exhaustion. This year we had the option to ride the light rail to the start line. That worked out much better than the buses that they had used in the past. Those were crowded and ran late. Too bad it was pitch dark outside, so I couldn’t see the scenery. Riding a train in Phoenix is still a novelty. For a long time political leaders didn’t see the need for more mass transit for a city in a county of over 3.8 million people.

At the start of the race, people are placed in corrals according to their projected running time. The word “corrals” evokes the image of cattle in my mind. So many people are there that the start has to be done in stages. It’s a slow walk to the beginning of the slaughter. I was supposed to be in corral eight because I thought I could finish under five hours, but not four. Corral eight did not exist, only six. Was I supposed to start behind the police cars? I guess if you weren’t in corrals one through six, you went wherever you could.

The bad thing about running in the desert in winter is that it is cold in the morning. I couldn’t dress warmly because I would get hot when I am running and I didn’t want to carry extra clothes. A lot of people just discarded their extra clothes in the street, like gloves and shirts. That wasn’t a option for me because I am cheap and it seems wasteful. I could have worn a garbage bag like some people did, but that just wasn’t cool. The same light rail that was our friend and got us there also delayed the start for half an hour, because a lot of runners going over the tracks tends to slow down the trains. I looked for people putting out a lot of heat.

Finally we started. Miles one through nine were bearable. I wasn’t hurting or breathing hard. I passed the 4:45 hour pace group, which was the time I wanted to finish in. The bands provided temporary distraction, but most of them were uninspiring. Locals schools put out cheer leading squads, but the only one I liked had a disco theme with sparkly costumes. They could cheer all they wanted, but I went into a moody misery. The route passed through the older part of town, which actually has some character, with stores, older homes and a canal. It’s the part of Phoenix that looks more like the midwest with the large green lawns and big trees.

The 4:45 pace group caught up with me, which probably wasn’t a good thing. I was slowing down. I ran with them a while. The pacer held up a sign the entire way that says “4:45". People followed him on the theory that they will be able to stay with him the entire race. That is, until the porta-potty calls.

I had tried to resist this call and I was determined not to waste time in this manner. My intestines had other ideas. They hated running as much as my feet did. At mile twenty, they threatened to erupt and I had no other choice but to use the blue box. How the hell do they find toilet paper this thin? I had to roll out long sheets just to get amounts at the molecular level.

Up to this point, I had a decent run. The saying is that a marathon begins at mile twenty. What this really means is all the mistakes that I made in the past twenty miles came back to haunt me. I didn’t drink enough water and eat enough of the vile phlegmy gels that I use. This resulted in hills becoming mountains and every step was a burning pain. It took a lot more energy just to do the same thing that I had been doing for four hours.

The mind is more powerful than the body most of the time, but sometimes they get into arguments. The brain says to keep going when the body tells me to stop. At this point it was a full blown fight. My body was screaming “stop!”. My mind was saying “I am damned if I am going to have a five hour marathon!”. It was frustrating to work so hard for so little speed.

A string of runners stretched out in front of me down the undulating road . Who knew Van Buren had all these hills? It seemed cruel to make us run over hills at mile twenty three in a marathon. I wasn’t going to give up and walk, though. People around me groaned. I thought, what the hell is your excuse? I have twenty years on you. Some rotund belly dancers in long, sparkling skirts provided some comic relief. I admired them for their confidence to expose and shake that much Rubinesque flesh.

I finally got to the Mill Avenue bridge over Tempe Town Lake. I could see all the white herons perched on the walls. They were probably wondering what all these idiots were doing. I was pretty cranky at that point because my feet hurt so bad. Hapless pedestrians crossed through the runners. I was ready to scream at them if they got in my way. They could die for all I cared. I passed the restaurant Montis on Rio Salado about mile 25.5 and they were playing “The Dog Days Are Over”. I certainly hoped so. I loved this song and it gave me energy for a little while. I kept reminding myself that “pain is temporary, pride is forever”. Giving up and not doing my best stays with me a lot longer than any momentary discomfort. But my feet weren’t buying this idea.

I picked up at the last mile, or tried to and my heart rate was sky high. In a normal race, this would have resulted in faster speed. This time it resulted in more discomfort. A lot of people at the finish line cheered, which was kind of cool, except I hurt so bad that I didn’t care. They could have been mutant aliens and I wouldn’t have noticed. I had a time of 4:54:39. It wasn’t my goal time of 4:45, but it was my best time in a marathon.

I like to test my physical limits in running and to have the feeling of control. Things don’t always go as planned, however. I learned from this experience that it takes a lot of effort to run slow in a marathon and it takes a lot MORE effort to not run even slower the last 10k. Despite my best efforts, the last 10k in a marathon always SUCKS. I can train all I want, but my feet and legs are going to hurt badly whether I run for five hours or six and a half. Lastly, I will NOT be able to avoid the porta-potties.

At least I didn’t feel like crying, unlike my other marathons. That is, until I had to walk back to my car

Christmas Affect Disorder

I can’t take the emotional baggage of Christmas. All the years of rituals and feelings of every Christmas I have ever had weigh me down. The expectations of joy and the inevitable let-downs hang around like ghosts, that come back year after year. I have whined about Christmas before in this blog, detailing my bad attitude about the holiday, my hatred of Christmas music and the illusion of happiness that mocks me. Last year, I got through it all relatively unscathed, but this year was different because my daughter Melissa wasn’t around.

Most of December was bearable. I had very little shopping to do, which meant no agonizing about what to get people, when I didn’t have a clue want they wanted. I didn’t put up a tree because no one else was around to see it; if it wasn’t put up, then it wouldn’t have to be taken down. The Christmas lights stayed in the box because it was too much effort to untangle them, get out a ladder, and string them up. I put up a wreath and decorated the mantel and that was it. I didn’t bake any cookies, just corn bread and tea bread for parties. I went to two great parties and felt good for a while.

I accepted the fact that I didn’t have family to visit, unlike most of the rest of the world. My parents and sister are all deceased and my daughter is in Washington, D.C. Families are over-rated anyway. Most of the time they are boring as hell and disrupt one’s routine. Sometimes a relative cracks and shoots everyone. Guns and Christmas are a bad combination. I briefly thought of visiting my sister-in-law in South Carolina, but the air fare was ridiculous and I hate traveling during the holidays.

I detest crowded airports and the weather is usually terrible between where you fly from and where you are going. I thought of taking a ski trip, but the lifts are crowded this time of the year. I would spent more time in line than skiing.

I should have avoided Facebook. All those people bragging about how wonderful their lives are, what a good time they are having, and all the family, friends and parties is depressing. All that damn cheeriness. My life doesn’t live up to this standard. Of course the people who are not having a great time aren’t posting about it. I could bitch about the holidays, but then I would be considered to be negative, which most people consider to be a major character flaw. If I can’t be positive all the time, then there must be something wrong with me. It’s not acceptable to hate Christmas.

I planned the hell out of December. I went to four parties, went to a movie on Christmas with a friend, volunteered at Desert Botanical Garden three times, trained for a marathon, saw a therapist, did a 30k race, and went to the Nutcracker Ballet. It wasn’t enough to stave off the holiday blues.

Maybe it’s the short days and I have Seasonal Affect Disorder. December should be called my Christmas Affect Disorder. Maybe it’s because I sleep an extra hour a day because it’s dark at seven o’clock and who the hell wants to get up anyway? It could be all the fat laden sugary treats that I can’t avoid because it’s there, it’s good and I am hungry. Every party has wine and I have to have at least one glass. Food that’s bad for me and booze is not good for my state of mind. At least not later on, when I get on the scale and find out I am wearing the extra calories.

I am glad that the holidays are over and I can get back to my regular depression. The Halls can get undecked, the Bells can stop jingling and the Chestnuts can stop roasting.

My Un-Anniversary

Wedding photo with my ugly dress and my parents, now deceased



I don’t think much about my wedding anniversary anymore. It used to be fun to get gifts and go out to eat or even in 2001, go to Tahiti. No one gets me gifts anymore, at least not romantic ones. Some people have a hard time with anniversaries when they get divorced. I have a more difficulty with other events like Christmas, but I don’t long to remember being married to F. I didn’t want to get divorced, but the marriage was dead.

The twenty seventh of November used to be my wedding anniversary. I was married in 1976. I thought that my husband loved me. It was a long time to be married and I was comfortable with it. I was unmarried June 5, 2009. F decided in 2007 that he didn’t want to be married to me anymore. He had an affair with another woman. He didn’t get around to dumping me until August 2008. Communication wasn’t his strong suit.

I was young and deluded when I got married. Marrying F was supposed to make me happy and anything was better than being alone. The thought of trying to make myself happy didn’t occur to me. I thought the marriage was good and I was content. I didn’t deal much with any problems I had because it was easier for me to be complacent. I lacked confidence, but I was afraid to do things on my own. Life events didn’t force me out of my comfort zone.

Getting divorced burst my bubble of safety or what I thought was safety. My assumptions about my place in the world liquified and nothing seemed certain anymore. I didn’t know who I was or what my purpose was. I had to learn to do everything myself, and I didn’t feel up to the task. F wasn’t around anymore to take care of the pool or the car. It was difficult dealing with stuff that I had have no interest in, because I was in a cloud of pain. I resented being left with this crap. No one else was around to do the stupid chores.

I was left with myself and I had to learn to live with this person. My spouse didn’t like me anymore, so I had to unlearn the assumption that what he thought of me was what I was. If I had no value to him, then I had no value as a person. That assumption is unbearable to live with. F*** came into my thoughts and said that I am stupid. I eventually told him to shut up. This worked.

Un-Anniversary means unromantic. True love seems like bullshit. Real love takes work. I feel kind of jaded about the whole fairy tale wedding concept and maybe a little bitter. I see jewelry store ads hawking diamond rings with starry-eyed men proposing to simpering women. It’s almost funny. I watch reality shows were women buy $6,000 wedding dresses and I wonder how many of them will end up divorcing the man of their dreams. My seventies wedding dress was $200 and I still have to figure out how to get rid of it. I can’t throw it in the garbage, but I don’t want it. My daughter thinks it’s ugly.

Marriage is for other people. It’s not something I can even think about at this point. I am not in that safe, secure world where I can count on someone to support me emotionally. Everyone else seems to be in a different plane of existence with their perfect, happy lives and I am an oddball, somehow not fitting into this delusional world.

I can’t take companionship for granted because it’s hard to find. I have to make an effort to seek people out in order to socialize. I don’t have a built in friend at home to talk to and I spent a lot of time alone. I envy people with parents and siblings. Mine are gone; my sister and parents are deceased and all of my remaining relatives live far away. It’s a whole new world from being married.

The tendrils of an old life are persistent. As much as I enjoyed shredding my marriage certificate, when you are married thirty years to some person and all the connections aren’t very easily severed. Reminders of the past can be purged, but not all memories don’t go away. They sometimes arise unbidden and unwelcome. We have a child together. I still have to e-mail her father sometimes about her. Seeing him in person makes me want to leave immediately.

My mission was to get rid of part of my old life. I took down all of our family portraits from the walls. Occasionally an old photo crops up despite my best efforts to destroy them all. I have hundreds of photos before I had a digital camera and I went through every one of them and removed the ones of F. The less stuff I have, the lighter the burden. I was cleaning out old tax records that detailed the minutia of my distant past. I felt numb, and slightly sad looking at them.

I still get along with most of my ex-in-laws. I knew some of them when they were pre-teenagers, before I was even married. My daughter, Melissa, has a strong bond with her cousins. We still all get together once in a while, although it’s kind of awkward with F’s new wife. I don’t care that he’s remarried, but I just don’t want to be around them. My mother-in-law, Rosemary, has also been supportive. Her husband dumped her as well, so she understood what I went through. My mother has passed on, so she’s kind of a substitute.

I still have my married name, because I didn’t want to change it while my daughter was in school. Now I am too lazy to change the driver’s license, state bar license, passport, bank accounts and such. I feel like I should change it, but my maiden name doesn’t seem to fit me either because I am not that person any more. It doesn’t seem to matter much anyway.

My Un-anniversary also means Un-fettered. I don’t have to deal with another person’s preferences. I cook what I want, when I want. F liked certain foods, preferably meat, but now I don’t have it all the time. He didn’t drink because he was an recovering alcoholic, so now I drink wine or beer. It’s a strike for freedom. He would come home late, probably from spending time with his girlfriend, turn the bedroom light on to read and wake me up. He didn’t care. Now I don’t have anyone to disturb me. The bed seems empty and cold, but no one wakes me up.

If I make a mistake, I don’t have someone rolling their eyes in exasperation, like I am so stupid. I deal with the error however I can. No one judges me except myself. I have learned to accept my shortcomings. If I get lost going somewhere, I figure out where to go. If I use a weed wacker instead of a lawnmower to cut the weeds in the yard, it’s okay. I am doing the best that I can at the moment, and that’s good enough.

I still dance on the edge of fear all the time. Fear that I will never be truly independent; fear that a disaster is just around the corner; fear that I will never make peace with being alone. The car may break down or get wrecked, an appliance may quit, or I might get seriously ill with no one to help me. It is a gnawing fear. It’s like Michael Binkley’s Anxiety Closet in Bloom County. The monsters come out at night when you are trying to sleep and keep you awake. Fear is a lack of trust in oneself that a crisis can be handled. Earning that trust is a long, hard process. I am still working on it and probably will forever. I get through the bad stuff, but it’s a struggle.

My un-Anniversary means that holidays aren’t the same. I have to try and not compare myself to others or I get really depressed. I have to work at having a positive frame of mind and it doesn’t come naturally. Holidays always seem to be made for happy people with lots of family and friends and I don’t fit that mold anymore. Christmas and Thanksgiving are not what they used to be. I had to figure out how to make them work. No more large turkey, if it’s just me and my daughter. If I am lucky, I spend Thanksgiving with friends. With my daughter at school, no Christmas tree. I make no more Christmas cookies because I am the only one around to eat them and I gain weight if I do. It doesn’t get any easier the older you get. I don’t get a lot of presents, maybe one if I am lucky.

Trips aren’t the same. I feel like an incompetent tourist. I have to make all the arrangements myself. It seems it takes me hours to decide what flight to take and what hotel to stay in. I have to drive to the destination or airport myself. I eat alone in restaurants. I have to find my own way around an area and sometimes I am not good at doing this. I blunder around. I still don’t feel adventurous enough to do certain things on my own and I force myself to go places. I found camping by myself creepy; not that I like camping. Being in a foreign country by myself is stressful. Driving on a strange, busy highway is un-nerving. I still manage to enjoy myself, but it’s not the same as it used to be.

One of these days I am going to celebrate my Un-Anniversary, because overall, despite the emotional pain and trauma, it’s a good thing. It forced me out of my comfort zone, because staying the same is unbearable. If I was still married, I wouldn’t be forced to try new things.
I have an incentive to try new activities because it means I can get out of an empty house. Someone I know says that “pain is the vitamin of growth.” It’s just a really big pill to swallow.
Opportunity is out there, I just have to find it.

Ironman Arizona from a Volunteer Perspective

I am an Arizona Ironman junkie. Ever since the race came to Tempe, Arizona in 2005, I have either raced or volunteered for every event except one. I can’t stay away. It’s a giant party and I just have to be there. I could merely spectate, but that wouldn’t be enough involvement for me. I have to be part of it somehow. This year it’s November 20th and the weather is perfect for a change.

The first thing I see as I am walking past the finish line on Rio Salado is the male winner coming in under eight hours. What a stud! This is the North American record for this distance. Ironically as it turns out, I will get the see the last official finisher as well.

I have a two mile walk to get to my first shift at run aid station #8, which is managed by the Phoenix Triathlon Club. Our aid station has mock jails, a courthouse and an effigy of one of our members being hung. Since it is a “cops and prisoner’s” theme, people dress in uniforms, which are sometimes scanty. It is warm enough that I can wear my “C.S.I.” mini-dress, something that I would normally never be caught dead in. Some guys are man enough to dress as women and some women dress kind of sluttily, with short skirts and knee high boots. The point is to make the runners smile and take their minds off of the pain of running a marathon after swimming 2.4 miles and biking 112 miles.

I have to cross Mill Avenue Bridge over Tempe Town Lake to get to the aid station. I see the stream of runners close to completing a lap. One of our local racers is dressed head to toe in a blue costume that looks like Blue Man. He looks hot and uncomfortable in his suit. He is known for racing in costumes, but this seems kind of crazy to do an entire ironman this way. He isn’t the only one dressed up. I later see an Elvis and a guy with a double mohawk and a leopard skin skirt.

At the aid station, I decide to hand out water. It’s less mess when they grab it and spill in on you. I am next to the sponge station, but I let someone else pick them up. It’s bad enough touching all these hands that have god knows what on them. A sponge that has been re-used, squeezed over someone’s face and body and put down inside a tri top is not something I want to touch.

Like last year, the racers in mid to late afternoon are in a hurry and actually look like they are running. They are focused and if I see someone I know and shout at them, they don’t hear me and don’t stop. Later on, the slower ones look exhausted and dazed and move more at a hobble. The course is three loops, so I see some people twice. All sorts of body types go by. Some are really buff and trim, some are overweight, some are young and some old. It is good to see them smile. All are probably suffering.

The music is blaring, and a D.J. harasses the racers. I see a friend and give her hug. She is worried about the time cut off. I encourage her just to keep moving.

I have to start my next shift at the finish line, so I leave to take the long walk back. I am tired from standing for four hours and my feet ache. It’s gotten dark by now and this stretch of the sidewalk along the lake seems bleak, with dimly lighted, dirty concrete walls and freeway culverts. People pass by me going the other way. I notice a man taking three steps and stopping, three steps and stopping. I found out later he finished the whole marathon this way.

In contrast to the north side of the lake, the finish line is brightly lit and music is blasting. As a finish line catcher, you grab the arm of the sweaty racer, put a thermal sheet on them, let them get a medal, make sure that they get their timing chip off, get them their hat and shirt and guide them to the photographer. Then you get back in line to do it again. It’s constant movement and it’s tiring. The show is really entertaining, though. Even the pros that were racing earlier in the day came back to watch. The second place women’s winner, Linsay Corbin, is handing out medals.

I help one man who said it was emotional for him because he had come back from a brain aneurism. One older man shrugs me off because he said he had done twenty nine ironmans. I am impressed. Another young guy says “oh man" and I say “it’s pretty awesome, huh?’ and he says “words can’t describe it.” Such joy is inspiring and I couldn’t help feeling it myself. Finishers cry and hug family members. Some drop to the ground and pray. Three people propose marriage to their racers. They would get on their knees and whip out a diamond ring.

I help a friend through the chute. This is her third Ironman Arizona and she had a personal best. She had overcome a lot of health issues over the year, including cancer, to race. My other friend, however, that was struggling on the run, I don’t see. I had left to get some water, so maybe I had missed her. I found out later she didn’t make the midnight cut off.

At eleven o’clock or sixteen hours into the race, the announcer, Mike Reilly, gets down from his perch and starts revving up the crowd in the stands, waving a shirt around and encouraging the last racers. This is when being at the finish line really gets fun. Everyone bangs the stands and dances to the music. As each person comes in, I wonder what their story is and what they had to do to get to this point. A group of three men come in and one of them hugs another man and cries for a long time. I have to go around them to catch another person. I later found out that two of these racers had spent one and a half hours helping an injured racer walk two miles to the finish line.

As midnight approaches, the last official finishers come in, one at the stroke of midnight with a little shove from the announcer. They all look exhausted, beaten and sad that they didn’t make it before the seventeen hour deadline.

To me, they are still ironmen. I love the spirit of this race. Some people breeze through, while a lot of others struggle at some point at the dark places of exhaustion. Everyone wants to go beyond themselves to achieve something that is difficult. Some racers have to overcome, injury, sickness, mechanical bike problems or even a lack of a limb. I saw one blind runner. They persist onward when it seems hopeless that they have any chance to finish. Not everyone does make it and they feel the crushing weight of failure. I know what they feel like.

Each year I volunteer, my perception are colored by what happened that year. In 2008, the event was held in April and November. I raced in April and did not finish due to heat and howling winds that caused me to miss the bike cut off time. I was crushed. My mother had died in March and my husband had left me in August. I worked as a finish line catcher, but I was envious of the racers for accomplishing what I hadn’t been able to do. I also felt sad that they had people waiting for them at the end, when I felt alone.

In 2010, I was in a better frame of mind because I had finished the race the year before. I didn’t do an ironman that year, but I could identify with what people had gone through to get to the finish line, since I had experienced myself. I still envied the racers who had loved ones waiting for them and maybe always will.

This year I had raced Ironman Canada, which still seems like a huge accomplishment to me due to its difficulty. Seeing athletes finish here was like re-living that experience myself. The end result of that achievement is compelling and joyous to me. I am tired and my legs and feet hurt, but I feel elated. I am infused with the atmosphere of happiness.

Trials of the Bus

On a recent trip to Spain, I had an excruciating long bus ride from Madrid to Gijon, which is about a 250 mile journey to the central northern coast. I traveled with my fellow Team USA members who were racing in the World Duathlon Championships. I wanted to venture to an exotic venue to race, but I was apprehensive about the amount of travel time it would take. The organizers told us that the ride would be about five hours. Five hours in U.S. time is more like eight hours in Spain time.. The driver was not in a hurry.

I thought that taking a bus ride would be a good choice because traveling with a bike is a major pain. The airlines pretend that the bike is like a another passenger and think you should be charged as such. I had to pack it in a box and lug the bulky forty pound box around the airport. I dreaded the attempt to take it in a small European taxi to the train station, where they may or may not take it on the train. I couldn’t even imagine driving in Spain. I would get lost in god knows where because the roads are marked all well and I couldn’t read the signs. The bus would take us from the airport directly to our hotels. What I didn’t know is that it would be a torturously long ride averaging 31 miles per hour. The bus interior was fairly nice, with plush, comfortable seats, but we were crammed in together and there wasn’t much extra room for our bags.

The Madrid airport is spread out and it took the bus twenty minutes to get to another terminal to pick up other people. I was starting to wonder if Madrid had two airports. The bus that was supposed to leave about 7:30 a.m. finally started at 9:00 a.m. I felt excited to be in another country once we got out of the airport. The country side looked a little like Arizona with bare rocky hills and stunted trees. Unfortunately, that was the most interesting scenery for two hundred miles.

Once the route left the city, the area looked like desolate eastern Washington, in which I had gotten horribly lost this summer. It was vast stretches of parched wheat fields and dead sunflower plants, with the occasional ruined building. All the moisture seemed to have been sucked out of the earth, the people and animals had vanished and only the skeletons of crops remained. The sun blazed in a clear blue sky. The emptiness and lack of green was oppressive and tedious. I had a weird sense of warped time because it was midnight Phoenix time and mid morning here.

We passed the time chatting with one another trying to pass the time. It helped to be in a community of fellow travelers. It kept my anxiety at being in a foreign country at bay. Somehow nothing bad could happen as long as I was with a group of people in the same situation.

After two hours we stopped at Spain’s version of a truck stop. It seemed fairly clean and had a lunch counter with meat filled pastries. It looked good, but when I tried one I regretted it. I was hungry, but this pastry had a nasty sour greasy aftertaste like fatty meat. The store had an assortment of Spanish junk food. I couldn’t read the labels, but the plastic wrapped donuts, cookies and potato chips looked just as nutritious as the American versions. There was a large scary looking hunk of preserved, unwrapped pork with hoofed leg sticking out. It had an unreal grayish plastic appearance that didn’t look like real meat. Maybe it was a Spanish version of beef jerky? I was not so far impressed with Spanish cuisine.

We made our slow crawl onward. After another two hours we were forced to have a sit down lunch at a twenty four hour restaurant. Few of us could read the menus, so a passenger who could read Spanish translated for us. I thought chicken would be safe, but I was wrong. I wasn’t real hungry after the nasty pastry, but I didn’t know how long I would have until I got a real meal. The chicken was greasy dark meat. The person I was sitting with had a grisly version of beef. It looked horrible, but he claimed it was edible. It certainly didn’t look like it. Good food kept me going when I was tired, but I hadn’t managed to get any yet and it was depressing.

This ride was a test. A test to see how much continuous traveling I could do without losing my mind. Racing an ironman is difficult, but it was easy compared to this trip. I had already been traveling for fifteen hours. The journey took patience and endurance. It was like entering the Twilight Zone where I am forced be a passenger forever and never get anywhere.

The bus experience was out of my control, like many things. As a passenger, I was supposed to go to a certain place, but I couldn’t make the ride any faster. I had to stop at places where I didn’t want to be. Weird places with strange meat. Time was filled with monotony. All of us had succumbed to the tedious slow passage of time and no one spoke much. I wanted to be in Gijon lying on a soft hotel bed. I knew that I would get to the end of this trip eventually, but it seemed to take forever. It’s supposed to be about the journey, not the destination, but in this case, the destination was far preferable to the journey.

I knew I would survive this trial. After an eternity, the view changed to actual green hills . We were nearing the coast. Mist hung in layers in the air around the mountains, reminding me of California, where the searing blasted desert and arid grassy rolling land gives way to the greenery of the beach areas.

The bus wound through twisting roads through the hills. It seemed to lose even more speed. I cheered when I saw a sign for Gijon. At least it exists. I was beginning to wonder.

Ultimately, it turned out that Gijon was worth the trials of the twenty three hours to get there. It was a nice civilized town on a beautiful beach with restaurants, parks and interesting old buildings. I had the privilege of riding my bike on a pretty, winding picturesque road. I got to meet people from around the country and the world. It was a totally new fascinating environment. I felt ill at ease in a foreign country, but it was fun observing a different culture. But the process of getting there was awful.

That seems to be common in the human situation, with great experiences intermingled with horrible ones. You find the love of your life and they run off with someone else. You have a child, but your parents die. You travel to a nice place, but have the plane ride from hell. You can forge on anyway. After this trip I had more faith in myself to endure anxiety, tedium and exhaustion to get to where I wanted to go. Fear did not keep me in my comfort zone and away from adventure. Next time, though, I am going somewhere closer to a major airport.