A Ticket To Kona: Batting Percentages

More luck of the Polish over the past 24 hours. We arrived back in Atlanta very late last night due to some flight delays from Toronto to Atlanta. This morning Angela woke up pretty sick and stayed in bed all day. Thank goodness we were home before she got really sick. It would have made for a very miserable travel day of that length to be sick while trying to catch flights all day.

When I arrived in Toronto from Vancouver I had to go through U.S. Customs and eventually was standing around for a long time while saying to myself, "OK, where's my bike?!?!" The bike never made it. While I was anxious to get home, my Cervelo wanted a further tour of Canada and took a detour to Montreal where it was stuck without an owner. The airlines said that they "knew where it was" and that "it would be delivered this morning." To no surprise this morning came and went and "no bike." I'm lucky that the bike was lost after and not before the race and that Angela got sick after and not before race day.

I called this evening hoping to get some positive news and I spoke to an Air Canada rep with a very strong French accent. She said, "Ah jes, Mee-stir Kin...Kin..Kin-dee-zee-eye...what is your name?" She assured me that not only did they know where my bike was but it was in transport as we spoke. The funny part is that right after she said it was "in transport to my house" she asked if she could have my address so she knew where to send it? I immediately thought, "How could it be transported for delivery to my house if you don't even know my address?" To provide more comfort, she asked, "where is Georgia and how do you spell it?" I was tempted to say that Georgia is just west of Russia and is taking some heavy bombing so if the mailbox is knocked down, I'll spray paint my house numbers on the front door.

Batting Percentages

As I'm updating my tracking spreadsheets, I've been able to conclude that I'm officially batting 5 of 11 on Ironman races. My batting percentage is back below 50% and stands at 45%.

Out of 11 Ironman races, I've had 5 where I've been able to race to my potential and 6 where I've either hung on or just "survived." This is coming as a bit of a surprise but also demonstrates that Ironman racing has a myriad of factors that come into play that impacts performance on race day.

In the past, when I was just starting out, I'd often be critical or judegemental of professionals and elites that didn't meet expectations (my expectations of course) on race day. But as the races and years are starting to add up, and I'm dealing with my own successes and set-backs, I'm a lot more aware of how the stars have to align to "nail" an iron distance race.

The training build up has to be strong with getting in solid and consistent training sessions. The athlete has to avoid injuries and sickness. The lives have to allow for the training time. Work, family duties/responsibilities, additional responsibilities and unplanned inconveniences all have to come together to allow for the preparation. All it takes is for a family member to get sick, a big work project to come up, a household emergency or many other things to come up and an optimal Ironman is out the window.

During race week, sickness can't come into the picture. I feel terrible for athletes that do all the training, make it through taper and then right before the race they come down with a cold, the flu or some other sickness. That would be very frustrating.

On race day, the weather, equipment malfunctions, other athletes (that can knock us for a loop during the swim or crash into us on the bike) can all be spoilers. These are outside of our control. And finally we need to be in that "zone" to stay tough mentally for the duration of the entire event. Once a few things start to happen on race day, it's very easy to lose it mentally and switch to "hang on" mode.

One of the things I really enjoy about my iron journey is the perpetual iron distance races. I often get asked, "How do you do it? How do you just keep rolling from one to another?" I find it's a very motivating process for me personally. Obviously I love endurance athletics. But I find that if I have a bad race, I can very quickly get past it, put it behind me and I have another race coming down the pipeline. There really isn't much time to dwell on things if you are into the next countdown.

If I have a strong race, well then I'm normally fired up, motivated, flowing with adrenaline and dreaming up the training that I'm going to do to go even faster. So if it's a bad day, it's easy to move on and if it's a great day, it's easy to move on.

That's not to be confused with never getting frustrated, confused or dispondent. I feel all of those emotions not only after certain races, but throughout perpetual training. Why did that long run go so bad? Why was my bike ride so flat? How come my swim times aren't getting faster this week?

But it's those frustrations that somehow provide the spark and the fulfillment when we make the breakthrough and go past our previous limits. How fulfilling would something be if it came easy and didn't require any work to be good? It would be boring and we would get stale.

That's the essence of iron distance racing and endurance athletics. It's the fulfillment that we get through executing the process of achievement. It's trying to get the batting percentage up. It's striving for that next breakthrough race where we cross the finish line with arms raised and a huge smile on our face. It's going farther or going faster (and maybe both).

So whether it's bumping up from a 5k to a 10k, a half marathon to a full marathon, a half iron to a full iron or trying to go faster in a full iron, we aren't all going to bat 1.000. Once in a while we strike out. It's not if you strike out because we all do. It's if you go back to the batting cages and work to improve and then show back up to the plate and swing for the fences.

Streaking Challenge

How is everybody doing on the streaking challenge? If you could send in stats through last Sunday, that would be great so we could keep everything updated through last week.

By The Numbers

Injured Jan 1 through June 30 with plantar fasciitis and achilles problems on the left leg.
205 - Days in a row of consistent training
3 - Days missed of training at least 30 minutes in 2008 (goose-eggs in 2008)
67 - Days remaining until Ironman Florida
333 - Days remaining until Ironman Lake Placid 2009