|
Written by La Tortuga
|
 "I've gotta follow that dream where ever that dream may lead..." Okay you probably don't know that song unless you are a die hard Elvis fan such as myself. But this is one of my mantras that I keep in mind during the tough time. The dream for me began nearly 25 years ago as I watched on my little 6" b/w TV in my college dorm room one of the first televised Ironman competitions. I watched it several times that year as it was repeated on probably Wide World of Sports or something of the like. I decided right then and there that this is what I wanted to do. I recall telling myself later that year or the next that I'm going to run an Ironman when I'm 72 (don't ask me why I picked 72, it just seemed like a good number) and that I had 52 years to train. Well, nearly 25 years have passed and I am finally signed up for my first IM. Nov 1st just 5 days after my 45th birthday I plan on joining the “Iron Circle” by completing IM Florida in Panama City. I have a lot of training ahead of me these next 6 months. But for me “It’s Now or Never”, the way I see it. A lot has happened in these past 25 years and I am now an able bodied disabled person. This means I’m on a limited fixed income. I had to cash in bonds prematurely (costing me a couple hundred extra right there) to have the money to enter the race. So I can’t foresee that I’ll have the money to enter another IM any time soon. But I decided that this is what I wanted to do to mark reaching middle age. (It’s hard to think of myself as middle aged, but hey 45 is half of 90, so if I live to be 90 then I’m definitely middle aged.) Although I’m not 72 (maybe by the time I am, I can save up enough money to enter another IM or two along the way) but my knees are as bad as my dads, if not worse, and he turns 68 this month. Friday I started another session of synvisc injections. This is my 3rd round on my left knee and my 4th on my right. Synvisc is injected into my knees to help alleviate what I call “crunchiness", because when my knees grind it sounds crunchy. (My dad will begin his first series of synvisc injections sometime this month in one of his knees.) So my knees are worse than my 68 year old dad’s. It’s amazing how a few years of running incorrectly and even more years of carrying too much weight can deteriorate the joints. I watch others run and in my wild imagination I’m running like I have wings on my shoes, but in reality I mostly walk, at times on the track or on soft ground I’ll muster up a jog. But I have to be careful. I want my knees to be as healthy as possible come November. So I’m trying to race walk. Besides, I never really was fast to begin with. I was always last in the 50 yard dash on field day in grade school. Actually I was more than last, as if that was possible, but not only was I last, I was usually 5 or 10 yards behind the last girl in front of me. It was very humiliating. And my younger brother has always been faster than me. It was a great source of shame for me at 4 when my 3 year old brother could always beat me when we raced to the end of the driveway, or across the yard, or to the backyard fence… So at a young age I realized I wasn’t blessed with speed so I’d have to work on endurance. In ninth grade I ran Cross Country. At the time it was a relatively new sport and they didn’t have separate girls and boys teams. I went to a small parochial school and we didn’t have a great pool of athletes, we really had only one true varsity runner. The rest ran JV times and I would have done well if I was running on the C squad, my times were consistent for a freshman, but because of our limited number of people most of our JV runners had to run varsity and I had to run JV. I finished last in every race that year. In a couple of races I was lapped by an entire mile. There were a few times when I actually passed some of the guys on the trail. But everytime I passed someone they dropped out of the race, so I still finished last. Back then as I do now I try not to be discouraged. Taking my example from the story of the Tortoise and the Hare, I say “Slow and steady FINISHES the race”. And that is the goal, to finish. Oh sure I’d love to break the tape just once in my life. But unless I’m the only one in the race, the odds of that happening are slim and none. It is my hope that as I continue to tell my story and my ups and downs of training that many will find encouragement. I’m the one out there that is the slowest on the Track days and usually last on the bike days. I do a little better in the pool but, not so well considering that I swam on my HS and college swim teams. But then again I was always the slowest on the team. Any time I would start to get faster than someone, they quit the team. So even though I improved I remained the slowest on the team. Being the slowest on the team is something I’m accustomed to, but it doesn’t mean I necessarily like it. But I’d rather be the slowest than not completing/competing. Because as I’ll discuss in future blogs, there were times in my life that my health made it look like chasing after my dreams was next to impossible. TTYL Orlinda, La Tortuga
|
