Sick of Racing the Clock

I am sick. Again.

So far this year I've had pneomonia, a sinus infection, and now strep and tonsilitis. Each time I've gotten sick right after a long workout. It kinda sucks.

It also reminds me that as much as I'd like to believe I've gotten better about balancing and scaling things so that I don't create new ends of the candle to burn, I might not have made quite enough progress yet. Especially on the setting boundaries, not taking on new stuff fronts.

The thing is I LOVE taking on new stuff. I love helping people. I love learning new stuff. I love challenges. And I love parenting at this stage, even though it means a lot more running around and logistical backbends.

So ironically, what's had to go is training. Not the rehab training, because without 2x a week of that I'll quickly end up injured again...which is even worse than sick.

No, its the 3rd run, the long bike, the overdistance in the pool....everything gets cut down or eliminated. And when it doesn't, I get sick and miss three days in a row instead. Which means that - because I'm not getting enough sleep and keep getting sick, I'm going to have to cut back training even more.

Sigh.

I'm going to get beat because of these facts. But I might be able to determine exactly how little training one can do and still finish an Ironman in one piece. That's valuable information, no?

I'm not really ok with that, being a competitive bugger, but I'm strangely at peace with my choices this go around. Last time I did Ironman, I trained a lot more (like about 8 hours a week more), but I remember feeling like I really sucked as a mom.

Not because I was off training. I don't believe that children need to be with their mothers 24 hours a day and I trained while they were in pre-school or with their dad.

No, I felt like a terrible mother because I didn't know what the hell I was doing. And because I wasn't great with babies. And because I didn't WANT to sit on the floor and play with playdough. I was tired of all the crying and diapers and anxiety about milestones and safety. You get the picture.

I spent many a long run or ride sorting out how to tackle various parenting issues that nagged me. How to respond to temper tantrums. How to keep from having temper tantrums myself. You know. Stuff like that.

This time around, working full time during the hours the kids are at school, I shoehorn in workouts early in the morning before they get up and late at night after they go to bed. They get done around the hockey games, the violin lessons, the nature hikes, the reading time. Not because they HAVE to, but because I want to be with my kids when I can.

Now long runs and rides are still good for my head, but in a different way. Now I sort through my children's problems, more so than my own. What to do with the bully at school. How to pick and choose activities. What really matters in terms of achievement versus childhood.

Where I had to strain to be a merely competent mom of 1 and 3 year-olds, come to find out I'm a pretty darn good mom of 6 and 8 year-olds. My kids have had their struggles this year, like all years, but they are coming out thriving, and it seems like I'm making mostly right decisions as their mom.

A lot of it has to do with the confidence that comes from doing a job for almost 9 years. But much of it also stems from the fact that Morgan and Sam are their own people now. They are GREAT people. And I'm facinated watching them move to center stage, while Pete and I start to take a back seat and watch them begin to run their own shows. I don't want to waste a minute of that show, which seems to be going by faster and faster.

Being a mom wasn't something for which I was trained or educated. But I've always felt that since having kids, parenting was my number one job...my primary responsibility. Having a meaningful career that provided both inspiration and finances for my family was nearly as important, and I'm grateful to have exactly that.

Meanwhile, triathlon isn't a job at all...its just a hobby. It's a hobby I love, and a challenge that continues to exhilarate AND frustrate me. It's benefits - like fitness, and costs - like time, are many.

But I think the greatest training I get out of this sport isn't for my body, its for my mind. And it isn't about toughness, instead its about being happy with giving something less than my best in something that I care about, but I don't care about MOST. And then learning to live with the results.

Those results may look very poor on the clock at the finish line. They'll look damn good, though, when I race the clock of my kids growing up. Hopefully they'll help my immunity too ;)

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Cogans' Heroes

Most triathletes are familiar with the haunting specter of ALS because of the heroic story of Jon Blais, aka “Blazeman”. We saw him battle to the finish of Kona, watch the following year from a wheel chair, and he was gone before another year had passed. But before he left us, he raised an incredible amount of awareness and money for research to find a cure for his horrid disease. Like Dick and Rick Hoyte did for athletes with disabilities, Jon Blais used his sport to triumph over the tragedy of his circumstances, and inspired many of us to take action.

I believe strongly in that model. Triathlon has such wide appeal and at its base is the human desire to celebrate the sometimes outrageous abilities of the human body and spirit. So it’s only natural that as participants, we draw on the inspiration of those who battle seemingly insurmountable odds to accomplish their goals and at the same time, help others.

As a coach, I have sometimes gotten the opportunity to make that abstract concept so much more concrete through working with my athletes. But the biggest such opportunity came when I got when I got a simple email from a woman in one of my C4 classes last year.

“My name is Helen Cogan,” she wrote. “I’d like you to meet my family.”

And what a family it turned out to be. Helen and her husband had a son, followed by triplets. In 2009, she lost her husband to cancer. Her kids bought her a bike so she could ride out some of her grief. As a team and in his honor, they raised money and rode at the Livestrong charity ride in Pennsylvania in 2010.

When I met them in 2011, one of the triplets, Patrick, had been recently diagnosed with Friedreich’s ataxia. As a big “F-you” to the disease, he had bought a recumbent bike, and wanted me to train him so that he could ride Livestrong later that year with his mother and sister.

Most people have heard of ALS, but very few know its evil cousin, Friedreich’s ataxia or FA. From the Brain Foundation:

"Friedreich's ataxia is a genetic disorder that causes progressive damage to the nervous system resulting in symptoms ranging from muscle weakness and speech problems to heart disease. Ataxia (loss of co-ordination) results from the degeneration of nerve tissue in the spinal cord and of nerves that control muscle movement in the arms and legs.
Friedreich's ataxia is caused by a genetic defect which affects male and female children alike and is passed down as a recessive trait. This means that the disease will develop in offspring only when both mother and father transmit the recessive Friedreich's ataxia gene. A child who receives the defective gene from one parent and a normal gene from the other becomes a carrier and never develops the disease. For this reason, there may be carriers of Friedreich's Ataxia in a family that has no known history of the disorder. When both parents are carriers, the chances of a child inheriting Friedreich's ataxia are one in four.
Symptoms usually begin between the ages of 5 and 15 but can appear as early as 18 months or as late as 30 years of age. The first symptom is usually difficulty in walking. The ataxia gradually worsens and slowly spreads to the arms and then the trunk. Foot deformities such as clubfoot, flexion (involuntary bending) of the toes, hammer toes, or foot inversion (turning in) may be early signs. Rapid, rhythmic, involuntary movements of the eyeball are common.
Many people with Friedreich's ataxia develop:
• scoliosis (a curving of the spine to one side), which, if severe, may impair breathing
• heart disease, such as cardiomyopathy
• shortness of breath
• diabetes mellitus
• dysarthria (weakness of the muscles required for speech resulting in abnormal, difficult to understand speech)
• auditory neuropathy (‘neural deafness’ which causes some difficulty in distinguishing certain sounds and/or signals from background noise)
Friedreich's ataxia usually results, within eight to ten years following the onset of symptoms, in an inability to walk. Occasionally, the disease goes into spontaneous remission, which sometimes lasts five to ten years or longer. Remissions, however, are uncommon."

By the time I met Patrick, he was using crutches to walk and could no longer balance and ride a 2-wheeler. We started training together with his recumbent, which was big, clunky, and heavy. His unwavering persistence got him to and throughthe shortest of the Livestrong courses, but we knew that if he was going to achieve the other goals on his list – a century ride, a triathlon, and the 50-miler of Livestrong (which is ridiculously hilly) – he was going to need a better ride.

So he wrote a grant, and was awarded Bumblebee, his bright yellow racing recumbent. At the same time, he started working with my friend Sara Thatcher to get the physical therapy he needed to maintain and even improve his motor-neuron functioning as long as he could. These two developments, combined with his mom’s and his sister Rosemary’s commitment, meant we could move forward with Patrick’s big dream...to ride 100 miles to raise money for the Friedrich’s Ataxia Research Association (FARA).

So THAT, my friends, is just what we are going to do.

I’m asking every single person who has read this far to click this link and donate $5. Of course you can give more, but at least click the link and give what you can. Like the page, and support Patrick and his family.

http://fundly.com/cogansheroescenturyridetofightfreidrichsataxia#.Ty5eBsWJAvA.facebook
I know I ask a lot of my friends and colleagues. But if reading all the details above didn’t inspire you to ask yourself what you could do to help, then I offer you this, and maybe you'll know why I ask so much of you all.

Imagine you could never run another step.

Imagine that you had to watch your child slowly become confined to a wheelchair.

Imagine that you knew your brother had a fraction of the time that you did to accomplish his bucket list.

Now think of all the money you spend on running shoes, gu, race entry fees, bikes, swimsuits, helmets, training books, coffee, powertaps, coaching, and all the other “essentials” you need to race the best you can. Think of all the time you pour into training, recovering from training, and thinking about your next workout.
What if just a little bit of that time and money was spent on someone other than yourself? What if you could take a little piece of “racing better” and give it to someone trying to “race at all?”

Patrick’s cause isn’t the only one I fundraise for…most of you know I will be racing Ironman Mont-Treblant to raise money for the American Foundation on Suicide Prevention in honor of my brother. If I could have helped him while he was alive, like Rosemary and Helen can help Patrick, it would have meant everything to me.

In fact, I keep a little poem tucked in my pocket while I train and race, and soon it will be tattooed on my arm. It reads,

“You are not gone, you did not die,
Through me you live, through you I strive.”

Our lives are all so much more if we live them through each other, and strive with the backdrop of inspirations like Jon Blais, the Hoytes, Patrick, and for me, my brother, Steven. There is no limit to what we can achieve.

We will be biking Cogan’s Heroes Century Ride to Fight Friedrich’s Ataxia on June 30, 2012. If you want to be at the finish line, ride all or part of it with us, or simply write Patrick a message of support, then just leave a comment on our Facebook page.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Cogans-Heroes-Century-Ride-to-Fight-Friedrichs-Ataxia/292124144181708
Your support makes all of us stronger. And who knows, maybe next time you race and you are digging deep for that little something that will help you keep going, or go a little faster, you’ll find us there, just waiting to pick you up in return.

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