Anne Giles Clelland

Why Do I Do Triathlons?

I am asked this often.

One could argue that I'm too old at 50, the gear is expensive, entry fees and traveling costs are expensive, training takes so much time, traveling to and from events takes so much time, it's self-indulgent, it's "out there."

I offered an attempt at an answer about a year ago in a High-Tech Athlete Profile for Handshake 2.0.

Let me try again by working backwards, from present to past, a reverse timeline:

• I am signed up to do 5 triathlons during the 2009 Virginia Triathlon Series.  I have a paid coach, Kati Derrick, a two-time Lousiville Ironman-finisher, and a personal trainer, Don Belote.  I do 5 to 6 workouts per week, 1 to 2.5 hours each.

• I asked Don Belote, my personal trainer at The Weight Club, if he could use one word to describe me when he first began working with me in July, 2006, what it would be.  He answered, "Fragile."

• I discovered I had three training speeds:  all out, recovery from all out, and daydreaming.

• I began circuit training with Don Belote in January, 2009.

• During the 2008 Virginia Triathlon Series, I planned to do one sprint triathlon as a relay with friends, and one sprint triathlon as a milestone before I turned 50.  I ended up doing one relay and five triathlons, finishing 6th overall in Virginia in my age group, although I often finished near the end of a race with over 600 participants.  Obviously, a factor in the standings is the number of races one completes.  I completed. 

• I became engaged to a guy the day after I saw him participate in the 2007 Angels Race, a sprint triathlon held in Lynchburg, Virginia.  At age 53, he came in 44 out of 188 men.  I said, "Yes," to Clark Kent.

• I met a bespectacled, mild-mannered guy who told me he had done a sprint triathlon the previous year and was getting ready to do his first full sprint triathlon season.  He was 52 when I met him and I felt a little sorry for him, thinking a red convertible might be a better antidote to his mid-life crisis.

• When I decided to move from Tampa, Florida back to my hometown of Blacksburg, Virginia, I scanned the faces of the personal trainers on The Weight Club's site. I wanted the one who appeared to know the most about strength training, life, and pain.  I chose Don Belote.  I have had a weekly appointment with him since July, 2006.

• I learned I have an extreme ability to dissociate, to separate myself from my experience, to be able to "do" without consciousness of what I feel.  This would be the opposite of full presence in the moment.  Halved is the opposite of oneness.

• I saw a film on chronic pain sufferers - for which no medical solutions could be found - who were escorted slowly down the hall at the University of Massachusetts Medical School to Jon Kabat-Zinn.  Cried.  Started meditation lessons.

• I showed up on the doorstep of Fitwise, a personal fitness center in Tampa, Florida, owned by Dan Wall, on the first week day of January, 2005.  He told me later I seemed "defeated."  I began full body weight training to make "a tree trunk of muscle."

• I consulted an orthopedist for my back injury.  He told me to create "a tree trunk of muscle" in which my spine could rest.

• I developed a nightmare condition that left me awakening in terror all night, every hour, in 2002.  My physician advised me to "wear myself out" in the day.

• I began the chronic pain sufferer's classic search for relief:  test after test after test, prescriptions, physical therapy, injections, massage, reiki, prayer from me, prayer for me. 

• I was making a bed in December 1998, lifted the corner of the mattress, felt stabbed in the back, and was bed-ridden.  The diagnosis:  a "bulging disc."  I began an almost 10-year stint with new pain.

• I qualified for the state track meet in 1977 in the shot put.

• When the weight room was moved from the boys' locker room in the old high school to a co-ed space in the new Blacksburg High School, the athletic director required a permission note from my mother before I would be allowed to lift weights.

• I tore a hamstring in 1970 while slipping doing a handspring on wet grass in front of Margaret Beeks Elementary School, Blacksburg, Virginia.  I became what is now termed a chronic pain sufferer.

***

Since triathlon as a sport is only 25 years old, very few can say, "I've always been a triathlete."  Most adults came to the sport from having been a swimmer, cyclist, or runner.

I came to the sport from weight lifting.  Because of a guy.

What I have discovered, to my continuing awe and relief, is that, for me, extreme chronic pain responds to extreme training. 

I work hard so I'm "worn out."  Nightmares must work harder than I do these days. 

I co-exist with the discomfort of sitting and ironically, cannot lift boxes or sweep floors without re-injuring myself.

But, the stronger I get - the more oak-like my "tree trunk" becomes - the more my spine can stretch out, ease the pinch on its bulging disc, and rest.

That said, if I were not a chronic pain sufferer, I hope I would have found triathlon somehow.

I got tears in my eyes when I wrote that.

Why do I do triathlons?  Because when I train, when I race, I am with me.  Not halved.  Whole.

Thank You So Much for Inviting Me to Meet

Here's an ideal work day for me.  I use my greatest strengths in the most engaging and satisfying ways and I foster my ability to keep doing that day after day:

I arise around 4:30 AM, and, after tending cats and making tea, begin to work "in the business."  I write and create until around 10:00 AM, train for sprint triathlons - swim, bike, run, or weights or a combination of two or three - eat, nap, and then work a second shift "on the business" - e-mails, phone calls, bookkeeping.  This can last until 6:00 PM or later.  Mr. Handshake 2.0 also works and trains, so we tend to have dinner together later in the evening rather than earlier.  

Here's an ideal meeting time for me:

4:00 PM - 5:00 PM for a glass of wine or a club soda with lime.  I have tea every morning and coffee a couple of times a year.

I've got a back injury so sitting is always problematic for me.  I know which restaurants have padded chairs - Sal's - and which ones don't - Macado's.

One of the best business meetings I ever had was walking and talking on the raised track at the University Boulevard location of The Weight Club.

I so hope we can meet in a creative way outside of the confines of lunch, coffee, even sitting.

A Sabbatical from Force

Today, I grant myself an entrepreneur’s one-year leave of absence from what I seek and what I love outside of my start-up.

The angst of having too little time and too few resources takes my mind and heart away from passion for my idea and my execution of it as a business.  That feels like force against flow.

I’ve had them.  I will have them again.  For one year, I relinquish:

Adornment

I love decorating myself in fine clothing, silk scarves, gold jewelry, tinted, sharp hairstyles, kohl eyeliner.  Newly.  In my mind, Cher and Sara Jessica Parker embody the possibilities for exquisite and exotic attire.  I have loved shoes but find them less interesting since I’ve opted for comfort in flats rather than flair in heels.

I love setting a nice table with fine china, cloth napkins, flowers, arranging new ornaments on table tops, matching towels, shaped soaps.

I miss shopping.  I had not realized how stimulating I found the colors and textures, the array and arrangement of goods, the recreation of simply being there and gazing.  I bought rarely and carefully, but I loved to look.  Not having the power to buy turns the looking into longing.

For one year, I will use my dollars to adorn my company, not myself or my house.  Although I feel faded at times, I can make do with what I have.

Scholarship

As an entrepreneur, I am learning, but it feels haphazard, unsystematic.  Achieving business acumen doesn’t feel like an intellectual pursuit.  I miss tomes and systematic acquisition of expertise in a discipline through study.  I miss synthesizing the ideas and words of the great thinkers into meaning for myself.  I miss the vitality of philosophy.  The reading and writing and mind time this takes?  Ah, well.

Books

I have collected them since I was a child.  Ten moves in ten years pared my stacks to a core.  Even they sit un-opened.  With a book club choice thrown in and an occasional must-know business book, no reading and buying of books for one year.  Peace.

Salary

O, I was a kept woman when I had a salary!  I had no idea of the luxury and security of the roomy container of someone else valuing my work and paying my way for it.  I could treat the whole table to a meal, donate to charities, buy an adornment, buy cat toys and cat trees.  Ah, well.

Spiritual Path

I struggle spiritually.  I had pieced together enough of a spiritual hovel in Tampa to feel a little peace, a little safety, while I continued to thrash.  I’ve been back in my hometown almost three years.  Striving to find a place, the people, a practice is wearing me out.  Enough.  I’ve put it down and picked it up again many times before.  I can do that again.

Order

Let’s see, move ten times in eleven years, return to your hometown, fall in love with a guy, decide to marry him, pack and pare one more time, bring together the lives of two mature adults and two mature female cats, then start two corporations.  The best place for the clean laundry is the dining room table.  One cat also finds it a best place.  Peace.

Mandatory Culturally Designated Rituals

Trying to fill all roles and meet all expectations and be all things to all people according to a nationally decreed holiday calendar has become beyond bearing.  I haven’t yet replied to Christmas cards.  For one year, I gather with my friends and family by heart, not by date.

Force has wrung joy from my days.  Let the flow of what I can truly be and do as an entrepreneur, unhindered by trying to make things happen, begin.