Control Freak (Out)

Most people who end up getting in deep into Triathlon are controlling, type-A, competitive personalities.  I am more
Type A-minus, but I have my moments.  You hear the stories about triathletes creating training spreadsheets, nutrition spreadsheets, racing spreadsheets, triathlon expenditure spreadsheets, spreadsheets about all those spreadsheets. 

While I was pretty lazy coming into the long course training, once I committed I pretty quickly learned that I too can be obsessive and controlling (ok, friends and family that already knew that, stop laughing). I don’t yet have a spreadsheet, but I do have a workout log that I fill in faithfully, and of course this blog.

Thing were going smoothly.  New bike.  Workouts completed.  Everything tightly scheduled – meals, work, friends, training.  Done and done.  I gotta admit, time has been flying by (in a good way).

Until I flew off my (brand new) bike last Saturday. 

I still raced the next day thinking “hell, I got this.  A little fall ain’t gonna keep me down.”  I can CONTROL this.  Well I was partially right.   The FALL didn’t keep me down.  But the bacteria that caused a massive infection in my knee had other ideas.

So hobbled and in massive pain, I was pretty upset at the orthopedist’s office Tuesday.  And I cried a lot, which is what I do when I’m mad and acting like a spoiled 2 year old.  “It’s not fair! What if I can’t race?  What will I write about? What if it’s serious?  Now what?!?”

But then, after putting the giant child version of myself in time-out, I had plenty of time to ponder this issue of “control” as I sat alternately popping antibiotics, vicodin, and malted milk balls (mostly malted milk balls).

Coach Paul reminded me of a conversation we had at the VERY beginning of training.  At the time, I rattled off my list of “musts” for this 7 months of training for Ironman.  I want to do this and that and stay focused, and be coachable and follow the plan to a tee, and eat right and lose weight, while documenting all of it and yada yada yada. 

And Paul thought that was great.  Except.

There are just things you can’t account for. 

It’s pretty funny when you think about it that in a sport FILLED with type-A personalities doing everything they can to control everything during a race, at the end of the day they have pretty much no control…flat tires, bike crashes, cramping, injuries, fatigue.  You can plan all you want, do everything “right” but you really have far less control than you might imagine.  And a race, like life, can take a bad turn in an instant.

And this week, I lost control of my training and all the other things that I do in life.  I was immobile. I couldn’t work.  I couldn’t train.  I couldn’t SALSA DANCE *gasp*.  I literally tried…TRIED…to stand up and FORCE my leg to bend and take pressure, willing it through mind over swollen matter.  But no dice.  I have no control. 

But I’ve been thinking about the lesson in this setback.

I love triathlon because it really is a metaphor for life.  It’s long and sometimes painful.  You plan, you succeed, you fail.  Sometimes you get lazy. Sometimes it throws you a curveball and your race ends far too early.

Breathe in, breathe out.  Put one foot in front of the other.  Bear a certain level of emotional and physical pain.

You have to attend to and nurture each moment, your breathing, your eyes on the road, the nutrition you’re taking in.  You have to learn to stay in the moment because I’m telling you that if you worry about that giant hill ahead of you, or the week’s workouts, or you start obsessing over the 10 hours to go, you’re sunk.  THAT’S what you have control over.  Yourself.  Your mind, your thoughts.  Staying present.

And the moments along the way are beautiful and painful and go by way too quickly.  And you just do your best to get to the finish line, embracing the moments, while remembering that at some point it’s going to be all over.

My training isn’t over. It’s an infection not a major injury.  The antibiotics seem to be doing their job.  My knee has gone from volleyball to softball to tennis ball. Hoping for a golf-ball next.

But who knows what the weeks and months ahead have in store, good, bad and ugly.  All there is to do is breathe, and relinquish some of the control.