2012: The Year of Living Audaciously

It's been ages since I posted, and (as often happens when delays in writing occur) so much has happened that it seems well-nigh impossible to get caught up on everything and thus to move ahead with what's happening now. Since the now-ness of things is really important to me in this post, I shall, therefore, give a ridiculously brief recap of 2011 in order to get to the present moment and think about that.

So, the last three-quarters of 2011 in a nutshell:

--Got into a bike accident in May, which totaled my Cannondale but left me intact save some bumps and bruises. The thing I remember most clearly is sitting in the middle of the road, thinking I could easily be dead right now. Needless to say, the world hasn't looked the same since.
--Got accepted into, and graduated from, the School at Steppenwolf-- an intensive 10-week professional actor training programme. An incredible experience with some of the most amazing people I've ever had the privilege to meet. Wonderful in every sense of the word, even when we were all exhausted and going through our respective processes in all their messiness.
--Had the fun experience of a fabulous staged reading with some excellent castmates, director, and production folk: one night only, but it was a night well worth having!
--At the very end of the year, I got word that the scholarly edition I've been working on for several years (with prospectuses flying hither, thither, and yon) has just been accepted by the publisher. The contract arrived just before Christmas-- I'll complete and sign it by the end of this month.

Those are the highlights, at least-- of course, plenty of other things like classes, family visits, and so forth took place as well. But this ultra-quick recap can bring me to now, which is where the title of this post comes in.

Over American Thanksgiving weekend, my fabulous sister (hereinafter to be known as my Chief Enabler, for reasons that will become rapidly obvious) came for a visit. Black Friday morning, she was off in the living room chatting on the phone while I perused a book I'd just acquired: Don Fink's Be Iron Fit, incorporating various plans for training Iron-distance triathlons. (An Iron-distance triathlon-- the term "Ironman" is actually a trademark, used for races run by a specific company-- is 2.4 miles of swimming, 112 miles of cycling, and 26.2 miles of running, back-to-back-to-back. To be an official finisher, one must complete these three elements under one's own steam within 17 hours.) The book's well-written, and I happily turned the pages, thinking, Huh-- I already train about as much as this plan calls for at the outset. Interesting. Didn't think much more about it...a few minutes later, I decided to check my Twitter feed to see if any interesting links had been posted. Just for amusement's sake, I clicked on the feed from the Globe and Mail for my horoscope for the day. Here's what I read:

"Think the unthinkable thought. Dream the impossible dream. If you can get your mind around an idea or concept that is too big for most people it means you can also turn it into part of your everyday reality. Do it now."

Huh, thought I, that's interesting. Since CE was still on the phone in the other room, back I turned to Fink. His next chapter happened to be on goal-setting and race selection, and he listed some races he liked. The last one in the chapter was the Esprit Triathlon in Montreal, an Iron-distance race that, he said, "has a supportive and nonthreatening feel."

When I read this, I could feel a near-audible click inside, the kind of click that says: Yes. This. Now.

Looked up the race site: the date was doable. I'll be on sabbatical in the fall anyway, so plenty of time to recover afterward. Counting backward from then, I realized I had 9 months to train for it: one month of pre-plan training, then eight months of  planned training using Fink's book.

By the time CE came back into the dining room, I was sitting there looking like a stunned ox. "I think I'm in trouble," I said.

"How? I wasn't gone for that long..." she understandably replied, and I explained. At which point she laughed and laughed and laughed. And every time I mentioned yet another thing I'd thought of about this crazy idea over the next 24 hours, she laughed-- and agreed. Every single time. If that ain't enabling behaviour of the very best kind, I don't know what is.

She even came up with the right adjective: "Instead of calling it 'crazy' or 'ridiculous'," she said, "how about 'audacious'?" And so I signed up for the Esprit Montreal Iron-distance Triathlon that night, and so 2012 became The Year of Living Audaciously.

I've gone through quite the emotional roller-coaster about it all already: everything from "Cool! This will be amazing!" to "WTF was I thinking????"-- and I expect that to continue. Today was Day 2 of The Plan (Day 1 was an official rest day-- gotta love a training plan that starts with a day off!), and I found myself decidedly uninspired after a bad night's sleep. While I ate breakfast, I read yet another article that emphasized the importance of knowing why you're doing an Iron-distance race, because when the going gets tough on race day (and it will, no doubt about it), you need to have that at your core in order to get through it all. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out just why I'd decided to do this: because my reading of a newspaper horoscope happened to coincide with my reading of Fink's book? Because I can? Hell, I'm not even sure that I can, so what on earth is there?

The Plan called for a 30-minute run and a longer swim today, so I layered on some clothes and headed out the door to get the run in outside (I loathe treadmills), thinking At least I can get moving. For the sake of my joints, I decided to do some laps at the local high school track, since that sprung surface was decidedly softer than frozen concrete would be. It was cold and windy, but the sun was out, so off I went.

And a funny thing happened as I trotted around in circles, keeping my heart rate in the relatively low zone Fink had prescribed. I realized at least one of the reasons why I'm doing all of this: halving my savings to buy a tri bike, training 6 days a week, often twice a day, experimenting with nutrition and clothing and hydration and (no doubt) peeing, all in the effort to complete 140.6 miles of self-propelled movement in 17 hours or less on September 8th, 2012. This crazy, ridiculous, audacious stuff. I might not have all the reasons yet, but one became clear:

I'm doing it to be present now. To live and pay attention to now.

If I get ahead of myself and start thinking about the whole race at this point, I'll just freak out-- and there's no need to do that, because I'm not doing the whole race right at this moment. If I dawdle in the past, I'll get caught up in old stuff that's long gone and over-- I could well have been killed in that bike accident, for instance, but I wasn't. No idea why not, so there's no point in puzzling over it. All I can do is pay attention to what's happening right now, whether I'm trotting around a track or in the middle of my 99th length of the pool.

There's something very simple about this realization, I know-- but it also feels profound. I also know it's a lesson that will take plenty of repeating to get me to learn it fully. Fortunately, The Plan involves lots of repetition.

So that's where I am at the moment: starting out on an audacious journey towards 140.6 miles. And here's where I'll be posting, thinking, and/or kvetching about the strange and wonderful things along the way (homemade kale chips, for instance, are rather moreish-- who knew?). Welcome aboard.