And Just Who, Again, Are You?

Post 43
Weeks of training complete: 27 weeks, 2 days
Time until Ironman: 4 weeks, 5 days

Miles swam: 115.953
Miles biked: 2,028.07
Miles run: 489.2

Goal: $5,000
Total raised: $2,440

There are many days - hell, many moments within these seemingly endless streak of endless days – where I stop and say: Who are you? Who or what is this shell I inhabit? Who, or what, is running this ship? And where is it that we're going, yet again, at 5 a.m. or 9 p.m., when the children are asleep and my wife is home, alone, again – pondering her own constant disassembly and reassembly of her inner self?

If you had told me at the start of the Ironman that nearly 28 weeks into training, I would have less sense of who I was than the day I started, there's no way I would have believed you.

I have been many things in life. I have been a trusted friend, a notorious partier, a hard worker, a great lover of people and things and life, but I have never met, never knew, this Ed. This Ed who thinks that 2 miles of swimming, 25 miles of biking and 9 miles of running on a Tuesday evening/afternoon just isn't enough. "You're going to fail, Ed. You're going to let people down, Ed. You need to train faster, harder, longer, more. Why do they have a taper period? Maybe you should just train hard until race day. Make sure you're ready."

But it's more than that. It's something beyond the training. It's the reality that I don't know what I will do with myself when this is all over. What would you do if someone handed you 25 hours a week of your life back - and you were still gainfully employed? What did I do before this? What did I do with that time?

Maybe I should set the backdrop for this deep level of pondering ...

Heidi lost her job last week. I guess we found out on Thursday. Her last day will be this Friday. Heidi already has good leads on several job opportunities - and that is a real positive. But we have to plan for the worst and this, of course, means doing some of the things I'm previously mentioned, like considering selling the house. It also means cutting back on all the "luxuries" – the daily paper, the gym membership, cable, beer.

I don't believe that Heidi and I have ever lost a job. And so we're learning about how much our jobs identify us; how much they become a part of the persona we create for ourselves in our mind. When you lose a job, you lose a part of yourself. And now, of course, where there was stability, there is a great sense of uncertainty.

Heidi and I are smart; and we both know that we'll work through this whole thing like we always do - as a team. But there have already been a few small spats over money. And that is something we've been very fortunate to have avoided through most of our 12 years together.

In fact, it seems, that in this crazy year that 2008 has become, the only constant in my life is this Ironman. Swimming, biking, running - through heat and cold, through good news and bad news, through sick kids and happy kids, through family fights and make-ups, through Barack and McCain and Palin and Biden, through stimulus packages, soaring Dows, and sinking Nasdaqs, there has been just me and the water, and the road, and the pavement, and lots and lots and lots of miles.

That's a lot of hours of solitude, a lot of hours with just me talking to me, trying to make sense of a lot of things that don't make much sense.

Maybe the reason I can't quite identify with myself is because I've never spent this much time with myself - at least as an adult.

What I am learning? That I am confused? Sure. That I am scared ... a lot? Yes. That I love my family and my children; that without them I would feel like an empty hole? Yup, I think that's why I'm scared. That I need my friends? Yeah, somehow they seem more important than ever ...

The difference, I guess, is these feelings are all very raw right now. They're no longer packaged up in the right places - ready to be opened up for the proper causes: birthday cards, drunken holiday parties ... Nah, they're there, right there. Right on the surface. For everyone to know and see.

Here I am. Weak. Blemished. Like the skin.

Maybe that's what this year is all about for me. I have been broken down. The imagined might of my family (we're smart, invincible, we'll survive any crisis) has been broken down; my body has been broken down by the constant pounding of the pavement; my mind broken down by the monotony of another endless day of laps and miles and by the challenges of every day life.

You think this is a negative? You think I feel bad about this?

Quite the contrary.

And that is either the strangest – or the most logical – feeling of all.

Peace and love,
Ed