Nana korobi ya oki / San Dieguito Race Report

So you've all seen my Facebook page in the last couple of months and know that I got a tattoo, and probably know what it means...but I haven't really written about it yet.

IMAZ, 2008.  I look like I'm going to puke.

About 15 years ago, I decided I wanted to do an Ironman triathlon, and I set about doing what I thought I needed to do in order to get there.  Like the fool that I was, I thought the hardest part would be the run, because I was a swimmer--and what could possibly be hard about riding a bike? Years of grueling workouts would eventually teach me exactly what could be hard about the bike.

I started with training for my first marathon--it would be the LA marathon of the year 2000.  And then I quit my job, and moved to Austin, TX, and decided I would run the Austin marathon that same year instead.  And that's when I injured my foot, in what I would be told by a doctor was this weird thing called "Plantar Fasciitis."  To fast forward through the whole mess, I gave running and triathlon a go for a while, and successfully ran some half marathons, did a couple of olympic distance triathlons, and some sprints, but I never conquered my problems with my foot pain.  I eventually stopped doing them completely, and just focused on swimming...and even that fell to the wayside at times.   It turned out that I was in this really awful relationship (thankfully, gay marriage was not legal at the time), and I lost myself...I lost myself a lot. 

But I eventually found my way back--and had a lot of help along the way.  Elaine Ryan may not know the impact that Brian watching her finish the Long Beach marathon had on me that year--he came home that day, and talked about how he wanted to run a marathon, and I decided I was going to call his bluff.  I laid out the training plan based on the same calendar I'd used leading up to LA/Austin of 2000, and it turned out that we needed to start in a week and a half.  And Brian was like "Yeah--let's do that!"  And I was thinking "I'll go along with this, and he'll give up...and we'll get to eat a lot of pizza along the way."

First sitting for tattoo

It turned out I actually made it to the start line of that marathon, and finished it.  I walked a lot in the last 10 miles, and Brian beat me by something like an hour--I could go look at the exact times, because we framed our finisher's certificates as our first marathon.  I would go on to complete Half Vineman, Ironman Arizona in April of '08 (the last year they had it in April)--it was hell on Earth. I would eventually complete 3 Ironmans, numerous half irons, and who knows how many runs, bike rides, and shorter distance triathlons along the way.

I would also go on to fight injury--and with the help of my coach, I would learn how to deal with it correctly. Being an endurance athlete means figuring out how to deal with your deficiencies, and if you don't figure out how to deal with them, they become injuries, if they weren't already injuries to begin with. Over the past 2 years, I've dealt with a significant recurrence of my plantar fasciitis and also some excruciating lower back pain that I refuse to go get imaged to "see if there's a disc problem."  I watched Brian have his spine fused and decided that my pain was not significant enough to consider that as an option, even if I have a mechanical defect of my spine.  I'm not in denial--my chiropractor thinks it probably isn't a disc issue, but may be an irritation of the facet joint, and thinks that my dominant problem is all about muscular tension, imbalance, and weakness.

Finished tattoo

The last 6 months have been about approaching these issues from a different place--I'm getting massages every other week, seeing a chiropractor once a month, and doing strength exercises to build up the core weaknesses that I have.  And I have been running more consistently and faster than I ever have before.

Earlier last year, Joanna asked all of her athletes to come up with a mantra--whether we kept it to ourselves or not--something that you could draw motivation from.  I defaulted back to something I used to say to myself as a swimmer, which was Muhammed Ali's "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee."  I didn't realize it at the time, but my mantra is actually what I had tattooed onto my torso during the off-season this year.  The Japansese proverb "Nana korobi ya oki" means "Fall down seven times, stand up eight," or to put it simply, to never give up. 

But it's more than that--it's about figuring out what not giving up actually means--it is not a blind step forward every time you get knocked off of your original heading.  It's about finding your path in life in the face of all of the obstacles that are thrown at you. And special thanks to Robbi Miller, for telling me how to pronounce the phrase--I feel like I probably should have figured that out before I had it permanently inked on me!

Yesterday, I ran the San Dieguito half marathon, and I would have been happy with my result even if I had to walk the last few miles into the finish--it was the first half marathon I've run in over three years due to injury.  I would have been ecstatic to be able to run the whole thing, and when I came to understand just how hard the course was (at about mile 3, in the middle of the race), I realized that doing anything close to my old PR on this course would be an outstanding success.  My old PR was

Hill profile for San Dieguito 1/2 marathon

1:53:50, which was done on the Long Beach Half Marathon course...one of the defining courses for the word "flat," with a bridge or two.  Yesterday, I ran 1:50:37 on what "is arguably one of the hardest half marathons around," to steal the description from Joanna. If Joanna says it's a hard course...it's a really damn hard course!

I think the more important thing is that I'm really enjoying what I'm doing again, and that's what really matters. So get out there--seize the day--get knocked down, and find your way to get up again!