Isn't it great we we completey suprise ourselves, in a way that is re-meeting/re-introduction of what we're capable of but somehow forgot? Victoria half(ish) was that way and in part I should credit a two week taper and my body itching to RIDE.
Here's the quick story told non-linearly:
fab race, raced my balls off (look ma!) in a way I never have in a long-d race.
placed 6 in age group out of 38. got an IM CA spot but was at hotel napping during the offering and don't want to do it. I need to get a poetry manuscript finished this summer -- IM training doesn't fit in with this.
swim: hated every stroke of it for some reason but came out of the water 3rd (masters women). i feel really confined and claustrophotic in my full-lenth body suit, even in my legs. hmm
bike: for once wasn't passed by everyone and rode to keep up with #75, passed her in the end, but she got me on the run. ride was beautiful, bucolic, rolly--just 50 miles this year. two loops. it helped to not be riding alone. Alone, i cherry pick; with others I push myself, gleefully.
run: #75 passed me on the run but i felt like i ran my best and during second lap, i had three of the hardest race miles of my life but god it was invigorating; It was a total experiment in what I could do all-out in a race this distance. A woman told me I was her guide and inspiration for the second lap and with that great title and job description my tail wagged a bit and it was a good for f-ing hard last lap.
Discovery: I LOVE this distance.
The weather was cloudy; didn't rain, no wind storms (as predicted). BEAUTIFUL course would do it again in a heart beat.
Time: 5:23
Swim: 33
Bike: 2:53 (50 mi)
Run: 1:50 (12 mi)
As always, couldnta done it without all my sports buddies.
Other highlights: Hallie Truswell won her age group; speedy Tom Schutte got a Canada spot; Team Shimizu (Liz and Ben, my traveling companions) did a great job on the relay, and we all had a good ol' time.
Let's get a big group and go up next year.
Side note: are all canadians totally friendly and foxy? Jesus...
Next up: Lake stevens half.
I went running with a friend who said she made a big personal discovery after being asked the right question by a wise woman. Another friend told me how she was moved by the simplicity and innocence of her 8 year-old-son's question to a rival tennis player/classmate: "How did you get to be so good?" Milan Kundera, in a book I read ages ago, has a character acknowledge a lack of love through a lack of questions asked.
And why do we go to our therapists, counselors and advisors? So they will give us the questions that will lead us on the right path and discoveries--into our selves, others, the world.
Which leads me to...
The myth of the Fisher King. There are many versions of the story.
Quick take: it's a quest story, after the holy grail, and it involes the young innocent "fool" named Parsifal (Wagner made him the star of an opera) who, on the search for the wounded Fisher King, finally asks him the question(s) that heal him--the questions are simple-- along the lines of "How are you?" "Who are you?" He did so, finally, after thwarting advice from his teacher: that he not ask questions and spare looking stupid.
Sound familiar?
So, I'm thinking about the power of a well-placed question.
I'm thinking of the friendships, relationships, dates that have been completely dulled by one of us lacking to ask questions. So--for more:
Here are some films and other arts & cultural references that pulls in this Quest/ion Story.
Eric Rohmer's Perceval le Gallois (1978), a fairly faithful rendition of Chrétien's Conte del Graal.
The Fisher King (1990): The humorously rendered story of Perceval is recast in a modern setting in the film
A couple other arts references I didn't know--not suprising: Quest stories are everywhere:
T.S. Eliot made extensive use of the Fisher King legend in his poem The Waste Land.
The character appears again in opera in Michael Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage, partly inspired by Eliot's poem.
The Fisher King appears as "Pop Fisher" in the novel and film The Natural.
Matt Wagner's comic book series Mage.
Joan Didion compared U.S. president Ronald Reagan to the legendary king in her critical essay "In The Realm Of The Fisher King," published in 1989.
Here's a poem I wrote about a year ago that winks to all this...
FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE UNDERSTANDABLY TOO BUSY TO
love the right person:
relax. You’ll be alone shortly.
But first, smell the waves sex in
on the electric bill as you turn
your back on morning. Return to the school
you erased, say hello to the girl in headgear, see
if the smoking section still exists. Say hello to
the homeless fool on the bus. Don’t
be so blind. Or are you too busy? Busy
writing the alternate ending to the dinner
where he told you about the beauty with the nose ring and a PhD?
Here’s what you do. Read the myth.
What is the right question
that will break you, make you free?
It was the question that healed the king.
Taya Mishel, top age 5 3/4; left, about 4 3/4.
By Virginia Adair, from “Living With Fire”
Here's to all the late bloomers out there.
Thanks to Liz for the quote. After spending three weeks thinking about my 2007 goals, I find myself wanting to bury them in the earth and start again.
You know when you think you're heading in Direction A, which is founded on your longing for, passion for and ambition for said goal/process/activity? And then in the middle (or beginning) of going about your happy li'l life and routine, you're suddenly scratching your head and wondering, Why the F-- am I doing this again? Do I like this, do I feel loving and happy and breezy and frilly? Or cranky and closed and tired? Have I already shed my snakey skin to desire something new? Or is it not a desire FOR something new, but a desire to GO ABOUT IT in a new way: from focused and serious to more playful and romantic?
So just as I got my lists and charts and workout logs and all that org-crap I'm terrible at laid out, now I'm thinking of shredding it all and trying something new. New?
There's the story of the wise man, Solomon, who advised his newly free, devoted servant, Don't take the new road home.
As the slave traveled home after a 20-year absence, he met a posse of adventures who invited him to join them and take a different route. He was tempted but remembered his master's advice. He continued on the old familiar path and soon after leaving his pals,heard their screams and cries, as they were killed by banditos. So, taking the old way home saved his life. But how does this translate to an existential query, circa 2007?
Maybe we should look at our lives as a story--or a mystery--that the answers we seek are left in clues and breadcrumbs within the map of our already-lived lives.
What if we already are the treasure we're looking for?
Painting, "Village Stairs," by Van Gogh
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