Wholistic Fitness

“I grow old . . .I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.”

T. S. Eliot: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1919)

by Coach Steve Ilg
leader/Team Mountain Yogi
Team Champions, 2005 & 2006

***

It’s been nearly two weeks since Team Mountain Yogi captured our Overall Team Title. Over my right shoulder, my exquisite Namb�ware Trophy shimmers and winks at me like a celestial deity dancing in a shaft of early morning light. A red-naped sapsucker visits a well-frosted aspen tree outside my office. On my left, Mt. Taylor’s Sacred Sister Peak, Mt. Humphreys, hovers like a majestic canopy over my Ponderosa tucked home. All is fine and well at my Flagstaff training temple on this impeccable late winter morn, right?

No siree, Bob.

Shattered and splintered was my slumber last night. A Mt. Taylor Winter Quadrathlon anxiety dream invaded my sleepstates like a drunken ninja. With unending efficiency, a dreadful drizzle of undigested thought polluted my mindstream. I had about as much ability to drop this dream as I would dropping Josiah Middaugh on the “Run Up”. Ain’t gonna happen. So, I am going to do the next best thing that any other Fitness Warrior of my feeble status would do; I’m gonna hand it off to you, you poor bastard.

Buckle up, bucko, this could get rough.

***

Time:
Race Day Morning; Mt. Taylor Winter Quadrathlon. Soloists Start.

Place:
Grants, New Mexico. Convention Center. Racer Registration and Equipment Check-In.

I am standing in a long line of nervous racers. I feel confident yet inwardly horribly, horridly unsure of myself. I fein nonchalance, striking up several inane chats with faceless racers. Inelegantly I promote my laurels; a several time top-20 Soloist and consecutive year Team Champion. I rest my hand on the scrawny shoulder of a teenager and, with coach-like authority, counsel him on how to break 3:30 hours. I am wearing a flannel shirt. Why a flannel shirt on Race Day? Hell if I know. It’s a damned dream, remember?

Suddenly, the brick hard realization hits me, demolishing my cavalier attitude; I am wearing a FLANNEL SHIRT on Race Day?! Immediate images of the shirt billowing up like a parachute during my Bike Down segment arrive. I’ve got to get out of this flannel shirt! It will slow me down!! In slow motion, I scan down the front of my body and am astonished to see not my road cycling shoes upon my feet, but…but…oh no…say it is not so…aaaaargh!?!??!

CROCS�!!!!!

You know, those plastic-like, neon spaceage material clogs that were invented in, where else? – Boulder, Colorado? NaNu, NaNu!!!

I am wearing pink-colored CROCS�! Why CROCS� for Christ’s Sake?! They looked ridiculous upon me! Normally I wouldn’t go near a pair of Crocs� on Race Day with a 12′ Stick-Clip! Yet, for all my repulsion, now, on Race Day Morning, I am wearing them minutes before the Start of the Bike Up!…oh man, this is not good!

It was at that moment, that a few former Champions of the race entered the convention-sized room. A respectful hush fell across the entire space. In order to show everybody that I was Somebody Special, I gave a shout out, “Hey Josh!” and nodded my head in the way that guys nod their heads when feeling the Sacred Bro’Hood of Guys. I don’t know why I called, Josiah, “Josh”…probably ‘cuz I have never met Josiah. He is always up and down the Sacred Mountain, Winner’s Check collected, and halfway back to Vail before I finish strapping into my Atlas�’s on the Snowshoe Up segment.

Anyway, “Josh” cast a wayward glance toward my absurd presence and that glance was enough to trigger the crowds’ collective unconscious toward two thoughts;
1) wow, that idiot in the Crocs� and flannel shirt really IS somebody special,
and…more importantly:
2) obey without question the Herding Instinct; follow JOSH!

The entire mass of racers surged as a massive entity toward a utility elevator (?) ‘cuz that is where “Josh” and the other great Champions were going. The elevator of course, must lead to the Start!

The Race was STARTING!!!

Mass hysteria spread, viral-like, among us…pressure from hundreds of racers cramming toward the tiny elevator was a suffocating Hell Realm. I had to get my Croc�-footed ass out of this pandemonium! Oh shit! I still needed my Ankle Timer Chip! Where was it? Back at the Check In table! I looked backward against the oceanic wave of people…no way I could backtrack now! “It’s okay,” I told myself, “I’ve got my Bib Number, that will surely be enough, since I will be in the top twenty…but wait, I am still wearing a flannel shirt and Crocs�! I’m not going to be a WINNER?!?!” My Fear of Failure was a greater force than that of the heaving human stampede about to crush me.

***

ESCAPE PLAN A ENGAGED!:
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a Stairwell to my left…HA!!! I vault over a retaining wall with DO NOT ENTER taping strewn over it. A sudden rush of Laura Croft TOMBRAIDER energy impregnates me with seeming superhuman speed and agility. Gleefully I soar down flights of stairs confident that I will outfox the rest of the competition and be the first one to begin the Bike Up. Down a hidden chamber, jump over another barricade, throw open a final door and burst out into…

THE START/FINISH AREA! Into a wind-torn open area, I emerge, unfortunately stripped from my recent paranormal superhuman shift. In the cold, blowing wind, I squint, searching for some sane sign of the Quadrathlon Start Line. Minus my Laura Croft swiftness, I clippety-clop my flannel way toward an open pumice-mine wasteland where I can see vague images of Bike Holder Racks. Somehow, nearly all the Soloists had already started and were well into the 13-mile Hillclimb to the Run Transition. A few other racers, like myself, move like zombies in and out among the Bike Racks, teetering in warlike winds. I frenetically search to no avail for my “Sudhanami”, my Race Bike. Lost, alone, and confused. Terribly confused at this incomprehensible beginning to my Race Day.

***

ENDURING CONFIDENCE:
“I can still do it,” I assure myself, “I can make up the time in the Alpine Events (ski/snowshoe segments).” I sit down on a Transition Bench, huddle against the wind to calm myself and compose a new Race Strategy. Giving up is never in the formula. A Race Volunteer approaches me. Can she help? “I don’t think they are going to fit,” I say to her, referring to my Crocs�/pedal compatibility. No need to mention I haven’t found Sudhanami. I am uncontrollably obsessed by these damned Crocs�.

“I don’t think they are going to fit,” I mutter again in the way Homeless People sometimes speak, “I will have to use them, yet I won’t have any ability to use the Upstroke of my pedal cadence,” I explain to her. She, having by now transmogrified into, get this, Sitting Bull in a hockey outfit, simply stares at me with a Padmasambhava-like gaze. Okay, this is really getting rather peculiar, I think to myself.

So, I do what any one of you would surely do in such a Bardo Realm. I accepted a raw form hockey stick from one of my new hockey teammates – the Scorpians – now magically sitting with me on the bench. Stoked, I took it over to our Hockey Stick Team Customizer, who, residing in a blacksmith type of shop behind me, according to my directions, expertly fashioned – by way of a very High Tech, Dr. Seuesseque machine – the precise curve that I like on my hockey stick.

With my new stick in hand, I crawled through a secret hole in the boards and…
took
to
the
ice
with graceful strides.
Confidence surged once again within my veins and spirit.

***

POSSIBLE MORAL OF THIS STORY:

(Author Note: keep yourself strapped in for one final run-on sentence:)

Next year perhaps, when you yourself are at the Grants Convention Center, nervously arranging your Transition Gear and furtively glancing about the gathering athletes, and you do catch sight of a past Champion of this amazing race – Ballengee, Nelson, Middaugh, Overend, et. al, – don’t let their cool beauty fool you. These great Champions, each of whom can finish this 43-mile, 5,000′ city-to-summit-and-back-again quadrathlon faster than you or I could finish a sashimi salad, only care about one thing:

Hockey.

You see, Oh Noble Warrior Of Breath And Movement, racing is not about winning.

It’s about knowing ourselves.

If our Dreamstates tell us anything, they inform us just how vividly we really care about doing great things upon great, sacred peaks.

Sleep well. Pleasant dreams.

I bow to you.

Coach Ilg