Never Done: I signed up to do an Olympic length Triathlon with Team in Training
I think I'm probably more surprised than you are. Because even though I wrote a couple weeks ago that I was going to start training for a triathlon, and in fact, since then I've been doing it -- swimming Mondays and Thursdays, biking Tuesdays and Fridays, and running Wednesdays and Saturdays. Sundays I rest -- even though all that, I've been waiting a couple weeks to hear back from someone at Team in Training who I could talk with about my particular injuries. In particular, I wanted to talk with them about whether they could help me modify the training so that I could really truly do an entire triathlon without getting hurt along the way.
It took a long time to get to the right person. First I went in to meet with someone who was supposed to be a physical therapist, but then it turned out he wasn't a physical therapist -- just a running coach. Not that a running coach doesn't know a hell more than I know about running, but he was in his 20s and I am in my late 40s with a busted up knee and a messed-up back, and I can't be cavalier about this thing. So I called the coordinator guy again, and asked if I could meet with the physical therapist coach he had first mentioned, and then it turned out that maybe there wasn't one, but I could talk with the head triathlon coach. That sounded good to me, and so I wrote him a letter, and then I didn't hear anything from him for over a week. When I wrote again, it turned out he had been away on vacation out of the country, and he said he'd be happy to talk with me. (I'm going into a lot of detail here; sorry if it's dull. I have a point.) Another week went by of trying to get a date to talk, and finally this past weekend, I spoke with him from the parking lot outside the Montgomery Aquatics Center in Rockville, MD. We had a dreadful connection. We got cut off -- and I am not making this up -- 15 times over the course of our conversation. But each time we got cut off, he called me back and was completely good-natured, present, and available to continue our conversation. After one time we got cut off and reunited, he said to me, "Well, you know I don't give up!"
Most of the things he said sounded reassuring to me -- Team in Training has no interest in people hurting themselves; I could do my running training in deep water or on an elliptical machine (I chose to ignore the fact that he also mentioned a StairMaster); I shouldn't increase any of my distances by 10% a week until I've had 4-6 weeks of injury-free training. I liked how he listened, and I liked how he spoke -- not because he had a mellifluous British accent, which he does, but because his approach to training triathletes for Team in Training is very consistent with my Mussar practice.
He never lost sight of the fact that most people who compete in an endurance sport event for Team in Training are doing it partly for others (they set a fundraising goal that we must meet, and most of the money we raise goes to cancer research and education, and the rest goes to our coaching, and fundraising support, and cute purple shirts) -- and also partly for ourselves (we want to get strong; we want to go through a process that will help us grieve the loss of someone we loved who died from a blood cancer; we want to accomplish something that makes us feel completely badass.)
For me, the self and other motivations are intertwined, because I spent most of 2007 and the beginning of 2008 taking care of my mother, as she lived with, and then died from, Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Had there been a cure at that time, maybe she would still be here now, which would have been good for me and many others. I would imagine that most participants have similar stories and motivations.
So here's something I've never done. I'd like to ask you -- my blog readers -- if you would please go to my fundraising page, and donate whatever amount is significant for you. And then I'd like to ask you to send it other people who you think might also donate. My goal is to meet my fundraising goal before our first group practice, this coming Saturday morning. I bet nobody has ever done that before. Crazy, right? Not really. Within seconds of posting on Facebook that I had signed up to do the triathlon, Lynn and Gary Cohen had already donated. I did the math, and if each of my Facebook friends would donate $2.63, I would be fully funded. (Or, if each of my Facebook friends would donate $25, I would raise over $30,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.) How hard could it be to raise $30,000 by Saturday morning?
Fundraising is the ultimate Mussar activity. We give because it makes us feel good, effective, powerful, and connected -- and also because we know we are helping others. Please join me in my Mussar year. We can be badasses together.
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