Refocus

Every once in a while events conspire to change focus, change priorities and force reexamination of the natural order of things.

Earlier this spring, while I was still on "sabbatical" from full-time employment I got a call at home from my mother. In her usual direct way, the conversation went something like this:

Mom: "Hi".

Me: "Hi".

Mom: "Are you sitting down?"

Me: "Yes".

Mom: "I have cancer".

As you might expect, that can be a bit of a conversation stopper. She explained that she had been feeling sluggish and tired for most of the winter, and after a vacation trip with the family and grandkids in which she just couldn't keep her energy level up she decided to go to the doctor.

Bad news indicator #1: my mother decided to go to the doctor. She is the strongest, most self-sufficient woman I've ever met, and the fact that she went of her own free will to the doctor was bad news enough.

Bad news indicator #2: when the doctor's office calls you back the next day and refers you to the "specialists" downtown. Also, never a good sign. Either they can't diagnose the problem, or the problem is too large for the regular family doctor to address. Neither is good.

So, my mother has spent the summer undergoing radiation treatment and chemotherapy for squamous metastatic carcinoma (Fair warning: there are some nasty pictures in this link). My mother is a woman who loves to cook and regularly makes giant meals for the family, the grandchildren and as many relatives as she can fit in the house. In fact last year she moved out of her "no-maintenance" condo into an aged, fully detached house which had two selling points.

1) A dining room big enough to fit seventeen people (all kids, spouses and grandchildren).
2) An inground swimming pool - the grandchild magnet.

Now, the cooking, eating and family visits are paused. Eight weeks of daily blasting of one form of treatment or another has her in a place now where three sips of diet cola, kept down, is a success.

A while back, for those who may have been following along, I mentioned that I might be interested in tacking on an end of season marathon. Well, now I have a cause and a goal - the Toronto Marathon, October 19. One of the principal charitable partner of the Toronto Marathon is the Princess Margaret Hospital, a place where I've spent several days this summer with my mother, so there's a natural confluence of events here.

So here's the goal - to raise $2000 for the Head and Neck Cancer Team of the Princess Margaret Hospital. The link to the page is here. As an added incentive (inspired some time back by Darren) I'm also going to run a raffle alongside this, with all proceeds going to the charity, of course. For every $10 donated, you get to guess my finishing time in the marathon (without going over of course). Closest finishing time will receive a genuine piece of Toronto Marathon swag, exact identity of which as yet to be determined, and all shipping and handling to be covered by me.

It's now on.

Peace.

Whitfield!

The short version - after all, a picture is worth a thousand words....

This makes the whole Olympics worthwhile. More to follow, after I actually watch the race tape.

Peace.

One one-hundredth of a second

Michael Phelps is a monster. Okay, I know I'm a little late to the game here, but I only watched his last two events. I imagine I can get caught up on YouTube, if I was so inclined. The relay was really rather anti-climactic, but the 100m fly was an actual one-minute spectacle. And for the dude from Serbia who lost by coasting the last one metre - he'll feel that for the rest of his life. Just goes to show that a casual swim fan (extremely casual) can't even remember his name three days later - that's the price of a one-hundredth-of-a-second coast. I can't fathom how short an interval of time that is. It's unbelievable (by the way that sentence is seventy-nine one-hundredths of a second long) to believe that one could be within reach of the wall and to not win. Equally unbelievable that Phelps was seventh at the turn, in a field of eight. Talk about turning on the jets, indeed. I've heard the phrase "Michael Phelps is the Tiger Woods of swimming". Hmm, I think that might be a little backward - more like "Tiger Woods is the Michael Phelps of golf".



And hats off to the rest of the Canadian medallers - better late than never. Yes, they started late, but if you go back and think about it, nobody who lost out in the first week was a real upset.

More to come.

Peace.

Definitions and the agony of defeat

So I email my part-time training buddy Darren on the weekend and say, "F the rain - let's ride!!" After sitting on the fence about it for an agonizingly long time (for him, about 20 seconds) he says, "let's roll!" We went out for an A-one ride, over 100km, on nearly deserted streets - and for a bonus the rain stayed away.

Having said all that, here's the kicker: we were both born and raised in this country, and both allegedly speak English as our "mother tongue"; however, there is a clear, obvious difference in our definition of at least one adjective: "flat".

My definition of flat: pancakes, Saskatchewan, a calm quiet lake, you know, like this:

Darren's definition of flat: cactus, Colorado, rolling waves - like this.

Mind you, he'd still look at the grain elevator in the middle of a flat field of wheat and say, "cool, let's ride the elevator!" Note to self: when a 8% ascent shows up two minutes into your easy, flat ride you should maybe know that there is a miscommunication of definitions. That was later followed by riding up a skihill.

Overall, great ride, great day.

***********************************

Here's the real agony of defeat. The agony of defeat is when your kid's baseball team loses the first game in the round-robin playoffs and are told, "win your last two games to make the semifinals". The kid's team then improbably goes ahead and wins those games (17-16 and then 9-8) over two teams that had beaten them in the regular season, only to find out that going 2-1 wasn't good enough. Two other teams in the "division"went 3-0 and that the kid's game only mattered to the "other" team, whose season also ended with the loss.

To see their little faces crumble when they found out after the game (they were told after the game, after going in thinking all they had to do was win) was as heartbreaking to the parents and coaches as it was to the kids. The kids (the team logo was Red Sox, and that was bad enough) hit well enough to win and played unbelievable infield defence - just in time for the season to end. Oh well - hockey tryouts are less than a month away.

Peace.

And now for something nearly completely different...

This is everything else we did this weekend.

First, a little boost from Daddy.

Then the training wheels are off for good.

After a hard ride, gotta cool down in the splash pad...


...with my brother, who's a bit of a ham.

The next day we went to the zoo where the elephants were really stinky.

the end.

Weekend report - T-minus 41 days...

Hey, first of all, props to my occasional training partners Darren and Cliff. Darren rocked the Owen Sound Olympic course this weekend, earning himself a qualifying trip to Australia for the world championships next year. He gracefully declined, no doubt worried about being upside-down for that length of time. And that result? - very nice. Just goes to show what a little focus, and 8-12 weekly repeats riding up a ski hill, can result in.


Not to be outdone, Cliff is on the verge of becoming an Olympian himself, and we're not the only ones who have noticed - check this out.


And for all those who had to "du"instead of "tri"this weekend at Steelhead, my condolences. I've never had the displeasure myself, so can only imagine the disappointment. I have to think, however that after saddling up for the ride, the grumpiness from the "first run"would float on away like a cloud.


Training-wise for me, nothing spectacular this weekend. 18k run, followed by a solid metric century ride this morning. Built in some good climbs - both Guelph Line and Appleby Line - as well as some good stretches of rollers to just bust the legs. Today's lesson was that, while a banana may be a good source of ride-time nutrition, it's not the best choice to carry in a back pocket. It still looked mostly like a banana when I got to it, but only about half.

Given where my training has been this year it's a relief to be putting in those kinds of hours again. Let's just not talk about the swim. I've also been considering stretching the season out a bit by adding an end-0f-season marathon in October or November, but that's still on the drawing board. I'll keep you posted.

All in all an excellent long weekend, topped off by taking the training wheels off my daughter's bike and watching my son turn a Jeter-esque ground-ball-scoop-spin-and-throw-on-to-the-base move playing in the park this afternoon. Successes all around.

Peace.