I was going to title this, “Training with the Coronavirus.”
(Yeah, not a good idea.)
I kind of figured that part out without you.
(You do realize that I am always with you.)
Kinda hard to miss that.
(So, when do I get my own article?)
Certainly not now. Right now I have to deal with an ever uncertain race season.
We are 120 days away from the race and now we received word that there will not be any triathlons in Canada until after August 31.
My race is scheduled for August 23.
(Cancelled?)
Maybe.
(Or postponed?)
Maybe.
(But what does that mean?)
September 6?
(Maybe they compromise with Sunday, August 30?)
No one will know anything until the Ironman race organization makes a decision.
(When will that be?)
May 1.
(What about the five athletes you are coaching for this event?)
It’s my job to train them, keep them safe and to guide them.
(How do you keep on keeping on when all might be for naught?)
It’s easy to look at my two children and say, “I always knew I would become a dad,” but I didn’t.
Fifteen years ago, my wife and I were trying to become pregnant, but it wasn’t happening.
We didn’t know what was wrong, but I realized that if I didn’t stay upbeat and positive, my wife wasn’t going to either.
(How did that help?)
There are no guarantees in life, but there are chances. As long as I was optimistic and we kept looking for answers, there was a chance we would become parents. There was a 100% guarantee of failure if we gave up trying.
(It’s the Wayne Gretzky quote that everyone ascribes to Michael Jordan.)
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
(Ok, so you train like the race is going to happen…but what if it doesn’t?)
Any time you exercise, you are extending your life. We train for a specific event, for sure. But, we train for life.
(But what if the race is cancelled due to the coronavirus?)
While Ironman is the greatest endurance race one can ever experience, it’s still just a race. If it is cancelled, the event will be there next year.
(Unless there’s an alien abduction!)
Of the whole town?
(It could happen.)
I can’t believe I am even entertaining this line of thinking.
My friend Ari Baum chose to quit Ironman Louisville, right in the middle of the race. It was 2018 and he was 25 miles into the 112 miles of biking. It was raining and unseasonably cold. His body was shivering so severely that he was having trouble controlling his bike. He was more concerned about falling off his bike and getting injured than he was about his pride. So he literally “walked away from the race” out of concern for his safety.
It’s an amazing race, but it’s just a race.
(Didn’t he sign up immediately for another Ironman race?)
Yes. Four weeks late he competed in and finished Ironman Florida…but that’s not the point.
The point is, we train for life. We train for our health. We train for our sanity.
(In your case, that’s debatable.)
This race makes some of us crazy. For others, it provides the singular focus that keeps us sane.
(Once again, debatable with you.)
It is terribly frustrating training day after day with the voice in the back of my head saying, “Your race is going to be canceled.”
(Me?)
Not you, but that voice of doubt that creeps into our thoughts when we cannot see how the journey will end.
(Like how each of us is experiencing this life altering coronavirus social distancing, day after day.)
Precisely. None of us knows how this will end or when it will end.
All we can do is get dressed each day, lace up our running shoes and wake the kids for their Zoom classes.
David Roher is a USAT certified marathon and triathlon coach. He is a multi-Ironman finisher and a veteran special education teacher. He can be reached at: [email protected]
