I've been doing these triathlons for ooooh-gobs of years. Since the early 90s, anyway. I lovelovelove to do them. I've done a bunch of marathons & half marathons over the years, hundreds of road races of varying distances, another ooooh-gobs of sprint tris, etc. I'm old and tall and big and by now, at 62, pretty much fighting my age and my body, but still having a blast doing my thing. DNF'd Arizona last year, trying again this year. Got some pretty schwaggy gear after all these years.
The thing of it is, hell, I'm learning to run with a cane. It's a pink cane, but it's a cane. Ha! I'm finding that the older I get, and the slower I get, and the rowdier I get as the years pile on, I'm just hanging on by a thread at the BOP. You know the big bus at the Disney marathon that sweeps everyone behind the balloon-people? Yeah, I fight the bus. :)
Anyway, I just wanted to say, to all the slow and old and big people like me, that the Zen of the thing that works for me is finding the place where it's all just okay to be who I am. I mean, people come up to me at the finish line and say "Hey, I just want to shake your hand!", and what they're really saying is "I can't believe someone as old and big as you are is still doing this sh*t." And they don't mean anything mean by it, so you smile and say "Hey, you can do it too, y'know?"
Just FWIW. There's a place in the world of triathlon for us, too, y'know? You just have to duck when the assholes try to smack you with their ... well ... asshole-ness. I've never really found a good approach to dealing with people who need you to know that they're better than you could ever hope to be.
Have a great day.
~~ kate
The thing of it is, hell, I'm learning to run with a cane. It's a pink cane, but it's a cane. Ha! I'm finding that the older I get, and the slower I get, and the rowdier I get as the years pile on, I'm just hanging on by a thread at the BOP. You know the big bus at the Disney marathon that sweeps everyone behind the balloon-people? Yeah, I fight the bus. :)
Anyway, I just wanted to say, to all the slow and old and big people like me, that the Zen of the thing that works for me is finding the place where it's all just okay to be who I am. I mean, people come up to me at the finish line and say "Hey, I just want to shake your hand!", and what they're really saying is "I can't believe someone as old and big as you are is still doing this sh*t." And they don't mean anything mean by it, so you smile and say "Hey, you can do it too, y'know?"
Just FWIW. There's a place in the world of triathlon for us, too, y'know? You just have to duck when the assholes try to smack you with their ... well ... asshole-ness. I've never really found a good approach to dealing with people who need you to know that they're better than you could ever hope to be.
Have a great day.
~~ kate