So I’m writing up my IMC race report for my own postarety (sp?) and begin to think.
Preparing and doing an IM is exactly like pregnancy and child birth.
Both have a long incubation/preparation phase filled with highs and lows - lots of discomfort, worry, excitement and planning.
Then comes the big day. A tremendously hard physical and mental effort ensues over the course of 8 to 17 hourse which culminates in something coming out in the end.
Then there is the aftermath where with both people tend to be happy that they went through the entire process but each individual needs to decide for them selves if they will ever do it again.
So - I never want to hear again (from my wife or another woman) that as a man I have no idea what having a baby is like or how hard it is. I do - my baby was simply 140.6 miles long!
The difference is you don’t have to raise your finishers medal for the next 18 + years (I am 24 and still ask my parents for $$$) . So I vote do IM’s instead of reproducing
My third daughter was born a month after my 2nd IM, so my wife and I were pretty much on the same schedule. She was the first to point out all the physical similarities. Aside from the phsyical, nutritional needs were pretty similar too.
Although I haven’t tried to play the ‘you can’t tell me a pregnancy is difficult’ card yet.
Interestingly, you are not the first person to draw this analogy. Belinda Halloran wrote an ongoing column comparing her pregnancy to IM last year or so. She did not, however, make the absurd claim that doing an IM approximates the pain/feeling of labour!
Having done it twice, sure labor and delivery is hard, long and hurts really, really bad, but pregnancy itself for lots of us is not that big of a deal. We eat a lot, get fat and lull around (or at least I did:). What’s so hard about that.
I dont know! My wife gave birth a couple months after my first IM last year. First of all the pregnancy seems like hell, especially in the last couple months. On top of that a pregnant is restricted on what she eats or drinks, especially good wine and coffee in my wifes case. And being in labor and giving birth seems like pure hell and pain. I would have to give the award to my wife for pulling off a more grueling event, and shell be doing it again in January. Id gladly do many more Ironmans but would never want to be pregnant and give birth, happy to be a man!
I don’t think my wife got a T-Shirt. There were no crowds cheering her on. There was no announcer at “the finish line” yelling “you are a mom”.
Although…
She did walk funny a for a few days. She did get to eat anything she wanted during “training”. And don’t even ask about how I lived with her during the last the weeks “taper”
If delivering a baby is like “excreting” a cantaloupe, what’s an appropriate analogy for completing a long distance triathlon or other ultra endurance event? 13 hours of continuous lamaze classes?
I often use counting and breathing practices from meditation practices when facing suffering such as up a long hill or when overheated,bored or fatigued.
Emotionally there’s no coamparison for me between the birth of my son and the many long events I have done- each an amazing act, but fatherhood was all about becoming responsible for someone else and an enormous sense of meaning in my life, ultra events are personally rewarding for me but they are essentially solitary.
I wouldn’t say childbirth and IM are EXACTLY the same, but there are a lot of similarities. I have another one.
When a woman is in the peak pain of childbirth she says things like " I’ll never do this again" and “look what did you do to me?” Hours later she is talking about the “next” baby.
During the marathon an IM tells himself, “why am I doing this” at the finish line he tells his wife, “don’t ever let me do this again”. The next day he is planning on how he can make his next race faster.
Last wednesday my wife gave birth to our little girl. I am having difficulty typing because I am holding her right now. My wife has done a few IM races, including IMH, and has a PR of 10:23 at Penticton. All bragging on the wife aside, she thought that being pregnant was analogous to training for IM, and figured that labor and delivery would be just like raceday. Pretty good way to look at it, right? Well it was, right up until labor got going full swing, then she described it as “doing the IM, getting an eye knocked out in the swim, riding the bike anyway, getting hit by a car and breaking your legs at mile 45, but being forced to have to finish the race anyway, and doing so with severe food poisoning.” An IM you can’t really DNF. How’s that? No big deal, right?
As an aside, my mom, in a fit of anger when I got caught doing something stupid in high school said “the only way you will understand what a pain in the ass you are is if you were to crap out a watermelon, then have it mouth off at you.”
I don’t think there is such a thing as an epidural for an Ironman. My wife said labor was a piece of cake once the epidural was working.
As far as the question about what pain is worse above all else, you’d have to ask women that have had a baby to compare that pain to every other pain they’ve ever had. If something comes up many women feel was more painful than childbirth, and it is something a man can also have (gallstones, kidney stones, hangnail…whatever), then I’d say having a baby isn’t the most painful thing to endure. A lot of the opinions about childbirth will depend upon whether the woman had an epidural, or not.
Anyway, the mental anguish of losing the life of a child eclipses the physical pain of delivering the child…and both male and female are capable to experience that pain. So, it depends upon the circumstances as to whether labor is the “most painful” thing, and I don’t think labor is the most painful thing ever, at least, not for women in modern countries.
