7/21/14
Run
0:50
Easy w/Drills
For years, little notes like this were my life.
AM Practice: Drills in Pairs
PM Practice, 3x 10:00 Hard (Set iffy)
Blasters x 20
WU, 2k Day
A mysterious language full of numbers and symbols, scribbled in notebooks, and recorded on notecards. A lifetime of tracking, categorizing, and inventorying the efforts of my rowers. But my favorites were always the notes from race days. A note card with a motivational saying, a race plan, and in the post-mortem a time. Week after week, season after season, year after year the little note cards came and went. It's funny that the last race, the fastest race, the most important race, I didn't have a card. I never wrote down the plan. I knew the plan. I can still tell you the plan. I didn't record the time. But it doesn't matter because the results board will be seared into the back of my brain forever
3 Cornell Ln1 5:30.356
And after that race I kind of stopped. I wasn't an athlete anymore. I was some jackass who ran sometimes. I didn't need to write shit down. That's a drag. Then I was some jackass who ran a lot. Then some jackass who ran a lot, sort of quick. I started training for things but for whatever reason I never got back into the obsessive data collection. I ran for fun, not for work.
Then I came to Madison. A buddy and I (he knows who he is) decided to sign up for Ironman Wisconsin. A monumental task. Summer and the rest of the Badger tri-crew convinced me to race Iowa's Best Dam Tri that same week, basically with no training. On the one hand I had a blast, on the other it was clear I needed to get serious. So I started to get back to my private little language of numbers and acronyms. "Workout Log.xlsx" began its silent vigil over my training.
296 rows in an excel spreadsheet of workouts and rest days. Times and descriptions. Little notes if something interesting happened. Jokes to myself to stay sane during the long winter up here in Madison ("fuck the poolice" was apparently a favorite in January). A weekly tracker showed how much time I spent a week. Two hundred eighty three days of work and recovery. Once again, week after week, month after month, the notebook filled up and the times got faster. The training volume got higher. A low of 4h20m, a high of 13h42m.
And then there's the last entry. Cell D298. I must have done it in the hospital because I don't remember writing it down:
6/3/14
"You are a colossal fuckup."
After that there are forty-seven blank rows. Forty-seven days of not being an athlete. Forty-seven days of just being some jackass who occasionally goes for a jog. An abyss of nothingness compared to the meticulous observations of the previous 8 months.
I don't know what the next thing is. I don't know what I'm training for. I don't know if I'll ever be able to properly pronate and supinate. If I can ever ditch this stupid brace. If I'll be able to ride my bike again or get in the pool. But at least I know what I did today.
7/21/14
Run
0:50
Easy w/Drills
