twaaaaaa

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I’m also doing DD for the first time. It’s going to be a wild ride.

it's so funny doing Dracula Daily this year but missing it last year because everyone else is frothing at the mouth at the harbingers of what's to come and I'm just like

the whole dashboard crying and shitting their pants over some paprika rn

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DELETE THIS POST

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“There are other forces at work in this world besides the will of evil.”

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You’re all missing the best part. Bear with me here.

If baba yaga means old, scary woman, it must be a compound noun: a noun made up of two words. More specifically, it’s an open-form compound noun: two separate words that form a thrd when placed together without a hyphen.

I looked up the Russian translations of the two words. A baba is a noun for an old woman or grandmother, and yaga is an adjective meaning (loosely) horrible or scary.

Still with me? Because this is the delicious part: Baba yaga is what’s called a head-first compound noun — the first word is more important than the second, because nouns trump adjectives. We care that the term refers to a granny more than how horrible she is. It’s in the same category of words as the term attorney general.

Do you see where this is going? When you pluralize a head-first compound noun, you modify the first word and not the second. Attorney general becomes attorneys general.

WHICH MEANS:

If a baba yaga were ever to defy Slavic tradition and march her house across the swamp to visit with others of her kind, they would be referred to as babas yaga.

I think that’s delicious.

“In Russian, Baba Yaga’s name is not capitalized. Indeed, it is not a name at all, but a description—“old lady yaga” or perhaps “scary old woman.”  There is often more than one Baba Yaga in a story, and thus we should really say “a Baba Yaga,” “the Baba Yaga.” We do so in these tales when a story would otherwise be confusing. We have continued the western tradition of capitalizing Baba Yaga, since the words cannot be translated and have no other meaning in English (aside perhaps from the pleasant associations of a rum baba).  There is no graceful way to put the name in the plural in English, and in Russian tales multiple iterations of Baba Yaga never appear at the same time, only in sequence: Baba Yaga sisters or cousins talk about one another, or send travelers along to one another, but they do not live together.  The first-person pronoun “I” in Russian, ‘ia,’ is also uncapitalized. In some tales our witch is called only “Yaga.” A few tales refer to her as “Yagishna,” a patronymic form suggesting that she is Yaga’s daughter rather than Yaga herself. (That in turn suggests that Baba Yaga reproduces parthenogenetically, and some scholars agree that she does.)  The lack of capitalization in every published Russian folktale also hints at Baba Yaga’s status as a type rather than an individual, a paradigmatic mean or frightening old woman.  This description in place of a name, too, could suggest that it was once a euphemism for another name or term, too holy or frightening to be spoken, and therefore now long forgotten.”

— Sibelan Forrester, from her introduction to Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales

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Race report: Ironman 70.3 Augusta

This is the first race report I've written for a U.S.-based race since college. And like a true American, I'm going to do it using bullet points. (Get it? Because we have an uncontrollable gun violence problem here?)

Also, I apologize for the lack of pictures here. Tumblr doesn’t play nice with photos in the middle of text, and figuring out the HTML for it is too close to my real job to be enjoyable.

PART 1: THE LEAD-UP

This was the first race I've done in more than two-and-a-half years. I took a hiatus because of burnout and an international move, spent 2018 building up a base and really started training again this year.

Going into it, I felt I was adequately trained on the bike. I hadn't done enough long runs, but that was balanced out by the amazing speedwork I've put in. Shoutout to Gerald and the Tuesday morning track crew.

My swim is also at the best it's ever been, though that's not saying much.

The race was in Augusta, Georgia. I have a bit of a shameful history with it – I registered for it in college in 2011. And then midterms happened, so I couldn't make it. To date it's my only DNS. Consider this time grade forgiveness.

I flew out with a bunch of teammates from Triple Threat. It's such a delight to race with a supportive team like this. Many of them were doing their first half-Ironman. They're so cute when they're new.

I got into the rental car with my teammate, Ann, and it took five minutes before I hit the first complication for the weekend. As soon as the speedometer hit 65 mph, WHAPWHAPWHAPWHAPWHAP. Something on the front of the car was rattling. So we turned around and swapped it for a free upgrade to an SUV. Later, my coach would complain the same rental company was out of cars, and I'm partially to blame. Sorry, coach.

Most people paid $350 a night or so to stay at the host hotel. Screw that – do you know how much ice cream $350 can buy? The value inn a half-mile away had a soft bed, a warm shower and a stale continental breakfast. That's more how I roll.

Turns out the cheap hotel was ideally situated – two blocks away from the starting line, damn close to the transition check-in and right at the edge of the downtown area. No regrets.

Augusta is … not the most august location. It has a stench to it. From the river, I learned – the same river we were to start the day swimming in. Greeeeeat.

But at least it wasn't Waco.

We crowded into the Mellow Mushroom for dinner to give the newbies last-minute advice and reassurance. My advice in summary: it was going to be freaking hot, relax on the down-river swim and do a cannonball when you jump off the dock to start.

I found a Publix the day before the race! You have to understand what this means to a Floridian trapped in Texas. Texan friends, it's like finding a Whataburger and a Buc-ees next to each other in the middle of nowhere. Canadian friends, same but for Tim Horton's. UAE friends, imagine if a small town was entirely made out of malls. It just felt right.

I got my chicken tender PubSub and my guava pastries for maximum homeopathy to Florida Man. You could hear Jimmy Buffet playing in the background. Pitbull yodeled. The alligators lurking in the Savannah lifted their heads in praise. God shrugged and turned a blind eye. It was glorious.

At some point I bought a badass helmet with a visor that made me look like Judge Dredd. It was good for 15 minutes of confidence before Devon, who tests these things in a wind tunnel shamed me for it.

The morning of, we trudged down to transition for final prep and then made out way 1.2 miles upstream for the start. Three school buses were working as shuttles, but the line for them stretched almost as long as we'd have to walk.

Here's the nice thing about having a hotel next to the race start: instead of standing in line for the portable toilets before the start, you get to bask in the air conditioning and proper ventilation of your hotel room. Makes quite the difference.

This was my first time racing long-distance in a two-piece kit. I didn't realize you need to apply sunscreen to the small of your back, where the top rides up on the bike. This would later result in a sunburn tramp stamp.

PART 2: THE SWIM

The pros started off at 7:30 a.m., and us age groupers had to wait until 7:50 to start. Except it was a rolling start, with two people going off every three seconds. It took 90 minutes to get everyone in, as the sun rose ever higher.

I made friends with a guy in my age group while waiting in line (thanks to a fast seed time, we only ended up standing around for 35 minutes). His name was Houston, he told me, and he had roots around Delaware, Ohio. Sounded to me like he couldn't decide on a state. I declared I lived in Dallas and that made us rivals.

Oh buddy, you better believe I did a cannonball.

Augusta is a down-river swim. It ranges from easy to easiest, depending on the current. There are videos of them floating a coke bottle or bag of chips down the river and making the cutoff time. This year the current wasn't too swift, but a personal record was still a foregone conclusion.

I became best friends with some river weeds. Best friends hug each other and stick together, right?

I did not have to punch or shove anyone out of the way, thankfully. Guess all the breast strokers started behind me.

I popped out of the water in 33:49. That's a PR for me, but only enough to hit 67/135 in my age group. I aim for top 50% in the swim, so that was just baaaaarely acceptable.

3:55 T1, because I took some time to towel the grass off my feet before donning socks. This was not the most luxurious transition location.

PART 3: THE BIKE

My choice of a disc wheel and 50mm front was a good decision for the day. It wasn't too windy and the road conditions, while not amazing, were not enough to give me trouble. The 56-mile course starts off flat for 17 miles or so, then has a few hills, then goes back to mostly flat for the last 15.

Ten miles in or so I see a yellow jersey up ahead. Is that … yup, it's Houston. I ding my bell and whoop as I pass him.

Five miles later, I get passed by a dude in a yellow jersey. He waves back at me and compliments my helmet (yessss). We would continue to pass each other every few miles for the remainder of the ride. “Tag, you're it.”

Aid stations on the bike are chaotic. I've found the best way to let the volunteers know what you need is to roar it. It may scare the bejesus out of a middle schooler when some dude rides by on a spaceship-looking bike, points at her and screams “BANANA! BANANA!”, but that's part of the fun. Whatever gets me my potassium.

Nutrition-wise, I nailed it. The usual strategy of super-concentrating my electrolytes in one bottle and picking up water at each aid station worked perfectly. I head enough caffeinated gels to keep my energy going, and while I came close to cramping near the end of the run I never did.

I keep a bell on my aerobars, mostly because I don't want to waste the breath to yell “on your left” each time I pass someone. Because I'm a slow swimmer but a fast cyclist, and I pass a LOT of people.

You know what the bell is also useful for? Cheering a teammate on the other side of the road while your mouth is full of banana. You go, Jeff.

Years ago, star USF time trialist and all-around hammerhead borrowed my disc wheel and put an 11-23 cassette on it. I've never taken it off. You know what that cassette is good for? Flat land. You know what awaited me in the middle of the course? Not flat land.

In races, they say you only have so many “matches” to burn before your legs tire out on you. Most people burn their matches pushing up a steep hill or going fast near the end of the run. Me? I burn them to see if I can hit 40 mph going downhill. While screaming at the top of my lungs. I may not have the best time, but I'll be damned if I'm not having the most fun.

(Garmin reports my max speed was 40.1 mph. Yeeeeaaaahhhhhh.)

I RODE PAST A DUDE WITH A GOAT ON A LEASH.

Despite the hills, I managed to keep a steady heart rate for most of the bike course. Don't know about my power output because my P1 pedals have refused to play nicely for a while. I can finally send them in now that it's the offseason.

I'm happy to say I passed Houston a mile before the end of the bike. But I stopped for the bathroom in transition, so he still beat me to the run.

If there's no volunteer to jump out of the way of your flawless flying dismount, did it even happen? Conversely, if there's nobody around when you jump onto gravel in your socks, did you even scream?

Total bike time was 2:56:25, with a more than 19 mph average page. 57/135 for my age group – that's behind the upper-third that I aim for. I still have a ways to go to regain my bike strength.

PART 4: THE RUN. ALLEGEDLY.

By the time we got to the run, the sun was high in the sky and the ambient temperature was 95. With the humidity, it felt close to 99. A course record by a generous margin. Crap.

I caught Houston within the first mile, and for a while there were four of us 25-29 men within 15 seconds of each other. Every peer I passed got a fist-bump.

We had a nice chat for the next few miles as we admired the beautiful downtown course. It's a zig-zag through the street, with spectators lining the sidewalks. Many of them had water guns, hoses or sprinklers, and I love everyone who cooled us for a few precious seconds.

The very best, though, was the homeowner with a giant inflatable unicorn spouting water from its horn.

I was holding a steady heart rate and pace for the first four miles, but the heat got to me as it got to everyone. Houston dropped me at an aid station and went on to beat me by 20 minutes.

From then it was all about heat management. How much could I push myself before overheating and being forced to slow down? How much cold water could I take in? Was I balancing the right amount of liquid and electrolytes?

I began walking in the shade of every building and running to get to the next patch of shade faster. It served me decently for the rest of the race.

I came up on a cute girl around my age (they write it on your calf) and had fantasies of using a pickup line on her as I passed her. “Excuse me, can you remember this number for me? 727-555-1234.” Thank God I didn't, because a mile later she caught a second wind and dusted me. How humiliating would that have been?

After an hour or so I began to get some underarm chafing. I asked for a bit of sunscreen at an aid station and slapped it on. That hurt. Then the volunteer saw what I was doing: “You know we have Vaseline too, right?” Oh well, too late.

Speaking of which, the second-best sign on the course was “chafing the dream.”

The very best one, though, was a drawing of Marvel's Iron Man next to the words “MAKE STAN LEE PROUD.” At that point I was so worn down that I teared up a bit. And then I picked up my legs and ran for as long as my body would let me.

What stage of heat stroke is it when your body has no idea whether it's cold or hot anymore so it just tells you it's both? Because I had that starting around mile 8. Maintaining homeostasis is not one of my strong suits.

Three times I called out to the onlookers, “Hey man, can I pet your dog?” Three times I was denied. Augusta can burn in hell.

At some point around mile 10 (of 13) I did the math and realized I could still hit a sub-6-hour time if I pushed it. So began a frantic but calculated series of runs and walks.

Thank goodness I was in one of the run stages as I passed my coach and relay teammates on the sidelines. They got a decent picture of me – I'm only panting a little bit.

I made across the line with two minutes to spare. Then I grabbed a water and laid down under the pizza table with two other dudes. For 45 minutes. Good race.

Total run time was 2:20:39, and frankly I'm surprised it was that short. 53/135, which surprisingly was again better than my bike performance, comparatively. I blame my running coaches.

Total race time was 5:58:05. 53/135, which again isn't where I usually shoot for. But I knew I wouldn't hit the top third going into the race.

Total calorie burn for the day, according to Garmin: 5,200.

The overall goal of this race wasn't a time, but nor was it just a finish. It was to have my body do what I told it to – or at least what I could negotiate with it – without cramping, collapsing or bonking. And I did. I have my mojo back. The heat collapsed everyone's plan A, but I was able to pull off plan B without much of a struggle. I could not have done that a year ago.

Unfortunately, the deal with myself was that if I pulled this race off I'd sign up for another Ironman in fall 2020. So it's either Cozumel or Argentina for me next year. I'm going to try to enjoy my social life while I still can.

PART 5: THE AFTERMATH

I ran into Houston a bit past the pizza table and collapsed into the chair next to him. His mom and sister were there to cheer him in his first half-Iron race. He snuck the pizza and beer. Hooray for supportive families.

After collecting some teammates and nursing a pizza slice for an hour, I made my way to the rest of the team to yell at passers-by. And someone finally let me pet her dog. She was from Dallas – go figure.

The walk from my hotel to downtown takes ten minutes. The post-race walk from downtown to my hotel takes 30. The difference is staggering.

I came back to my second batch of car trouble: someone had backed my rental in the parking lot. No note or anything – just a bunch of scrapes and misaligned panels.

I talked to the hotel manager, who earned a great Booking.com review into pulling the security footage. We watched as a family three doors down from me backed their car straight into mine, got out, saw no witnesses and sped off. Thank God for my credit card's insurance coverage.

The geniuses were staying through the end of the week – the hotel had their driver's license and video evidence of them leaving the scene of an accident. Easiest police report the cop had ever filed.

As I was packing up the next morning, and after the policeman had talked to her, the woman approached me apologizing. I shrugged and wished her best of luck against the insurance and rental car companies. If I have to deal with this load of paperwork, so does she.

In the day after the race, I polished off three meals' worth of leftovers – including two different pizzas. Between those, the finish-line pizza and the week of carb-loading, I never wanted to eat another slice in my life.

That resolve didn't even last three days.

I bonded with a fellow athlete seated behind me on the plane ride back. Turns out his carry-on was not a suitcase, but a reusable bag of fresh vegetables and a half-eaten box of Life cereal. The absolute legend.

I learned later that day that over the weekend my Abu Dhabi friend Leanne had taken fourth place in Ironman Cozumel that same weekend in her debut as a pro. But I didn’t pee myself on the bike, so who really came out ahead there?

So now I'm in the off season. It's nice to get eight hours of sleep most nights. I'll be tweaking my workout schedule to build a base over the fall and winter, and then it's back to training. I'm looking at one or two half-Irons and a full next year, plus whatever local sprints and olympics bubble up.

When I came back to the US two years ago, I left important parts of my identity behind. Bunches of friends, a journalism career, my expat status. And triathlons were placed on hold. This past season has made me feel more like myself again, and it's a comforting feeling after so much doubt and uncertainty. It's good to be in love with the sport again after a few years of burnout.

The hardest part of the next year will be persuading my mom not to disown me if I get an Ironman tattoo after next fall. Wish me luck.

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Juana, a Peruvian medic living in Zambia. (Conversation in Spanish)

Life in Zambia is completely different from what we know in the West. There's so much corruption and poverty. If people aren't suffering from natural disasters, they're suffering from man-made ones. But it has a natural beauty to it too - Lake Victoria is an hour away from where we live. We're free to appreciate God's creations.

I'm a Christian, and I've worked as a medic for a humanitarian charity in Zambia for 25 years. Before that I traveled all over the world working at athletic competitions. I've done 14 Pan American games - even one in Medellin. I've done the Olympics. But since I went to Oklahoma Christian University and found God, I knew I wanted to help people. So I moved to Africa. I married a Zambian Ian and had three beautiful children. I've just dropped the middle one at Oklahoma Christian. He's studying aerospace engineering - and I can't wait to see how he ends up helping people.

(She was seated next to me on a flight from Dallas to Mexico City. She was connecting to Peru to see her 95-year-old mother and 103-year-old father.)

__

I'm back, and currently traveling from my current home in Dallas to Medellín, Colombia for a vacation. First, though, a 20-hour layover in Mexico City. 12 hours into the trip and I've already added two people on Facebook from the airport lounge, helped Juana here race through the airport and make a connection, swapped travel stories with an old man on the night bus and spoken more Spanish than I have after a year and a half of living in Dallas. I'm looking forward to meeting and sharing about more interesting people.

It's good to be back.

(Side note: did I really not post anything from Egypt last year? I need to fix that when I get back.)

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My friend from the south Florida area shared a (legitimate and vetted) fundraiser to help raise money for a yearbook for any MSD high school student who wishes to have a copy. For most of these young men and women, the memorial pages in this book may end up being their token of remembrance of a friend or teacher they lost. Almost all of us who graduated in the last 10, 15, 20+ years can probably remember yearbooks are not cheap. And are often unaffordable for some students. So if you’re in a giving mood, you may want to consider this as something you can possibly do to help a community heal.

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So I did a thing.

I tell this story often enough. Now, ten years after it happened, it’s immortalized in a podcast. Or a prototype of one - I don’t quite have the details hammered out yet.

That was a fun way to spend six hours.

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Gym observation 5

I’m standing at the Smith machine, my apartment gym’s stand-in for a squat rack, and in front of me is a bigger guy who’s about the same novice level as I am. He’s doing bicep curls and struggling every inch of the way. Unsteady arms, embarrassed expression, inconsistent technique.

I watch as he tries to lift the weight and fails. Tries again and fails. Tries again and still can’t get it all the way. He tries with the other arm and also fails. He sighs in exasperation. He looks over at me and I just smile before staring into the distance to do my exercises - don’t want the guy to think I’m judging him, because I’m not. We all start where he is.

And then a woman about his age walks in with a baby in her arms. The guy looks over at her and sees her approaching. He turns his head away from her - toward me - and contorts his face into the most strained expression you can imagine. With a mighty heave he curls the weight again, and I watch as he at last raises it up to his shoulder.

The woman then comes up to him and starts chatting. She’s his wife, and that’s his child, and she just saw him lift a big weight all manly-like. He beams and tries to look like it didn’t take everything he had to lift that weight.

Sometimes we just need the right motivation to push ourselves.

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For the record

I’m not feeling enough burn/soreness from just the Starting Strength routine in the gym. It’s designed for beginners I’m guessing, and not people whose bodies are well-versed to adapting to exercise.

So my strategy now is to just do three sets of 5-10 reps on each machine around the apartment’s gym after finishing the prescribed freeweight exercises. The last set goes to failure, but that usually only means one or two more reps above 10.

I think at this point I’ve figured out what weight levels I’m at on the different machines. The results definitely show my cycling background: I can push the adductor machine on max weight (about my own bodyweight) for days, but I can only get to a fraction of that on the pectoral machine, which uses muscles that are supposed to be a lot stronger.

Here’s the full list. Feedback is welcome:

Squats - 75kg Military press - 32.5kg Deadlift - 75kg Benchpress - 40kg Bent-over row - 52.5kg Leg press - 120kg Adductor - 60kg (maxed) Leg extension/curl - 45kg Low row - 45kg Chest press - 35kg Pectoral - 10kg Shoulder press - 15kg

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(Home) gym observation 4

Sorry cat. You can sit on the bed and judge my ab workout all you want, but if you walk past me when the video calls for a weight you’re going to be conscripted into vertical press-ups.

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Gym observation 3

Some days you stick carefully and dutifully to the training plan you’re on.

And then other days you realize your body is trained for speedy recovery and isn’t getting tired out by these starter repetitions, so you do the exercise and then just go ham on every machine in sight until you feel sore.

It’s a learning process.

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Gym observation 2

You know those gruff, manly grunts men make when they move heavy things around?

Apparently I don’t make those in the gym. I sound more like this.

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Gym observation 1

You know you’re a cyclist when you get on the leg press after the big, hulking bro and have to bump the weight up. And then you try out the abductor machine and easily move the max weight.

But then you go to arm presses and you’re just moving the bar around.

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Update on athletics, goals and life in general

This post is long-winded, vulnerable and brutally honest. You’ve been warned.

So this season was a total bust.

I set out on the 2016-17 season with pretty clear goals: go less intense than last year, concentrate on just a few half-Ironmans and build up to an Iron in April at a pace that wouldn’t burn me out like what happened to me last year. Simple, right?

And then life got in the way.

For various reasons, I missed two half-Irons in the fall. (The first was a trade-off - cancel my vacation but take a promotion at work. The second was a missed flight.) No big deal, right? It’s a bit of missed momentum, but nothing that can’t be recovered from.

And then I just couldn’t bring myself to switch into Ironman mode. I couldn’t split my sleep schedule in two for three days a week, even though I was now working saner hours and regular weekends. I couldn’t wake up at 3:30 a.m. to run. I skipped the extra swimming sessions I promised myself I’d do. I didn’t feel that drive, that motivation, that hunger. I didn’t want to admit it to anyone, but I was burnt out.

It’s a weird thing to admit to myself even now. In theory, I still love triathlons. The community is wonderful and they’re a huge part of my identity. Race days still excite me. But just like injuries in endurance sports, burnout builds up over time and with repetition. I just couldn’t do the grind anymore.

And the burnout wasn’t just athletic. Life was getting in the way too - there was massive anxiety over my job, which turned out to have a good cause. In April the company I work for laid off almost half its staff and offered the rest of us contracts that were tough to swallow - and then gave us three days to decide on them.

Going through the buildup to the contract decision day made me realize something else: I don’t really have a support system left in Abu Dhabi. It’s a consequence of expat churn in a country of 89% expats, and the social instability that comes with it. One of the major challenges of the place is rebuilding your friend group every six months or so when your friends move to new countries or emirates, or just cycle out of your social circle in general. All the people I was talking with about the career anxiety were already overseas or expecting to leave the UAE this year anyway.

The other source of emotional burnout was the relationship side of my life. Without going into too many whiny details, there were three women who came into my life, sequentially within a few short months who independently made me think that finally, I had found someone I really liked who would turn into the kind of relationship I’d been hoping for. After nearly three years of being single and mostly dateless. And so I invested a lot of time and energy into each one, only to have things fall apart with them for reasons beyond my control. One had mental health issues and took herself out of the dating pool entirely, one had physical health problems and too busy a schedule, and one just went from full-throttle to ghost in the span of a week.

One massive disappointment like that I can handle and recover from. But three in a row hit, plus the existential anxiety about my job me hard and sent me to a bad place for a while. That was at the end of my usual UAE racing season, and by that time my training was so bad that I had downgraded my hopes for the post-season race to a half-Ironman a month later than the Iron would have been, and then just nothing at all. I don’t want to use the word depression, because it hasn’t been diagnosed by a doctor, but it was hard for me to get out of bed in the morning and I just shut down for a little while. My nutrition lapsed and I lost too much weight, which for me makes for a downward spiral. My boss even pulled me aside and told me he was concerned about my performance at work.

The expat life ain’t all sunshine and roses, despite what my Facebook feed makes it look like.

I managed to pull myself out of that spiral with a vacation and a visit from my parents. Nothing makes you get out of bed and scramble to get your life looking like it’s together like the fear of disappointing your mother. After they left I realized I had to do something to keep myself from sinking back into that same rut.

It started with the nutrition. I started planning a week of meals at a time and prepping them on the weekends. I know how losing weight from poor nutrition affects the rest of my life, so that was the clearest first step to get out of this funk.

And then April came with the contracts. I was offered one but found it unpalatable. It took me literally until the final hour to decide whether to take it, though, because it’s been four and a half years since I came here and being an expat in Abu Dhabi has become part of my identity. I went through a lot of soul searching, which could be the subject of another long post, and had a few serious what-if discussions. But in the end, I realized that the terms of the new contract would just exacerbate the problems that led to the rut I’ve found myself in these past few months, and cut off the ways I’ve been able to cope with them.

So I turned it down. My contract expires June 30. And since UAE residence visas are tied to employment, I’ll most likely be leaving the country and probably heading back to the US.

There’s one other major thing that happened as part of the contract decision. (Warning: more relationship complaints ahead.) There’s a girl back in my hometown who is everything I want in a girl. I’d been harboring a massive crush on her for years - by far bigger than anything else I’ve felt since the last breakup - but never made a move because I lived overseas and she either had a long-term boyfriend (complete with a joint mortgage and two dogs) or had broken up with the boyfriend and was still reeling. Still, we talk almost every day, spent all the free time we could together when I visit home and I’d seen some encouraging signs from her. Hell, when my parents came to visit she got up at 5 a.m. to buy a box of fresh donuts and drop them off with my parents so they could bring them to me on the plane. And it would have been more than a year since they had broken up by the time I got back to the US in August if I turned the contract down. Plus, the Tampa-St. Pete area where she lives is one of the places I’d like to find a job in.

I didn’t hang my decision on what she said, but I’d be lying to myself if I said it wasn’t a factor I had to consider. So I asked her what she thought. Unfortunately through text and not voice - I tried, but she literally fell asleep on me as I was about to bring the topic up. Snored and everything. I asked her if she would want to give dating me a shot this summer if I were to turn down the contract.

And she said no. She wasn’t attracted to me, she never had been and those donuts were something she’d do for any friend. And I was such a close friend to her that she didn’t want to risk messing up the friendship.

It hurt. God, did it hurt.

And it led to more soul-searching. I’ve always struggled with being the guy that girls love to keep around as a friend, that gets told that any girl would be lucky to have him, but never gets seen as an actual relationship prospect. Meeting people through Tinder or other dating apps helps with that, as it frames me as a romantic prospect in the girl’s mind from the get-go, but even after a few dates I usually ultimately get the same speech: “You seem like a great guy and I want to keep you as a friend, but I’m not attracted to you that way.”

This is not Nice Guy whining. The problem is not with the girls and their attitudes towards me. The problem is me, and whatever it is that doesn’t get them to see as boyfriend material.

To be brutally honest, I think one of the main factors in that predicament is looks. Something I’ve also struggled with for a long time. I don’t remember the last time I got complimented on the way I look, but I know it’s been years. Years. And there aren’t a lot of simple ways I can improve them anymore. I dress in clean, styled, well-tailored clothes. I have a haircut that I’m finally happy with and I keep current with my grooming. I even had Lasik, which got rid of the glasses and the tired eyes from contacts. Effort has certainly been made. And I don’t consider myself ugly - just not attractive.

But I’m still skinny, as is pointed out to me so many times per week. That’s what happens when most of the calories you consume are burnt up in long-distance endurance training and racing. And it’s been brought up as a factor in dating rejections. “I could never date a guy who weighs less than I do” is something I’ve heard a few times. The one that echoes, though, is from a fellow triathlete: “You don’t look athletic enough for me to be attracted to you. Now tell me how your Ironman went.”

The thing is, in long-distance running and cycling skinny means fast. It’s all about the power-to-weight ratio, and though I may not have much power I have even less weight, which makes me sleek and speedy, especially in the hot, flat places I race. That’s what I’ve tuned my body for over the past decade. God, it’ll be 11 years this weekend since I started riding seriously. And I’ve been skinny my entire life before that. Sure, I have leg muscles from all the cycling and running, but that doesn’t count for much.

And yeah, it’s shallow. But I’m in my 20s, where dating and relationships are still heavily influenced by looks and shallow aspects and everything else you notice on first and second impressions. I really do think that the combination of unassuming looks, introversion, aversion to drugs/alcohol and genial personality tip the balance toward the benign “he could be a great, caring friend” side of the scale as opposed to the “he could be a hot, loving boyfriend” side. But what would that scale look like if my looks went from unassuming to “wow, he’s hot.”

So let’s review where I’m at right now:

Dissatisfied with life. Possibly mildly depressed.

Burnt out from endurance training but still love the sport.

At a transition stage in life for the next six months. Belongings like sports equipment and clothing will be discarded or packed, and housing may change a few times.

Likely moving to an area where racing happens in the summer, not the winter like it does here.

Which means an awkward summer and fall where my normal endurance training is at a trough and everyone else is at their peak.

Likely moving to a new area, which means a whole different set of friends and potential dates.

Nutrition is actively managed with weekly prep sessions.

Solution to one of the main stressors likely involves changing myself physically, in a way I haven’t been able to because of endurance training.

Need a change.

Take all these factors together, stir them up and bake them for a few weeks of overthinking while on vacation and you get this:

Time to hit the gym.

For the past month I’ve been going down to my apartment’s gym three times a week and following the Starting Strength full-body routine. I haven’t ridden a bike or run or swam since February, apart from one crazy mountain bike race I did in Poland a few weeks ago. I’ve taught myself the basic lifts using Youtube and taking advice from a few friends who know about these things, and apart from that I’ve told almost nobody. I don’t intend to talk about it on Facebook either. I want to see who notices when I start to gain.

Because make no mistake, upper-body hypertrophy is the main goal here. There will be other benefits that hopefully will help in the long run, but first and foremost I want my shirts to not fit anymore. I want to stop poking extra holes in my watch bands. I want to catch people checking me out in the grocery store. I want to feel confident taking my shirt off at the beach or pool. I want to smile at myself in the half-length mirror in the morning.

I want people to think I’m hot. I want people to tell me I’m hot. I want to think I’m hot.

This doesn’t mean I’m taking up competitive bodybuilding or lifting. The long-term goal is still endurance sports. This move from cardio to the gym will last until winter, when it’ll be time for base miles and the start of the next (northern hemisphere) racing season. The goal is to be at the right weight and muscle mass by then, and then I’d focus on maintaining the gains while rebuilding endurance.

The gym should help in a few other ways. Having a stronger upper body will mean a much stronger swim, which has always been my weakest event. The core strength I’m looking to develop should help on longer bikes and runs. And I’m still working out my legs (even adding rotations on the leg machines, because my upper body can’t bear enough squatting weight to tire out my leg muscles yet), so the added strength there should help with technique stabilization and injury prevention.

This does mean I’ll lose cardio endurance, so I think realistically I’ll have to take a year or so to build up to half-Iron strength again, and two years to Iron strength. But my body knows what it’s like to have that much endurance already, and regaining is always easier than gaining for the first time.

Nutrition-wise, I’m ramping up the calories and shifting from a carb-based goal to a protein-based goal. I still have to drink my weight-gainer protein shake after I finish typing this up. My weight still fluctuates and I’m not always perfect in following my nutrition plan, but I’ve still weighed more this month than I ever have before. From age 16 until March my weight stayed mostly between 127 and 133 pounds, sometimes getting as high as 136. This month I hit 139 - so, so, close to the 140 mark. It’s down to 136.5 again now, but I hope to hit 140 on at least one day next month.

The gym focus also means I’ll be able to train consistently even as I move homes and do God-knows-what with my bikes and equipment. It’ll be good to have that kind of stability, even if I have to switch to bodyweight exercises for a bit.

It’s also refreshing to go back to the novice level. I’ve never gone consistently to the gym before, so I’ve had to teach myself everything. I had to figure out what my weight limits were, what exercises to do, what program to follow and even how to work some of the machines. I haven’t had to learn anything new in triathlon for years, by comparison. And I’m already making small gains.

I went to a triathlon team meeting for the first time in a while this weekend and opened up about the gym focus (though now all the reasons behind it). They were supportive and a few said I looked a little bigger - though that may have just been my clothing choice that day.

I’ll likely be leaving the UAE for good in July or August. It’s the middle of May now, which gives me about two months to gain enough to make an impression on those who last saw me in December. And six months until November kicks off the training season for 2018. This is new territory for me, so I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to grow by then.

But I know that I will be growing. I’ll be moving forward towards my goals.

And for endurance sports as well as life, momentum is a good thing.

(If you came here through Facebook, please don’t mention the relationship, job loss, country switching or gym focus on the comments about the post. I’m not keeping it a total secret, but I don’t want to broadcast it to the public yet.)

[twaaaaaa]

PSA to all my friends out there who are in a relationship with a guy

Send your boyfriend/husband flowers. Randomly, just because.

Yeah, I know, it sounds unmasculine or whatever. But hear me out.

We guys are used to doing a lot of the heavy lifting in relationships. Most of the time, we ask you out. We plan dates. We send flowers/chocolates. We love coming up with thoughtful ways to show our affection to you. And it makes us feel all manly when we see the smile it puts on your faces. It’s an active role vs a passive role.

But.

While we’re used to giving these kinds of affectionate things, they don’t necessarily come back to us in equal measure. Call it gender roles or sexism or whatever you want, but it’s still something we deal with.  I send flowers and chocolates and food left and right when I’m dating someone, but I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve been given a small random gift by an ex, and each time it made me smile for days.  We still have the same emotional needs as you, the same desire to feel loved — we’re just socialized not to show it. Which means that when we do get affectionate gifts like that it means so, so much more to us. This link says it well: When he can finally let go of the crank he continually turns day after day in order to earn love and, even if only for a moment, it turns by itself to nourish him in return, that is when he will know he is loved.

And flowers, in our culture, are one of the purest expressions of love you can give us. They’re not a practical object. They’re not something he’ll have to put effort into to enjoy, like car parts or a new grill. Their only function is to brighten his day. They say “I love you, I want you (and everyone around you) to know I love you, and you deserve to sit back and see beauty in your life.” What man would not love that?

It’s not just me who has this opinion. I’m on this rant because of my visit to a friend in Dresden the other day. She’s in a long-distance relationship with her boyfriend, and she was telling me that she missed him. I made the flowers suggestion, which threw her for a loop.

A girl send a guy flowers? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Guys don’t get flowers. What if he’s embarrassed by them? What if his co-workers make fun of him?

So I explained her the above, and then brought up the topic when we were eating dinner with her two other male friends. Their reactions were the same: “I would be shocked, but in a good way. It’s an amazingly thoughtful gift — and that never happens to me.”

So she did it. We sat on the couch next to each other and ordered flowers. I sent mine to my Mom, because Mother’s Day is the most important day of the year for her, and she called up a flower shop in Switzerland and arranged for a bouquet to be sent to her boyfriend’s work.

And they arrived today. The secretary called him in from the field to pick them up. He loved them, she said: “[He told me] That it was one of the nicest gifts he's ever gotten, made his day, and all co-workers were jealous. So basically I am the best girlfriend EVER.”

I can only imagine the smile on that guy’s face. He’d been apart from the most beautiful thing in his life for a month, and likely wouldn’t see her for a few months more. And now he had something pretty to remind him of what he would be coming back to.

Send your guy flowers. Trust me on this one.

[twaaaaaa]

PSA: journalists aren’t supposed to put names in the headlines if the person isn’t a public figure. It’s not a matter of maliciously not giving credit