Race Report: North Face Endurance Challenge, Madison, WI Sept 15, 2012

Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water, [do hills]

After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water, [do hills]

-Buddha's CrossFit coach

Monk Power-- Preparation
The North Face Endurance Challenge was mine and my wife's first 50 mile run, and it turned out to be my favorite race of all time! Perfectly managed. Perfectly unmanaged. Never mismanaged.

On one level, I get that all this racing and training is an utter vanity. The results, the accomplishments, the gear, the jealousy, the expectations-- they're all vanity of Biblical/Koranic proportions. So, 10 pm, four days before the race, stricken with some kind of 24 hour Buddhist virus, I suddenly decided my hair, too, is vanity, and that's it's gravely important to shave my head in order to transcend it all. Detatchment, grasshopper. Ommmm! 

The mediation started out with zen-like clarity-- See the trail. BE the trail. Find your freedom. Release the hair. 30 minutes into it, my wife, Susie, stumbled upon me helplessly fudging with the clippers in the kitchen. Here. Let me help you, babe. Then Susie commandeered my little monk plans and proceeds to tells me,  Hon, sometimes you just gotta let the mo' flow. Yunno? Then the purity of my feng shui scalp quickly veered from the monk to the punk-direction.

Sometimes you just gotta let the mo' flow. Yunno?

Mohawk it is, then! After all, monasticism, too, is a vanity with it's own egotistical pitfalls, (which I know a little too much about).

Ultimately, the race turned out so well, I think, because... 
1) I was able to approach it stripped down of all the baggage that normally shackles my mind (appropriate training drills, performance goals, ego's attachment to outcomes, fruit-eating logistics, etc) As a trail run, it just felt so pure-- devoid of all the pavement, triathlon gadgetry, the hulking-type-A personalities, the glitz and glam of million dollar bike corrals, etc; 
2) it was a stunningly beautiful day among breathtaking scenery on the famous Ice Age Trail; 
but most of all, it was awesome because of  
3) FAMILY! In their clumsy, loud, and sacrificial way, they turned it into a giant lovefest. 

How it went down
In typical monk fashion, I never run with ear phones. I prefer the minimalism of going noiseless and shirtless. However, at this particular 4 am race day juncture, I decided to de-frock the monk and detach from past precedent-- going WITH a shirt and WITH earphones. It would be cold, dark, and solitary, after all. I set my Pandora station to "Elton John- Tiny Dancer" which guarantees lots of classic rock songs that I can sing to. This is important because by singing along I am guaranteed to keep my competition subdued and my heart rate at the appropriate zone- NOT panting- ~80% of max heart rate. 

Headlamps are mandatory and essential till sunrise.

My karaoke-based heart rate plan backfired like a mother, though. First of all, with a 5 AM start time, my heart was still asleep and not quite ready to do 80% to Tom Petty's "Runnin' Down a Dream", so the first 6 miles were a rude awakening. Secondly, by mile 18, the dang Pandora station played "Let It Be" four times and "Imagine" twice. John Lennon was slowly tranquilizing me to my demise. I found out the hard way that there is such a thing as "too hippy". My iphone's arm band made the screen so impossible to see and touch that I wasn't able to skip to a new song or change stations. I stopped and stumbled with it several times unsuccessfully. Let that be a lesson to never try anything new on race day.

By mile 12 or so, the sun was rising, the frost melting, and I emerged from the woods and into the rolling meadow section. This is where I had an emotional mountaintop moment as the Skynyrd song, "Simple Man" played. It always reminds me of my dad. He's the greatest and simplest man I know, true to the song (minus any redneck or racism). His love has always been mohawky-- not the smoothest thing in social situations with me, but sloppy, raw, spunky, balls-to-the-wall, generous, heroic human love. It reminded me of the legacy I want to leave planet Earth.

Hotel California came on soon after and I was feeling dang good about a "dark desert highway...cool wind in my hair." I pulled my arm warmers off, feeling warmed up, and I latched on to the heels of a local who claims he runs 70 miles per week on the Ice Age Trail. What a lucky dude! I was feeling in a groove, reminding myself to reserve some gas in the tank-- the race would begin at mile 40.

The meadows were so beautiful. It was like running back in time.

When we finished that 5 mile stretch through the meadows, the local dude claimed that we ran it 10 minutes faster than we should have. I'm not sure what his plan was, but I was running my own race confidently, with my heart rate steadfastly locked at 80%.

Prior to mile 40, I had two benchmarks in my mind-- 1) the marathon mark, because I mean, C'MON, it's a marathon; and 2) the 28 mile mark, which is where I could pick up my pacer-- my brother-in-law, Mike. I'd been looking forward to running with him for about a year since we first started talking about the possibility of this race and Mike first started taking up running. Mike is the most interesting and creative man on the planet. I knew I'd want his company and Jedi warrior skills, but I underestimated how essential his bag of tricks would be. 

Mike is also a Reiki master and if there is anything you need at mile 30 in a race it's Reiki and voodoo. Reiki is an acknowledgment of the fact that permeating all of reality is energy and vibration that affect and can be affected. Think of The Force. The practitioner intends to promote healing by way of attuning and facilitating energy flow. I don't know enough about it, but I asked for it and I believe it helped. It usually requires the laying on of hands, but rather than break our stride for touchy-feely hanky-panky, Mike laid his hands on my voodoo doll while we ran. I asked him to work on my quads, which were starting to feel fatigued and on the verge of cramping.

My doppleganger voodoo Reiki doll. See how inflamed my quads got?

When I picked Mike up, our original Plan was that he'd only be with me for 7 miles, to the next aid station. The plan was for him to escort me to Lee Ann at mile 35. Then he'd retrace his steps and crew for Susie too. Lee Ann is a veteran Ultra runner and dear friend and the sister I never had. I crewed for her at the Burning River 100 last year and that's where she planted that little ultramarathoning seed in my head. I was hoping she'd pace me into the promised land, maybe helping me break the 8 hr mark. Anyway, when I picked Mike up at mile 28 aid station, Lee Ann was there and alerted me that she changed The Plan. She wouldn't be running at all with me because Susie was in need of veteran crewing ASAP. She was in a dark place on the verge of not making her cutoff times at the checkpoints. So, I consented.

Even though I was running with Mike through the beautiful pine forests of Ewok-repute, I was distracted by my concern for Susie. I was also worried that I wouldn't have any company for the closing miles of the race because I wasn't sure how much gas Mike had left in his tank. The 22 miles to the finish would be longer than he had ever run before. 

The pine forests of Kettle Moraine State Park looked like Endor from Star Wars.

There weren't a whole lot of women on the course, so when Mike and crossed paths with Susie in the forests of Endor, she might as well have been Princess Leia herself. I was very happy to see her, but she hadn't yet picked up Lee Ann at mile 28, so we kept the chit chat short, high-fived, booty slapped, and I told her what a bad bitch she was. Because she IS. 

I need to note that when I picked up Mike at mile 28 I took a little equipment break to change my Pandora station to tap into the direct satellite link to the testicular spark plug of the universe-- my Enrique Iglesias and Shakira station. The stretch of trail to the next aid station at mile 35 was certainly the hilliest section of the course. This is where Enrique lit a fire up under my cockels. True to my plan, I took the uphills in such a way that kept my heart rate at 80%, which usually meant walking or very slow running. BUT on the descents, I threw caution to the wind and attacked them hard. I knew this was risky, but I was feeling realllly good. It almost took more effort and caused more pain to run cautiously than to basically treat them like a controlled fall, powered by gravity. I had a feeling the strategy might come back and bite me later in the race, but I don't think it did.

Mike was in much better form than me on the uphills, where he had to slow down for me, but the descents were starting to take a toll on him. I think his motor had the power, but his chassis wasn't quite ready to take the pounding. Somewhere around mile 36, we separated. I wouldn't see him again until the finish. I blame/thank Enrique and Pitbull. 

Running downhill, I let my body do the talking, making lots of horse sounds.

This was the toughest section of the race for me. Mile 43 was my low point. The day had heated up to about 80 F. I was out from the shade of the forest, and the aid stations were just far enough away from each other (5-7 miles) that I ran out of water twice and got dehydrated. Not only that, but my salt tabs fell out of my pouch somewhere and the aid stations had no salt, and the race placed my drop bag at the wrong aid station and we couldn't find it. Together, I blame the cramping that ensued on those mishaps. I would be in a total groove, passing people right and left, and then I would clip my toe on a root and as I caught myself from falling, my legs contorted with cramps all the way down my hamstrings and quads. I'd take a little stretch break, see some people make up some ground on me, and then I'd build the pace back up steadily. Then the cycle would repeat-- speed-up, trip, cramp, stop, stretch, build it back up.

When I hit mile 40, I was ready to start racing as a race. Before that, I had to treat it like normal training run. I was prepared to allow my heart rate to drift to 85-89% and I allowed myself to fully feel torturous pains. I find I can sometimes treat this feeling like a familiar friend. It's almost like being out of my comfort zone is in fact my preferred comfort zone. Some torturous pains are constructive while others become destructive. I was trying to run that fine line between them.

I took extra water at the two remaining aid stations at mile 40 and 45 to see if I could recover some of my hydration. I started to pass people like crazy between 40-45. They were all slowing down while I continued to get faster and faster, churning out some of my fastest miles of the day. In fact, it became pretty clear that I was going to run the second half of the race faster than the first half.

The folks I passed lifted my spirits further with their, "Good job, dude" and "Way to go mohawk." I tried to reciprocate their kindness. However, my cramps had other plans for me and would bring me back from cloud 9 to reality. A man can't run, or walk, or encourage others, if he can't get rid of his own cramps. So, from mile 45 to the finish, the only way I could keep the cramps away was to keep my heart rate at 75%, not the direction I was hoping to take it.

Coming out of the forest was a huge relief. The park road was lined with fans and I could hear the music blaring from the finish chute. On the one hand, the feel of the flat, predictable blacktop was a depressing contrast from the lush beauty of the forest, but it was also kind of familiar and homey, and more importantly, it meant that I had done what I had set out to do- RUN 50 MILES! Emotionally raw, I crossed the finish line and dove into the arms of Mike and the rest of the family and started tearing up. They were such great fans, I didn't know how to thank them.

I finished in 8:26, doing the second half of the race ~20 minutes faster than the first half. I've never negative split in my life. After a quick recovery in the on-site ice bath (which I'm pretty sure was mostly icy urine), I got back in the car with pointman Earl and Susan, on the hunt for some more Susie-sightings. 

2 Live Crew. Mike Davison was a champ as dad and photog and pacer. He chats it up with Ben, while Earl is busy playing crew chief with Susan. They were a welcome sight for this tired dude.

Lee Ann and Earl going over The Plan.

Earl created the ultimate map that showed the race course, roads, aid stations, glacier history, migrant bird flight patterns, THE WORKS! We knew exactly where to be, and when, in order to see Susie and cheer her and Lee Ann. 

Having your body-and-soul mate to train and compete with is the coolest part of the adventure.

It's also a special feeling seeing your fan club in matching T-shirts with your name on them while they massage your feet and when your feet feel like this:

Sorry, nail, you're a goner.

Susan is a saint.

The BEST CREW in the world on the hunt for some carbo-loading the day before. 

Food and Poo
All right. You knew I had to address it, but to be kind, I saved it till the end. Poo was a non-issue. I've mastered it. Woke up at 3 am race day, drank a liter of water. Then the system did its duty just like clockwork.

Food for the weekend and the race had a few hiccups. I brought a cooler of frozen bananamammajamma (banana puree) for the weekend which was essentially my meal plan for the whole weekend and it worked great. We also went out for dinner two nights in a row to a bar which actually had an amazing wild rice salad. I

n typical Dwyer-fashion, I also brought several pounds of pitted dates that I had soaking in water. True to minimalist form, I forgot my blender. After three days of soaking, the dates basically separated into mushy fiber balls and high octane syrup. I drank the syrup, but the dates were nasty at that point. Thus, my race day drop bag date-o-rade plan was a bust. I survived the entire race with an unscripted nutrition plan-- I ran on what the race provided-- ~300 calories per hour of Gu gels, Gu Brew, Nuun, SaltStix (I brought), and water. I snuck a few advil in there, too, but that was a once in a lifetime thing.

Fiber balls in high octane date syrup

Post race grime

Post race kiss with legendary Ultramarathon Man Dean Karnazes

The icing on the cake was eating breakfast the next morning at the hotel, when along walks the legendary Dean Karnazes looking for bananas and sees a huge pile of them on my plate. He's a kindred spirit. "There are my bananas!" 
"Hey Mr. Karnazes, thanks for putting on such an epic event. And thanks for really helping lift my wife's spirits when you high-fived her on the trail. We just love you." 

Susie had the composure to sweet talk him into posing for a picture. 
"Dean, can I kiss you?" 
"I'm from San Francisco-- of course, man."

Blood.Brothers.Suckers

My brother, Matty, came over my house to hang a couple of weeks ago and felt the wrath of the mosquito brothel in my backyard. He figured out that the mosquitoes are laying their eggs in my open rain barrel. We can't even go outside or the mosquitos will mutilate our faces in a ruthless bloodbath.

Sorry, Oakley-- my bad. 

So the next day he (Matty, not the Lama) came over with a jar of mosquito-larva-eating fish that he uses in his pond. They are called Gambusia, I believe. Or just call them mosquito fish.

THREE WEEKS LATER
After the fish had their feeding frenzy, I'm happy to report the mosquito life cycle has been broken! I finally hung out in the hammock today in our back yard with no mosquito bites. The hammock is once again one of my three happy places I go to mentally, and now physically. I kind of expected the fish to be so huge after feeding on the mosquito larva that they'd look like tilapia. No such luck.

The 2400 Square Foot Elephant Scrotum in the Room

Not all that can be counted, counts. And not all that counts can be counted. 

 

 Albert Einstein  (but more likely William Bruce Cameron)

The future of green homes is like a big juicy elephant scrotum. As a participant in the green home consulting business (at Sol design + consulting) I have a unique vantage point on a very strange situation I see growing. It's almost as if the entire culture and green businesses are 1) ignoring the elephant in the room, while 2) we are all giddily imagining an enormous fertile scrotum of business potential in the room. But here's the catch--elephants do NOT have scrotums (their testes are internal). Furthermore, the elephant MUST be acknowledged for safety's sake.

My purpose in this blog is a two-testical punch:
1) shed light on the "elephant-like-thing" that is in the room
2) shed light on the elephant scrotum that is NOT in the room, or rather, add some realism to our runaway imagination on what this green home growth is all about.

If there were an elephant in my room, I wouldn't be asking for a symposium about elephants, but instead, I'd be asking for a tutorial on window latches. Solutions, immediately, please!

It's a hose? It's a rope? It's a tree trunk? It's a fan? It's a rock?

I'll be the first to admit, "green" is exciting, but it's tricky. I wish the green label meant that something was regenerative and nourishing. Instead, it's a nebulous term, impossible to quantify, and susceptible to hi-jacking. As in the old Indian fable, ask six blind people to define an elephant and you'll get six answers. Ask a dozen people for definitions of "green" and you're likely to get a baker's dozen back. So instead, we cave to the temptation to define "green" by an assemblage of proxies. Is your building lead-safe, water-wise, grid-smart, high efficiency? Does your car get good fuel economy? Is your coffee shade-grown and fair-trade? Is your neighborhood pedestrian-friendly? Is your corn dog all-natural? Blah blah blah-Certified

That is why I like the way my buddy Dr. Bob Dahlstrom likens "green" to a compass's magnetic north. We never really arrive to "north", but it's a useful orientation. The weakness, however, is that the direction of our vector can be made rosy even if the magnitude is gloomy.

The proxies for green-ness come in all different forms, but they usually implore metrics that fall short and sometimes miss the mark completely. Then the system is left suffering the classic system archetype behavior known as Seeking the Wrong Goal (1)-- defining our success via corrupted metrics. Here are some examples of perverted green metrics that end up warping our loftier goals:

Perverted metrics:
1) Number of wind farms contributing to the grid
2) Miles per gallon of new car
3) Percentage of citizens recycling
4) Number of LEED Certified homes built in the city

Better metrics:
1) Megawatts of coal-sourced power contributing to the grid
2) Number of gallons of gasoline consumed in a year
3) Pounds of organic matter composted in a year
4) BTU per square feet of newly constructed homes

If your goal is become healthy, but your metric is "amount of diet food purchased" then success looks like a whole lot of Snackwells (Jevon's Paradox). If your true goal is to educate children, but your metric is defined as "dollars spent per pupil", then success inevitably look like a perverted game of cash explosion.

What if, instead, the educational metric were changed to...
 -number of words in student vocabulary?
- height of survived egg drop divided by weight of egg drop protector?
- minutes of dialogue spoken with a foreigner?
- number of students willing to pay their teacher for having offered them an amazing experience before they graduated?

Obviously, if these metrics were in place, the system would demonstrate remarkably DIFFERENT behavior (good, bad, or ugly).

For goodness sakes, get to the point, Chris! 
What is this elephant in the room that we are afraid to acknowledge?

GROWTH. As it pertains to aggregate growth of the Gross Domestic Product-- I propose we start to treat "growth" like cuss word. When you hear the politicians say it on the radio, as a fix for the country, just substitute that word "growth" with "elephant scrotum".

"What we need, my fellow Americans, is not four more years of failed policy, but elephant scrotum."

 

Random Presiential Candidate 2016

"Growth" is an elephant scrotum of wonderfulness...as in, it is poorly-imagined, mis-guided, and non-existant wonderfulness (which Herman Daly does a better job illuminating). It is a case of seeking the wrong goal, since GDP has much less to do with the welfare of a culture than most Americans would think. As an accounting mechanism, we universally know and admit that the GDP metric fails our end-goal in at least three major ways:
1) it ignores the AWESOME non-market goods/services (like parenting or pollination);
2) it ignores the externalized costs of harmful activities (like pollution);
3) it allows equivalency tradeoffs between necessary things (clean water and air) versus luxury things ("boats and hoes").

That means that the services provided by stay-at-home parents are bad for GDP but the purchase of a pack of cigarettes is good for GDP as are the cancer treatment drug sales down the road. The purchase of LED light bulbs and riding your bike are bad for GDP but driving your car and changing the tires is good for GDP.

Some alternative accounting mechanisms, like the Index of Sustainability Economics and Welfare, actually show an inverse correlation in between GDP and Americans' welfare. That means that as GDP grows, our welfare is worsening!

Source : Lawn, Philip A. (2003)

I wish I had a more current graph, as there are obvious biases and complications that need refining in any index attempting to capture the full meaning of human welfare. It is in fact, impossible. But that doesn't mean it's not useful. At least that's what I think Albert Einstein was getting at in the quote I intro'd with. Here's a reminder-

"Not all that can be counted, counts. And not all that counts can be counted.".

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with a scrotum as there is nothing intrinsically wrong with growth. But let us not forget some basic rocket science-- when things grow, they get BIGGER. We must recognize that the economy is a SUB-system of a larger organism. The "scrotum" is within the elephant just as GDP can only live within the resource limits of the planet. There are natrual limits to growth, many of which we are currently finding and overshooting, in our oceans' fisheries for example.

Now, on to a shining light.
As GROWTH pertains to homes, the good news is that our super-size-me-fication trends of the last three decades have been flattening. Even though last year, the U.S. Census reported that the average new home size increased 88 square feet to 2480 sq. ft., this anomaly bucks a four year shrinking trend. We will probably see a continued decline in home size, as realtor trackers report growing demand for down-sized homes. Yabbadabbadoo!

In two weeks, we are excited to welcome Sarah Susanka, author of The Not So Big House and The Not So Big Life, and other "Not So Big" publications. A brilliant architect, she will be the keynote speaker at our Green Home Summit. Her inspiring designs remind us better than words of what it is about our homes that makes them so valuable and nourishing. Quality trumps quantity.

What I like about her approach to green building is that it doesn't begin with the building at all. It begins with the life.
What is a good life?
What makes a home special?
What is a home's relationship to sense of place?

Here's your enormous juicy elephant scrotum of business opportunity
I love chatting it up with Klaus, our office handyman, about green construction and home building techniques. I asked him if he had a chance to tour any of Cincinnati's green home shows over the years. His response had me rolling on the floor laughing my ass off:

Big homes with 2x6 framed walls and geothermal systems.

I've been building all my walls 2x6's for the past 20 years.

And a geothermal system doesn't suddenly make a $300k home magically worth $500k.

C'mon, I want my 10 bucks back!

Is this incremental improvement the future of American home construction business?
Or is there viability in some of the more radical approaches?


TO BE CONTINUED

(Or maybe not. We'll see if I have time orenergy between now and my big race in September)

 

Footnotes
(1) For the greatest book on systems ever, read Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows

Guest Blogging Has Kept Me Busy

I got to guest blog this week for two of my favorite people. Check em out!




Marburg Real - for a clever How-To (NOT) get your penis thrown into a garbage disposal by your significant other. Smoothie anyone?

Fitness Electronics Blog - for a technical review of the Garmin Forerunner 910xt, a GPS watch and its role in DWYRMAN, my do-it-yourself Ultra-Triathlon. 

DWYRMAN 2012 Race Report

DWYRMAN is done and done!

Congratulations and thank you so much to EVERYONE who participated in the most epic, most affordable, most potassium-enriched, most challenging race ever run in Cincinnati - the inaugural DWYRMAN carnival of funk.

Chris and Sanrdo tied for the win, setting course records, (with asterisks abounding) but no legitimate instant replay to refute the shared victory. There will be a battle brewing over the next 360 days leading up to DWYERMAN 2013 or perhaps SANDYMAN 2013, 'cause you bet your butt there'll be another - bigger and badder and this time well-organized event of epic proportions. DUHN DUHN DUHN!!!

First of all, my lovely wife Susie deserves the top place among the honor roll for completing what she calls the "wife of the year" performance, sag-waggoning, burrito-hauling, traffic-dodging, couch-surfing, and down right saving the day from behind the scenes. She's right - wife of the year. What a peach! And in the same weekend she managed to whip out a 20 mile run on top of teaching her annual two hour Tour de France Spinning class at studio s. Second honors go to all the other participants' wives, husbands, partners, and friends who put up with our antics.

THE EXCESSIVE DETAILS
Even though the original course was designed to complete 227 miles of swimming, biking, and running over two days, due to some typical Dwyer fudge-factoring, the course had to be improvised for safety, legality, and to serve the greater goals of the event.

The Start: Saturday 6:17 am (5:45 am Brazilian time)- meet at Bass Island in Newtown.

I scavenged my Facebook files and found about 35 crazy bastards that I feel like I've gotten to know better thanks to cycling (one more reason to love bicycles). I couldn't have assembled a more disparate group of friends. I love them all but I was like, "O man, I hope these guys can find some common ground for conversation or else it's gonna be a long awkward day."

Introductions were quick but effective. Matt McCune refused to ride without some jokes to warm us up. (Sounds like a typical Ohio State Buckeye soccer warm up to me). Rob Messmer dug deep into his repetoire, "What kind of bees give you milk?" [Silence and yawns from the sleepy crowd] "BOOB-bees!" Rob is a real talent.

Lee Ann Werner was quick to applaud sarcastically, "You're obviously making great inroads with the ladies, Rob." And the ice was broken. There were cat calls from the crowd for me to deliver a speech. So, I tried to combine the world's greatest cinematic pump-up speeches from Braveheart, Independence Day, Ghandi, A Few Good Men, and Goonies. Some kind of speech NOT like what I wanted came out. I don't remember exactly - I'm dangerous with a microphone. But it was hopefully something about the pure joy in riding with friends and enjoying summer. And then we were off...headed northeast, toward Ol' Milford and Round Bottom Rd.

(L-->R) Sandro, Katherine, Casey, Christine, Lauren, Lee Ann, John, Rob, Franklin, Russ.  (Yours truly taking the picture). 

Destination One - East Fork Lake
It was about 25 miles of empty roads to East Fork, other than the ornery pick-up truck that gunned past us, crossing the double yellow, narrowly missing a state trooper and killing everyone. No one likes to see someone get busted... except twelve nerds in lycra who see impatient drivers like this every weekend. Score one for the rule of law.

East Fork Lake where the turkey vultures like to hang out. 

"That's strange, I don't remember those no-swimming signs being there, last week when Franklin and I scouted the course." If there had been signs, I'm positive Franklin would have noticed and planned an alternate swimming location, because that guy is always prepared. Nevertheless, there were the signs. And here we were, ready to swim. What were we going to do, NOT swim. Nuh nuh. Sometimes you need to know the rules just so you can break them. Lee Ann's eagerness to break rules was borderline anarchic. And her spirit was infectious. Some of us swam, while other illegally sunbathed. So much for the rule of law.

Awesome picture courtesy of Christine Robbins, obviously the only one with a photo-journalistic sense in the group. 

Most of us just jumped in with our tri shorts. The water was much warmer than the air and so calm that it was easily the most comfortable and enjoyable open water swim I'd ever done. We hugged the buoy line toward the opposite shore. Not all of us swam, but the most impressive performance was easily that of my kid brother, John, who swam the mile with no goggles and barely any swim experience - Tarzan-style.

John and Russ exiting the boat ramp. John is a Bearcat who showed up some of the other triathletes with his low-tech, no goggle studliness. No one lives life harder than that guy.

The classy folks over at the Fitness Electronics Blog were kind enough to let me borrow a GPS watch (Garmin Forerunner 910xt), to track my swim distance and time. In the mad rush of the work week prior to DWYRMAN and the logistics of hosting the event, I neglected to figure out how the gizmo actually worked or how it could save my butt. Luckily, Franklin and Rob were veteran Garmin buffs and they gave me a crash course...which I'd later come to fail. So, even though the swim course wasn't marked with buoys, or a dotted line like I saw on the map, my watch told me that by the time I got back to the dock, I had swum 1600 yards in 28:00 minutes and that seemed like a nice round number to hop out. One lake down; four more to go.

Destination Two - Ceasar's Creek
The ladies of the Element Cycles Women's Team and Casey had to scoot home to their prior commitments, so unfortunately we lost four members of our crew shortly after East Fork. The group was still strong though, but I was fearing that it might be too strong and too much sausage, if you know what I mean. Only the Brazilian bombshell, Sandro, had committed to going the full DWYRMAN distance with me, so to be led by five seriously Irony-men, plus Lee Ann who could probably trump them all, pushing the pace for the next 50 miles seemed like it could backfire on Sandro and me later in the day.

Except for a few stretches, the course was corn fields and gorgeous, even improved from a week earlier when Franklin and I scouted the course after the Ceasar's Creek tri. Here's what it looked like just a week before. The road was completely gone and the only way around was through poop-smelling pourage! For DWYRMAN, though, this exact road was totally back to normal in what had to be a record repair time.

Rt 132 under construction

As usual, when the hills approached, I took the bait and pushed the pace too much with the guys doing the short-course (100 miler). What can I say - I love erratic, stochastic behavior. I blame Rob, who just escaped from Alcatraz. 

Me and my brother John at Ceasar's Creek

Now, I swear I attempted due diligence for safety and legality for our next swim. Here's the map of the south end of Ceasar's Creek Lake from the State Park website. Where would you plan a swim so as not to get arrested? If you chose the picnic area where the little icon of the man with the elbow is, you'd be way wrong! The Rangers will hunt your ass down.

The perfect observation deck to watch some swimmers...if you're a park ranger looking to bust some people. 

Swimming (and biking) is against the rules here, but the ranger was a good sport about it. He pretended to have tickets for us. But they were really just mountain biking maps. Thanks Ranger Rick!

Hardi-har-har! Franklin thinks he is so funny for punking us with the old fashioned ranger-with-ticket-look-a-likes trick.  "O yea, well your pecs are look-a-likes."

Ceasars Creek Lake near the dam

We only managed one out and back loop in the lake before Ranger Rick kicked us out. "The dam could suck you up," says Ranger Rick. It sounded unlikely, but we didn't want no trouble. The good news was we had time to kill since Susie was stuck in traffic with our made-to-order burritos. The bad news was that we had to go off-course five miles just to find a real beach where we could finish our swim and, at this point, Rob, Matt, Franklin, and Russ were getting antsy about meeting their curfews. How were they going to make it home in time? 

I would trust Russ to track a falcon on a cloudy day when it comes to knowing every bike route by heart. He is also the maestro at orchestrating Belgian wheels and team time trials. All I can say is they hauled booty to get home. According to Rob's Garmin and Strava, their paceline back to Cincinnati earned them the second fastest bike split along that portion the Miami Scenic Trail ever. And then there were four. 

Destination Two-and-a-Half - Ceasar's Creek Legal Beach

John, Lee Ann, Sandro, and I rode the extra miles to the Ceasar's Creek beach to pack in more swimming and wait for burritos. (Good golly, what's so special about these burritos - performance-enhancing clenuterol?) The previous swim was the nicest. But this one was the toughest due to the heat, the hunger, and the water conditions being so choppy. Once again, Lee Ann managed to get yelled at by the lifeguards at the beach for straying beyond the buoys. She was so proud of her sinister behavior. I love her. Totally burrito-worthy. 

Sandro, John, Lee Ann, and I break for magic burritos at Ceasar's Creek.

Susie finally got through her two hour traffic jam and found us for a beautiful lunch at the picnic table. After the swim, was the only time all weekend I felt my body somewhat out of control. I was calorie-low and shaking, about to bonk. I had plenty of calories available in my Camelbak, but I wanted a real meal for once this weekend. We all had our fill of mangoes and bean burritos. 

Sandro man-handled the mangos for lunch

13,000 calories can only get you so far in the absence of "real" food. 

After lunch, Sandro and I had to say goodbye to the last of our support crew. John and Lee Ann hitched a ride home with Susie. As we were hugging and kissing, I noticed the strangest thing - Sandro was starting to smell really good. How is it that this seasoned Ironman veteran forgot his goggles, but remembered his cologne? Meanwhile, I couldn't smell any worse. Not so much me, but my clothes. Even Lee Ann complained that she had could smell her own "lake breath". Susie gave us all a piece of gum and suddenly it was as if my mouth had taken a shower in the Alps and now I was completely refreshed for the challenge of DWYRMAN to really begin. 

Leaving Ceasar's felt like the real beginning of DWYRMAN and where the test of endurance began with my man Sandro.

Destination Three - Hueston Woods State Park 

In typical Dwyer fashion, I steered us out of Ceasar's Creek park in the opposite direction that we wanted to go. I didn't figure it out until 4.5 miles out of the park. So, I apologized to Sandro, who was full, happy, and forgiving. We did an about face and headed due west, toward Hueston Woods State Park. This would be the longest leg of the DWYRMAN course even if we hadn't gone the wrong direction. 

To make up time, we rode far longer on Rt. 73 than I had planned. There was a wide shoulder for much of it, but it was a total highway and very stressful and not at all scenic. We got through Franklin and Middletown quick enough, but just as the roads become scenic again at Springboro, we ran into trouble. Sandro was bonking so we started looking for a pit stop. We saw the cutest little bike shop in old Springboro, but decided it would be a distraction and that a gas station would be best to load up on more calories and electrolytes. We found one about a mile out of the way, and just as soon as we had left, we were descending a hill and Sandro's tire popped. Not just his inner tube, but his tire - it was completely shredded. He started cussing in Portuguese and Spanish at his mistress Patricia Renata (the name he's given his Specialized road bike). 

Our eyes met and my heart sank. "Chris, this is not good. Our adventure might be ove...BIKE SHOP!!!!" We both had the thought at the exact same time. Sandro plopped down in front of a picturesque farm house and I booked it as hard as I could back the way we came to the bike shop. "Are you #$% kidding me?!" In the ten minutes that had gone by since we were just at this bike shop, they had closed and no one was around. I checked my iphone and the nearest bike shop was north in Centerville - 11 miles away. I called Sandro and let him know I'd be at least an hour. We had no choice. I knew our DWYRMAN course would be altered somehow by now, but I just couldn't let it end here. 

I bought Sandro two new tires and two tubes, since his were pretty worn thin. Meanwhile, he was chumming it up building international relations with his hosts on the farm. They were the definition of good Samaritans, offering him water, bike pumps, corn, a refrigerator box to sleep on. 

Sandro replaces his back tire and tube while local yocal David practically invites him to join the family.

My trip to the bike shop was basically a one hour time trial and the only time all day that I held a heart rate above zone three. Zone two was the goal, and from now on, I will swear by it's magical powers, but we were running out of day light and had no time discuss theory. We had only three hours of daylight remaining by the time we got the tire fixed and we still had another 50 miles between us and Hueston Woods. 

The next 50 miles were the most pleasant scenery and conversation of the day. Sandro and I discussed deep life matters, the challenges to attaining mental health, and the beauty of finding community. We knew we wouldn't be able to make it to all the destinations of of our planned DWYRMAN route. But there was relief in the freedom to choose our own adventure. 

As we neared Hueston Woods, the tendonitis in my knee was out of control. I felt like I was riding one-legged. My right leg felt invincible and like I could ride forever, a testament to zone 2 endurance, but my left leg felt like my knee's tendons had detached and burst into flames in a shark's mouth. 

Hueston Woods is literally one of my three "happy places" that I go to mentally during visioning exercises. So as we entered the park at sunset, with a sliver of a rainbow on the horizon, it felt like I was truly arriving home. It felt very good. No, we didn't complete our goal route, but I was very proud that we had still completed 163 miles of riding in one day and ~3 miles of swimming. It was too dark to swim our mile at Hueston Woods, but I did take a nice running dive off of the dock into the lake. 

Day one conquered!

Susie had to rescue us at Hueston Woods. 

DAY TWO

We had a bit of trouble getting out of bed and rounding up supplies, and I will take full credit for making us late to the park. I will go on record as being later than the Brazilian. Skipping coffee could have put us back on schedule, but Brazilians and my wife just don't go there, girlfriend.  Our plans were to meet at 10 AM Sunday at Miami Whitewater Park on the west side of Cincinnati near the Indiana boarder. We were going to run four laps around their eight mile bike path and then we were going to ride our bikes home via Anderson Ferry to Rt 8 Kentucky through downtown Cincinnati (~50 miles). My knee was on the brink of injury from the bike, so I cancelled the ride home. We didn't even take the bikes. 

I felt awful that I made my brother-in-law Mike wait for us at the park. He's just recently gotten into running and if he could complete one lap, it would be the longest run of his life. Spare time is not something this young dad has an abundance of. He's truly an inspiration to me. If I could complete four laps, it too would match the longest run of my life (and my age). Luckily, Lee Ann was back to crew us for another dose of sadism and she and Mike found each other in my absence. They got busy right away making friends and ratcheting miles, headed counterclockwise until we arrived and could find them going clockwise. 

To paraphrase 4-time world champion Chrissy Wellington (about Ironman), "When you run a marathon after riding 112 miles, at first your legs feel like jelly. But later, they will feel like lead." As I suspected, one cannot expect to run normally after riding 163 miles. But surprisingly there was absolutely no pain in my knee or any other body part as we ran. It felt like a relief, different from cycling, trotting along in heart rate zone 2 (~125 beats per minute). And again, I felt like I could have gone all day long at this pace (~10:15/mile). 

At mile two, we collided with Mike and Lee Ann who were moving fast. They looked strong and already good friends. 

Mike's been doing a lot of barefoot walking, running, and living and already has a good looking stride.

Miami Whitewater birth canal. So metaphorically delicious. 

Sandro, Me, Lee Ann, Mike, and Susie (taking the pic) in the heat of the day.

Mike and Lee Ann had afternoon engagements and so they left Sandro and me after one lap. There we were again, on a very long quiet road with just our thoughts, half-baked lectures, dissertations, books, and a Camelbak full of water and calories.  We were plowing through them all. Time was passing very fast for me. 

We were both experimenting with our nutrition strategy. Up until Sunday, Sandro was a Stinger Waffle virgin. He sure turned waffle-slut pretty quickly, and basically deep throated my whole Y2K stockpile. Meanwhile, I was running with a squeezable jar of honey, which may or may not be considered vegan. But there I was, LOVING IT, not wanting to put another god-forsaken artificial gel in my body. It worked well. And not all bees feel exploited by the honey harvesting practice. In fact, their very future (and ours) may well depend on good local beekeepers. But I digress. 

It was sooo interesting running with Sandro. He claims to be a reincarnated refugee from the planet Zeist, where he used to dwell in smoke form. That is why his running form is not quite tip top shape yet. But he ran the last four miles barefoot which was pretty darn impressive. He attributes his lack of injury to his barefoot running. He convinced me to run the last mile barefoot, which was a fun change of pace, although I haven't done it for several months. The pavement was just cool enough by the time we were finishing. 

At mile 16, my ankles and hip flexors started to ache in a dull pain sort of way. It never went away, but miles 16-19 were the hardest. Then, I sort of embraced the pain. It is a very similar feeling to pulling an all-nighter doing homework. It hurts, but it just continues to hurt, while not getting much worse. 

By mile 32, Sandro and I noted that we both felt like we could totally keep going. Zone 2 running was feeling very powerful. It wasn't lightening fast, but we were already guaranteed a share in first place with no threat from other racers. And guess what - WE WON AGAIN!!!!

I feel well prepared for September's 50 mile run at the North Face Endurace Challenge in Madison, Wisconsin.  But beyond preparation for something else, DWYRMAN itself was a stand-alone event of my summer, and indeed my bucket list. No, it's not a famous (or real) race or anything, but it had all the ingredients of what makes life worthwhile to me. It was a journey, not a destination. 

Sandro taught me to that in life, it's best try anything twice. The first time, liking it or not liking it may be a fluke, but if you try something a second time - then, you know. Maybe next year we can try to complete the full distance DWYRMAN. With a few logistical improvements, completion might be possible. With some matching leopard print speedos we may even have a good looking team. Sandro is even threatening a SANDYMAN 2013 up in beautiful Interlocken, Michigan. I'm in! And Russ is even countering with a MEYERNMAN, which will probably skip the swim and just push his Whole Foods shopping cart instead and then circumnavigate the entire state of Kentucky. Russ, don't we do that every weekend? You know it. 

Sandro deserves a kiss for taking such good care of me. 

Susie deserves a kiss for taking such good care of all of us. 

Muchos besos to all the participants! It is such a blessing to know such cool people. 

Susie Crossland-Dwyer, Mike Davison, Russ Meyer, Franklin Baker, Rob Messmer, Matt McCune, John Dwyer, Lee Ann Werner, Christine Robbins, Lauren Meeth, Kathryn and Casey Blankenship, Sandro Barros, and Dan Dwyer in spirit.  

REFERENCES

Here's the planned route minus the running. Here's the actual bike route.

DWYRMAN 2012

Muskeegon, Michigan on our way across Lake Michigan via The Badger

My wife and I just got back from a little family getaway to northern Michigan and from a friend's wedding in Elkhart, Wisconsin. Yet, as wonderful as the vacation was, I always enjoy the act of coming home-- ahhhh. Sometimes I need a vacation from the vacation. Is that just a case of the grass being greener? 'Cause I chronically suffer from it. But the suffering is great training for what's in store next weekend. Playtime is over. Or is it just beginning?

It's DWYRMAN time.

Today, I suffered from it some more-- green-grass-ping-pong-pick-a-daisy syndrome. What doest that mean? It means my deep yearnings and their oscillations between two extremes of "arriving home" versus "venturing out"; it's "rest" versus "hammer-fest"; "work" versus "play". I love them all; I love them not; I love them all; I love them not. Contentment is the elusive attractor at the bottom of this pendulum swing that never quite settles down in me. Even this morning I felt like I was on the outside looking in on a triathlon smorgasborg-a-palooza. LET ME IN! 

I reeeeally wanted to race today with my friend Franklin at Ceasar's Creek Triathlon, but I just didn't have peace of mind to spend $75 after all that unpaid vacation. So, I decided to just tag along with Franklin's too-cute family and cheer him on. What do you know--my cheering WORKED! Franklin put together a stellar performance and ended up winning his age group! I was so happy...and yet I was so sad that I didn't get to race. But it was probably best that I save my energy for next weekend.

Franklin at the finish. Victory!

After his victory, Franklin was studly enough to do some course reconnaissance with me for next weekend's most epic summer adventure of all time-- the first ever DWYRMAN.

DWYRMAN is my do-it-yourself adventure race next weekend that was inspired by the convergence of several winds of inspiration:

1) Ironman is the ultimate athletic stage, in my opinion, but good golly it's expensive and corporate-feeling. And who are these white people with the $10,000 bicycles? Is there a way to fulfill the challenge without giving $630 of race entry fees and $500 of hotel fees to someone else? It should be called a quadrathlon since the 4th and most challenging event is managing the finances it takes to put this race on your calendar. I want the DWYRMAN to be a stick-it-to-the-Ironman of sorts.

Menona Terrace bike transition Ironman Wisconsin

2) The feelings of fitness and freshness rarely occur at the same time. For many, the feeling of either fitness or freshness would be miraculous on its own, but to experience both simultaneously, coinciding with the particular date on the calendar that corresponds to the day of the $630 race...now that would be like Shakira and Enrique Iglesias having offspring together on a lunar eclipse in my backyard within my finished privacy fence. Simply the ultimate project taken to 100% consummation. That is why I wanted better control over exactly when my A-race of the year would take place. It's a cool feeling when all the training, nutrition, sleep, friends, and post hole digging come together.

3) Rich Roll's blog, and then his New York Times best selling book, Finding Ultra, about his journey to and participation in the inaugural Epic-5 Challenge deeply inspired me. A great read, if you get the chance. His quasi-spiritual DIY adventure was an attempt at conquering five iron-distance triathlons, over five days, on five different Hawaiian islands, with his one-armed amigo Jason Lester.

Jason Lester

4) We've got all these lakes, parks, and different states around, so...what the heck-- let's go see them and enjoy the summer!

Anyone can come who wants to. 

Riding The Badger across Lake Michigan, the spirit of the Honey Badger overcame me.

Contact me for details if you want in.