You know you've probably let things get a little out of hand when racing two triathlons in two days over the weekend gets in the way of your long run and you have to find a way to squeeze a 17-miler into a Wednesday, but here I am. As important and cool as the Luray Triathlons were, my goofed-up spring and summer reshuffled my race priority hierarchy, and now everything is ultimately aimed at an attempt to meet a Boston Marathon qualifying time at the Detroit Marathon in October. That's if I don't collapse before then, but maybe that threat is part of why I keep trying to get away with this nonsense. Assuming I'm not going to get it just right - a safe assumption if there ever was one - at least overdoing it is self-limiting. Underdo it, and the big risk is that you'll get used to doing less, and the spiral into senescence begins. I am, of course, wide open to accusations of being full of crap, but I'm used to that, and that's the story I'm sticking with.
And how. My upcoming, August 28-29 Chicago Triathlon weekend has grown. With Peter Sagal going to such great lengths to back out of our showdown in the international-distance event, the race organizers asked if I might like to race against some other media- and celebrity types in the sprint event. One of those celebrities is Miss Illinois, and if I'm ever going to have half a chance at holding my own in a swimsuit competition with a beauty queen, this is it. So I said, sure, but that I'd love to still do the international-distance race as well. They countered with the suggestion that I might want to add Saturday's supersprint race to those two and do their Triple Challenge, and I think you know how I answered.
One of my commemorative t-shirts from April's Alcatraz and Golden Gate swims has a slogan across the back by Bob Roper, also attributed to Mick Jagger and any number of other people who live life right. It reads, "anything worth doing is worth overdoing." I wear that shirt a lot. Probably too much. Which is, when you think about it, just right.
4 comments:
I think you mean August 28-29th
Thanks, HenryT! Got it fixed. Very much appreciated.
I'm curious, Jef, did you ever study economics? I've forgotten most of it, but I remember about marginal values or diminishing returns or something. Too much of a good thing is usually worse than not enough, but to find the dropoff point, you have to experiment -- ie, input a bunch of different amounts and see what happens.
If you're having pacing issues, maybe you just need to draw more graphs ;)
This may be the first time in history that a cartoonist has been asked in all seriousness whether he studied economics. Either that or it's about the millionth time it was asked facetiously and the fact went straight over the cartoonist's head.
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