From Ironman to couch potato....now what?

  Time stops for no man. A dream becomes a goal, then a reality, and, finally, a pleasant memory. You can’t live in the past, though. Well, I suppose you can but this would obviously put a bit crimp in your ability to accomplish much in the future.

 

        It has been 4 weeks since November 2. In that time frame, before November 2 I have would put in 32 training sessions over 24 days, totaling nearly 15 hours. Since November 2 I swam once and did a 3 mile run (which left my calves more sore than the Ironman did). From Ironman to couch potato in a month, a devolution if there ever was one.

 

   I must say, however, that having an extended period of down time after such an intense year has been amazing. I had almost forgotten how wonderful it is to have leisure time. I am a night owl and love to stay up late at night but on most days I have to get up early in the morning. This is not a good combination for someone who feels sleep deprived much of the time. When I was younger, I used to hate to sleep, feeling that it was a big waste of precious time in which I could be doing something, anything. Now, I live for Sunday afternoon power naps and love the feeling of waking up on Saturday morning spontaneously, without the insistent chirp of the alarm breaking into my REM sleep. The latter is something I have not experienced the entire twelve months of Ironman training, as Saturday was always the day for my long bike rides. Up at 6 and out the house by 7-7:30 to spend the next 6-7 hours “at the office” so-to-speak pedaling away across the Lake County landscape.

 

To get up in the morning without an alarm, roll out of bed, fix breakfast, grab the morning paper, then sit at the breakfast nook enjoying both without a pressing deadline, chore, or exhaustive training session looming, ah, that is heaven.

 

There is a danger to having too much leisure time, however. After four weeks of this I am already feeling restless and unfocused. People with ADHD do not do well without structure. I know that I function best when I have a schedule, even when that schedule is ridiculously full. I seem to be able to move through a busy day more efficiently and purposefully than one which is full of free time. Most of my life, my schedule is made for me by others. In school, it was classes, assignments, etc. established by my teachers. In residency, both in general surgery and plastic surgery, it was established by the program director and the requirements of the respective certifying boards. In my medical practice, the schedule is set by my staff, patient appointments, and surgery. In the Ironman, it was set up for me by Karl and all I had to do was follow it.

 

Now, I have to establish a new schedule to fill the void left by the absence of the training requirements for an Ironman. Of course, I don’t want to lose all the physical fitness I gained, because it felt great. At the same time I know that I cannot maintain that peak level of physical fitness, nor do I want to, required for an Ironman. While some time will have to be set aside for regular swimming, running, and biking throughout the week this will still leave a lot of free time. My hope has been, as indicated in past blogs, that I can use this time to finish the re-writing of my book manuscript. This has been on the back burner since around April, when I received the 17 pages of suggestions from Emily, the developmental editor in California that I engaged to help me produce something potentially publishable. My disappointment that the manuscript was not perfect as submitted was mitigated by the information passed on to me from Emily, and a very successful writer, that all books go through multiple re-writes. It is just that the task of writing what turned out to be my first draft was monumental and the thought of doing it again is almost overwhelming.

 

Now, I have to establish a regular schedule of writing. All serious writers set aside time for their writing. William Nolan, the surgeon who wrote The Making of a Surgeon and is one of my inspirations for a writing career, used to put in at least one hour of writing each morning, before heading out to the hospital or his office. I need that kind of discipline but so far have only been able to find it in my physical activities. This is not going to be easy. It may be the literary equivalent of my first (did I really say that?) Ironman.