Broccoli first

Ever since I was a kid, I've eaten my dinners in reverse order.  Least favorite to most loved.  Thus, broccoli was always a first course for me.

And, as I'm sorting through my thoughts on my first Ironman experience, I keep finding myself getting caught up on the bad bits.  You know, things like barfing in the water and grinding up Old Sauk Pass on a couple of Clif Bloks and a prayer.  It's all emphatically disappointing and, frankly, it's getting in the way.  The bad bits, that is.  And you know what?  This weekend I toed the line to an Ironman with good people and family watching and had a BLAST, despite all the tribulations.

So, in an effort to clear the air, I have to purge a little post about what happened, so I can get on to the long list of good things that warrant much more of my thought and attention.

Broccoli first, please.

Bad Bit #1: Not finishing the race.  Yeah...that's a pretty big bit.  I have HUGE amounts of disappointment flowing through my body about how my Sunday ended and how far afield that ending was from what I planned and trained for.  But I have to trust my decisions and my own instincts and know that the story still remains valuable, even with a different ending.  I can tell you how progressively worse it has been to awake each morning since and remember this reality anew.  But life will go on, even without melodrama, and I will have excellent memories to share and hold.

Bad Bit #2: My propensity for barfing.  I'm going to use the word barfing, because there just isn't a graceful way to talk about this.  It's gross.  And indelicate.  But it was my reality for much of the day and the major reason for me pulling out of the race after 57 miles on the bike.  Yup, 57 miles.  But more on that later.  Let's just say simply that my stomach had a very different plan for the day and it didn't involve any of the nutrition that I had carefully scoped out, tested, retested, and trusted for these past months.  Am I bitter?  Absolutely.  Do I feel better now? Yup.  And oddly, feeling better now only makes it worse.  I want THIS healthy body back on THAT course.  I want a do-over in the most pronounced way.  I want to drive the 20 hours back to Madison this very moment and start where we left off.  But such is not life.

Bad Bit #3: What does this mean?  I have a list of possibilities, but it bows heavily on the negative and somewhat destructive side.  I've had five states worth of conversations with Mighty M about what this means and how it reflects on me, what I could have done to prevent it and what I can do to avoid it in the future, and how I will use this experience.  Will I focus on the "failure" to cross the finish line?  Will I use it as a learning experience?  An indication of a limit?  How will I describe how I feel about it?  How, in fact, will I feel about it?  Right now I'm a little numb and tired, emotionally.  I'm slowly pulling out the bits and pieces of my feelings and looking at them closely.  I tend towards brutal honesty and harsh criticism, but this is tempered by M's soft touch and forgiving perspective.  Somewhere in the middle I will find the right words.  For now, though, I am still figuring out what this will mean to me, now and in the future.

So there they are, my bits...my broccoli.  

I didn't finish my first Ironman.  I got wickedly sick and I couldn't make up the difference on sheer will.  And now I'm unsure what this means.