Ironman Kona is here and running, and I'm here in my Graphic Design computer lab looking at photos from the race and trying to sort through my thoughts as I work on my book. I think the most difficult part of this little documentary, is trying to figure out where to start. My quest to finish an Ironman started way before I decided to do the race, and which is the most important part of that? In the meantime, every extra thought about the book throws me off my game.

Opening scene? If this were a movie, we'd do the Tarantino thing and start sitting in the water. Picture this, the screen comes up from black and we see a bunch of out of focus purple and blue and green blobs floating up and down. That sits there for a second, and we realize that things come back into focus when we realize what we're looking at is foggy swim goggles and he's just taken them off to clean them.

Voiceover: These are the thoughts I'm thinking right now. Or at least some semblance of the thoughts I was thinking at this moment. "I'm scared. What the heck did I get myself into? Can I even do this? At least I don't need to pee. Thank GOD I don't have to pee. I wonder how far up I should move up in this pile of bodies.
I could back out now, it's not too late. I'm glad I don't have to pee. Alden is probably doing much better at this point than I am, at least he knows he can swim. I'm so glad I don't have to pee. EEK." In a moment, I'm going to look behind me and the cannon's going to go off and I won't be able to back out. This is a little hard to look at, I'm going to get swamped in a second.

Boom. Split screen shows cannon going off and the swimmers taking off. In a little corner of the screen, you see Brian looking away from the start when everyone lurches forward. That scene freezes and the other slide off the screen.

On the right side of the screen:
Name: Brian Behm
Age: 22 years, 7months, 8 days
State of Mind: Absolutely and completely freaked out.

Cut back to sometime in the past.

That's how things would open, if this were a movie, but this is a book and I don't know how that translates. Guess I'll just need to learn.

Oops. almost forgot. Zen-like moment of the day? The swimming pool was mostly devoted to a women's water aerobics class. It was kind of frightening to see these very large but fairly graceful senior citizen ladies soaring through the water to my right as I swam up and down the pool. There's a certain grace to hearing so much less in the water. I think if there's anything I was surprised about during the Ironman, it was how quiet the swim became after the start. I mean, it wasn't silent, but it wasn't the flurry of noise I thought it would be once people spread out. I could hear music every so often when I came up to site, but it was mostly an hour and fifty-eight minutes of gurgling water sounds.

Maybe the swim would have been different if I had been able to look to my side and see the graceful senior citizens launching through the water. Ballerinas of the mind in their own aquatic play. eloquent underwater, yet so much less so when you come up for air and hear them sweatin' to the oldies aerobics beat style. Lord let me stay underwater!

more running today. The way things are right now, I do a heavy lift on Monday and Friday, a supplementary lift on Wednesdays and windsprint type running on the treadmills Tuesday and Thursday. I think the running is actually the most painful part of this whole thing. Pushing anaerobic threshold for as long as you can is a little painful. Then back off and do it again and again and again. Varying the pitch a little bit each time to make it harder or easier. At the peak I was doing a 10mph sprint at a 10 degree pitch. It hurt. A lot. Afterwards it was off to the pool again. It's become a sort of Zen-like thing to head down to the pool after my workouts. Just swimming a few laps working on form and then soaking in the hot tub for a few minutes can completely make my day.

I ran home afterwards to get ready for the bible study I lead. We moved from the church we usually do it at since it's not a big Young Adult group anymore and this was the first week at Casa Behm. I've come to the realization that there are no copy machines at all on the route between the fitness club and home. Oh well, we made do. Made up a protein shake with flaxseed oil for the first time. (I was happy that the flaxseed oil was fairly taste and odorless) and drank the protein shake as quickly as I could. Though, let it be said that GNCs Mega Whey Berry Extraordinary is miles beyond the MegaWhey vanilla.

After bible study we headed over to Buffalo Wild Wings and they had Fox Sports Channel on. Jim Rome's show comes on and who's on it? LANCE ARMSTRONG! And no sound or closed captioning! It was so frustrating seeing the show and not being able to hear what they were talking about. Did anyone happen to tape it for some odd reason? I really want to hear what Charles Barkley and Johnny Bench had to say about Lance.

I'm still alive! I know, I'm horrible for not having updated this yet, and I AM working on my race report. In the meantime, I thought I'd give a quick update. Training has kind of started again. I've really dived deep into some weight training and sprint workouts for hte first part of this next phase. I just realized that I'm not strong enough and that the extra layers of stuff that isn't fat that I have aren't going to go away with just cardio work. Thus, off to the weight room for moi.

went and did my weight workout today only to run into two people doing the one thing that drives me up the wall: sitting on the machines between sets. First things first I hve to wait for the leg press machine because some high school kid is sitting on the machine, then this guy who I see on the Tricep pull machine isn't leaving. The guy sits there for two minutes, does a set. Sits there again, gets up changes the grip and does another set. Reapt ad nauseum for 20 minutes. I finish the rest of my workout (reluctantly because I like to do it in the same order) and he's still sitting on the tricep machine. After several glances from me, he asks if I need to use it. I kind of nod and he lets me know... "yeah, slip in, but know I'm not done yet"

now that I'm here I want to get my two extended sets in and two unextended sets in. I do them back to back with dropped weight between the first and second sets and he comes up in the middle asking if I'm done... very impatiently... telling me that he DID let me squeeze in and that I should squeeze out just as fast. I grunt that I'm almost done and he leaves me alone, pacing around the weight room. ERGH.

anyway, that was today. I did however meet a really nice old guy in the locker-room that I talked to about IronMoo for a couple minutes. Turns out Dick Beardsley used to run a farm for him that he owned. Kinda cool.