An Unexpected Dempsey Challenge

I took a long time to recover from that horrible awful no-good amazing wonderful Ironman. I rested and ate and didn't worry about a damn thing. Finally it was time to think about my final event of the year, the Dempsey Challenge, a fundraiser for the Patrick Dempsey Center for Cancer Hope and Healing.

Apparently all that rest was good for me. I PR'd the 10k on Saturday, the first time I've ever run a pace with an 8 at the start. I felt like a million bucks. And hanks to my incredibly generous friends, I got to hang out with Patrick once again at a VIP reception for top fundraisers. I told him about my friend Kelly Gray Hall's recent fight against cancer and he just about broke Facebook when he posed with one of the stickers I'd made for her.

The next morning, I took off on the coldest bike ride of my life, 50 miles at 28 degrees. 

I met a guy in the last 20 miles, a guy who owns a flower shop in town, and we hit it off. Just before the end, Mike the florist and I exchanged contact info and agreed to meet up later. I stopped on the bridge right in front of the finish line to take a picture. I got back on my bike, clipped in, and somehow fell over. My foot didn't unclip, and it twisted under the bike,  the pain  excruciating. Several people rushed to my aid. I pushed them away, trying to see through the pain. And then suddenly, it was gone, just like that. Oh, I must be fine after all, I thought. Thank God. They wanted to carrying me over the line in a golf cart. Hell no, I said, I raised $10,000 and just ran and rode all this distance? I'm riding over that line myself. Plus, I feel great!

I stopped in the medical tent just to be polite, because my friends the event officials insisted on it. Really I just wanted to make the most of the VIP lanyard I had and get into the beer tent where I could enjoy a big free lunch with the professional cyclists, plus Patrick and his pals. Let's get this over with so I can get over there.

I'm fine, I'm fine, I insisted to the medics. I don't even have any pain! It was just a scare. They convinced me to take off my shoe, and then I realized the only reason I was not in pain was because I was in shock. My foot was a grossly deformed, swollen in the strangest ways. Suddenly I was shivering uncontrollably. They wrapped me in space blankets and blasted me with heat. Oh shit, I said, I just want to go to the VIP tent. I think you'd better go to the emergency room first, they replied.  I texted Mike, the florist from the bike ride. I'm going to be later than I thought.

Karen and Brian came to get me in their truck. We stopped by the hotel so I could change my clothes before going to the hospital, and guess who was there, with a big hug and a kiss for the girl who broke her ankle on his finish line? My friend Karen enjoyed this quite a bit.

And while we were waiting at the hospital for the triage nurse, Mike the florist showed up with a yellow rose in hand.

Then my friends Tom and Laura made it. Tom was the guy who got me involved in this event, which he missed this year due to a fall. At last night's event, I was introduced as his sidekick. 

What a way to cap off the season.

Race Report

The smell of smoke in my hotel intensified as the fire raged on across the street, and sure enough, at 8:45 the hotel's fire alarms began to scream. I had been sort of expecting this all evening and had my stuff mostly ready to go--wetsuit, cap and goggles, morning clothes bag, bike and run special needs bags, breakfast, water bottles. It was a big load to carry up the hill, but when I got to the parking lot and saw the dozens of displaced athletes milling around, I was only grateful that my friends Carla and Martha had invited me to stay in their hotel for the night.

They had rearranged everything to make room for me. We were already up later than we wanted to be, so we settled in as quietly and quickly as we could. Down the hill, the fire grew smaller. I closed the curtains and closed my eyes, eager to claim some of the sleep I knew I desperately needed to fuel tomorrow's 14+ hour effort. But I hadn't realized how jacked up I was, and while my body felt exhausted, my mind's eye replayed a loop of roaring flames and exhausting firefighters and displaced residents and these beautiful buildings charred and soaked beyond repair. 

We athletes have been wandering around all week feeling like this is a pretty big deal, like we have taken on a huge challenge, and we get a lot of recognition for it. It IS a huge challenge, and we're pretty tough, and we've worked hard, and we're going to work really damn hard in the race.

But spring training has brought me lesson upon lesson about humility and perspective, as I've watched friends and family manage major illness, injury, and grief with mind-blowing grace. So it fits perfectly that I'm being served up this final dramatic reminder. I'm not tough. I mean, I am tough. But I'm not charge-into-a-burning-building tough. Yeah, my race is challenging, but really it's just a massive indulgence. It's not losing my home or my business. 

So when the alarm went off at 3:30, maybe 4 hours after I finally fell asleep, I was horrified at how tired I felt--I am a solid 8-hours-a-night kind of girl--but I wasn't about to complain. I felt my good fortune in my bones, and I could only hope my muscles would somehow understand.

My goals for this race had already suffered revision upon revision with a winter and spring fraught with minor illnesses. Until last night, my goal was to beat last year's time. Now my goal was merely to get through.

I counted on nerves and adrenaline to get me going, and next thing I knew, I was in the water. I found my pace quickly, held steady, and had the most satisfying race swim of my life. These swims are about so much more than swimming. It's one thing to swim a straight line for over an hour at race pace. It's another thing entirely to do it with almost 3000 other people, all of whom want to be on the same line. It takes focus, resolve, nerves, skill, and luck to claim a space and hold it well. You get punched in the face, kicked in the kidneys, swum over from behind. It's a kickboxing match in a washing machine. If you're lucky, you get behind someone you can draft for a good long while.

I think men and women tend to occupy space differently. Of course it's a generalization. But here's what I notice in swim after swim after crowded swim, where some 80% of the athletes are male. We women are just as competitive, and just as concerned with ourselves, but I think we're more sensitive to how we occupy space, how we're affecting others around us. It doesn't mean that we'll necessarily slow down to let someone go ahead, but I do think we work more collaboratively out there. Not even consciously. I think we make voluntary and involuntary micro-adjustments that allow us to claim our own space without necessarily usurping someone else's. 

The first few times I got pushed and scratched and clobbered, my impulse was to take offense. And then I realized, no, that dude is only trying to make it through, same as you. Put your head back down, own your position in the water, and go get it. And I did it. With those 2000 men and those 800 women, I found a line and swam hard, fast and steady, feeling the simple, exhilarating power of claiming and maintaining my position with confidence. I finished the swim well ahead of last year's time. I might just make it through this day.

Last year, I got on the bike in a torrential downpour, lightning and thunder crackling around me. This year's sunshine and dry roads were a delight, I was energized by the success of the swim, and I pushed hard. We all know the cardinal rule of this race--save your legs for the run, hold back on the bike, don't push--but I was about halfway through the first loop when I thought, screw it. I got nothing to lose here. Let me blast it while I can, see how hard I can go, see how much I suffer later.

Around mile 50 I started to feel the effect of the push and the sleep deprivation, but the spin through town at the end of the first loop was electric. Mike Reilly announced my name as I rolled through the cheering crowds, and I headed out on mile 57 newly energized. But on the flats heading along the river to Ausable Forks, things started to get dark. At the turnaround I stopped to use the sole portapotty and could barely even manage to flirt with the handsome state trooper who offered to hold my bike. I knew things were bad.

After the turnaround I saw Carla coming at me. I knew I was ahead of her out of the water, figured it was only a matter of time before she caught up. I was secretly pleased I had held her off until this point and resolved to make it through the bike. The climb back up to town is mostly blank. It was hot, I remember that much. I was really, really tired. I teamed up with some guys--one of whom had the same Felt brand bike--and when I raced them down a hill, psyched to take the lead, one of my CO2 cartridges for a tire change came flying off the rack and clattered away, narrowly missing the guys behind. They called me "The Felt Bomber" for the rest of the race.

About ten miles before the end, I spotted my friend Mara climbing the hill in front of me. She's a faster swimmer and cyclist. I knew I'd been hammering but this wasn't right.

"Why I am I catching up with you?" I asked. She was nearly in tears, her MS flaring so badly she could barely pedal. "Oh, Shann...This hurts more than birthing all four of my big headed boys," she cried. She let me give her some salt tabs, but that was it. Go on ahead, she said. Just go.

I rolled in to town feeling terrible. This was Mara's makeup race, after last year's attempt was fouled by a sprained ankle one month before race day. (She still did the race, mind you; she walked the entire marathon.) She knew that this distance just isn't good for her MS, but she was allowing herself this one more time to nail it. Just like last year, she had done everything right. She was in peak condition, ready to rock it. I was devastated that she would have to call it quits.

The volunteer in the transition tent opened my bag with urgency. What do you need? What do you want? How can I help? I sat down, feeling the heat, dizzy and nauseated. I'm not in a hurry here, I told her. Let's just do one thing at a time. I sat in that chair way too long. I couldn't imagine how I was going to run that awful marathon. And then I thought of Mara. OK, this one's for her. If she can't even be out there, the least I can do is get going. So I hit the road, every cell of my body protesting.

I was about half an hour into the run when Mara came trotting by. "I can't feel my feet!" she chirped. "I just hope I'm putting them down in the right place!" And off she went.

So much for trying to do anything for Mara. This woman is cut from a different cloth.

I feel like the rest of the marathon took days. I stuffed iced sponges in my top at every aid station. I walked a lot. I tried but failed to eat. I remember a few moments of joy: dancing up the Subway hill with a few spectators, playing a giant foam guitar with some metalheads at the end of a driveway in some back corner of the run.

Eventually Carla caught me. "Ohhh," she muttered. "This is really humbling." It was her first Ironman. "This is really, really humbling." I agreed so completely that I couldn't even mumble a response. We shuffled along together for about a mile, and then I had to let her go ahead.

Coming in to this race, I was prepared to register for 2016 on the following day. I knew I had at least one more in me. Now, as darkness fell on the back reaches of that marathon course, I changed my mind. Why the hell would I do this to myself again? This is a terrible experience. Why would I trash my body this way, why suffer by choice? This is it, I'm done. I'll be glad to get through today, and then I'm calling it quits. There's no way I'm doing this again.

Eventually, sometime after 9:00, I got back into town.  Music blared over the loudspeakers. The crowd was wild with affection and enthusiasm. No longer caring about my time, I high fived and helloed and hugged and hooted with them all, Into the oval and the final chute, I burst into tears. I was awash in a sea of love. Pure love from these thousands of people, all for a total stranger. I soaked it up and sent it back and wiped my eyes as I turned the corner into the final stretch. The music blasted as I pumped my fists, overcome with joy. And there's Mike Reilly, calling me in.

"It's Shannon Thompson. You're an Ironman, Shannon! Great job, girl!"

And there I was.

Oh, I am TOTALLY doing this again.

One More Thing

Hey friends, if you're thinking of me today in Lake Placid, know that one of the people I'm thinking of is Keith Miller, a local bike mechanic who lost his home in last night's fire across the street from my hotel. If you care to send a few bucks his way, visit the GoFundMe site here: gofund.me/9h4v9ja4s 

THANKS.

Race Day

My hotel was evacuated at about 8:30 last night as the fire across the street raged on. I found refuge up the hill with friends and slept four hours, which feels about four too short. This will be an interesting day. 

The fire is out, and everyone is OK. 

Athlete tracker is here, if you want to play along: http://tracking.ironmanlive.com

Thanks, you guys.

XO

Perspective

I was settling in for the night, right on schedule at 6:30, when I realized I had forgotten to buy salt for the potatoes I'm taking on the bike ride. I went down to the hotel lobby with a little baggie to see about getting some from the restaurant, and the two guys at the front desk looked shellshocked. "That's not good," one of them said. "Call the fire department NOW." I turned around and saw that the beautiful old brick building across the street was fully involved in a fire. Flames roared out the back of the upper levels, which I've assumed all week held apartments.

Stunned, I ran back up to my room. I've been thinking about fire all week. I've mentally mapped out the exit from my room so I could do it in the dark, I've worn PJs to bed every night in case I had to make a dash, kept my phone and wallet and keys right on hand. I never do these things. It's been very much on my mind. I watched with shock and horror as the fire department shut down Main Street, pushed spectators back, and began their first trips up the dark stairway to clear the building. It seemed an eternity before they got a stream of water on the flames. Smoke seeped out between the old bricks with increasing ferocity.

For the last two hours, the LPFD has been pouring water on the fire and on the four or five adjacent buildings. I have my bag packed in case we are made to leave. The buildings across the street house very small, locally owned shops and apartments. A Grateful Dead store, a toy store, a little gift shop.This small sweet, welcoming town has really grown on me, and its resources are stretched impossibly thin this weekend already.

Now so much smoke has gotten into our hotel that the alarms are going off and I'm being told to get out.

OK, well, see you on the race course.

A Body of Work

I am done hating my body. Most of my 40-plus years have been spent criticizing, hiding, and abusing it. Not wearing the clothes I like because I don't think I "can." Or because the clothes I like don't adequately hide the parts I hate the most. Missing out on adventures because I was too self-conscious to wear the required clothing. Missing out because I was too self-conscious to take the clothing off. Feeling guilty about eating. Sneaking food. Bingeing. Restricting. Exhausting a massive amount of energy worrying about it, trying to control it, beating myself up over it.

Enough is enough is enough. One of the biggest gifts triathlon has given me is that inch by inch, mile by mile, it has brought me into happier relationship with this body that makes it all possible. This glorious, strong, tough, resilient, perfect body. It's almost imperceptible, but the self-loathing trickles away with every workout, every race.

So I find myself here at Lake Placid, ready, willing, and able to take on one of the world's toughest endurance events. A race that I already know I can finish, an accomplishment I have already achieved. I wear my Ironman bracelet with pride, and I walk around this town wearing my Ironman athlete bracelet with pride, and I feel like F*CK YEAH, MAN, you're DAMN RIGHT I'm a freaking Ironman. This body and I can do any goddamn thing in this world.  

And at exactly the same time: holy shit, I am the biggest female athlete here. I am the only one with cellulite. No one here has any extra body fat. I feel enormous. I don't even look like an athlete. No one thinks I'm here to race.

I tell this voice to shut it. When I hear her shout, I consciously cancel her message with words of love for my calves, my thighs, my butt, my round tummy. But she's persistent, and loud, and she keeps coming back. The cognitive dissonance is compelling, and the intensity of this convergence leaves me thinking that I must be on the cusp of a major breakthrough. I am ready to shut that voice down for good.

We (women, especially) are bombarded with messages about how "flawed" our bodies are. We are expected to conform to an exceedingly thin standard to achieve real beauty. We are supposed to exercise and diet to achieve a beach, summer, or bikini body before we dare to let our wobbly bits show. No no no no no. My tummy wants sunshine on it, and I give exactly zero fucks about whether you think I have a good enough body for a bikini. Which is not entirely true, but it's my platform and I'm practicing it until I don't feel one bit squeamish about it. 

In a wonderful post in her "Go Kaleo" blog, Amber Rogers writes

Listen folks. Cellulite is not a ‘problem’. It is not a flaw. Cellulite is a normal function of the way women’s bodies store fat. 80-90% of women have cellulite to some degree. Lean women have cellulite, healthy women have cellulite, vegan women have cellulite, paleo women have cellulite, celebrities have cellulite, body builders have cellulite, bikini models have cellulite, women in isolated cultures who still live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle have cellulite, women with access to unlimited amounts of plastic surgery have cellulite. Most of the women reading this have cellulite. You’re not flawed. You’re normal.

(I encourage you to check out the whole article, for a clear and simple anatomy lesson and an inspiring message about body acceptance.)

I belong to a Facebook group started by Amber that provides a forum for discussing these issues. One of the traditions of the group is for members to post photos of parts of their body that they feel good about, or bad about, or ambivalent about, as a way of gaining perspective, developing some appreciation for themselves, normalizing our diverse body types, and correcting the radically skewed body image ideals that pervade our mass culture. I thought it was a little weird at first, but over time, I've found it to be one of the most emotionally moving, powerful, effective, and healing aids in my own path toward self acceptance. To see all these normal women's bellies on Tummy Tuesday, for example--to realize how widely reality diverges from the ideal, to read about their own fears and insecurities, and to hear about their own victories and confidence, their efforts to love themselves wholly and completely and without condition: yes. I want that for all of them. I want that for all the daughters. I want that for myself.

I was delighted this week to see that the cover of Women's Running Magazine features a beautiful athlete who does not conform to the typical size/shape/body composition standards of mainstream athletic pop culture.

We so desperately need images that represent us in all our shapes and sizes, that allow us to be strong and fast and brave and tough, whatever that looks like. I'm also a member of a women's triathlon group on Facebook, and every so often someone will post something about looking so horrible in race photos. Some chime in to offer support, but the bulk of the responding comments are from dozens of other women who think they, too, look terrible. How they bulge out of their spandex, how their faces look drawn, how their cellulite shows, how fat they look, how bony their knees are, how old they appear. 

It crushes me. My heart breaks for all these sisters. Of course the photos are unflattering -- we are breathless, in motion, working hard, wearing spandex, concentrating. I deeply appreciated champion runner Lauren Fleshman's decision to publish "real" photos of her body in contrast to her "perfect" runway shoot. 

Why are we even thinking about this? We are strong and capable and winning! We are goddesses and badasses. Stop it, just stop! But here's the thing: I am the worst among them. When I get link to a photo gallery from a race, I rush to find my own photos, and I'm a nervous wreck as I do it. I literally hold my breath while I click though to find out how disappointed I'm going to be. I sort through to to find a photo that I think is flattering enough to share to celebrate my accomplishment. If I'm lucky, and maybe with some cropping, I can find one I'm OK with sharing. Even last year's Ironman! A whole gallery of photos of me smiling while achieving the most badass victory of my life: and I was OK with sharing 4 of them. In the other 10 or 12, I couldn't see through the fat to simply celebrate the image of this strong, happy woman achieving a peak experience.

So I'm going to do something really hard right now. I'm going to post a photo from a recent race that I consider OK to share, even though I'm not thrilled with it. And then I'm going to post the one that horrifies me. I mean HORRIFIES me. Without editing and without further comment.

Yesterday while I was in the changing rooms at the Mirror Lake swim area, I heard some girls using the vending machines just outside the door. I imagined they were about 11 or 12 years old. "I'm actually getting food for a bunch of people," one said. "God, I would feel so gross and guilty if I ate this much food." 

NO! I wanted to shout. NO! Do not feel gross, do not feel guilty. Eat to feed your growing body. Do not explain yourself to others. Do not apologize for your choices. Do not hide. Love yourself, child. Let us all love ourselves, just as we are.

So tomorrow I'm going to stuff my big Athena goddess body into a teeny tiny spandex race kit, and I'm going to spend 140.6 miles in front of some 30,000 spectators. My legs are going to swell, as they do every day, and my various parts are going to jiggle and wobble and bounce, and my cellulite is going to be really pronounced in some of the photographs, and I am going to be jealous of some of the women out there, and that voice is going to try to tell me I don't belong, that I'm not good enough. But I am pushing that voice way away, into the deep woods of the Adirondacks, because the only voice I'm listening to tomorrow is the one I hear at the finish line, the one that says,

Shannon Thompson, of Camden, Maine, congratulations! YOU ARE AN IRONMAN!

Adirondack Mountain High

My excitement reached fever pitch when I made the turn in Keene onto the bike course. The clouds shifted across the lush green mountains and played the late afternoon light, sprinkles of rain mixing with golden sun as I clapped my hands and pounded my steering wheel and belted Van Morrison out my open sunroof at the top of my lungs, thrilled beyond thrilled to finally be at Lake Placid.

I checked in to the hotel, made six trips up to the 4th floor to bring my bike, all my triathlon gear, and a week's supply of food, not to mention the few things that normal people need for a vacation. I had done my 30-minute run in the middle of my trip, when I stopped in Burlington to meet my friend Nora. I still had a 30-minute swim ahead of me, and as excited as I was to be here, I was exhausted and it took every ounce of will power to get out of the hotel at 7:30 to walk down to Mirror Lake in the light rain. My resistance was so evident as I struggled to put on my wetsuit in the failing light that a man walking by said, "You really don't want to do that, do you?"

Nope. But I have never once regretted swimming. This time was no different. The moment I slipped into the water, my body rippling with appreciation and ease, I was filled with gratitude. All the kinks of the ride, the stress of the month leading up to it, all the fatigue dissolved away. I swam a portion of the Ironman course -- a double line of buoys, with a cable running along the bottom to allow swimmers to sight a straight line--and came out of the water a changed woman. Rain fell as the sun set, a band played in the park across the lake, a group of teens flirted on the dock, and two young boys splashed in the children's swim area, ignoring the pleas of their mother to call it quits for the night. I am in Lake Placid, and I believe I am the luckiest person on this planet.

I slept until I woke up, a near-forgotten luxury, and spent the morning catching up on a few things, thrilled to be quiet and still and alone. When I ventured out in search of a new race belt at the bike shop, I ran into a guy taking photos of the Olympic Speed Skating Oval, where they're setting up Ironman ground zero. 

"Isn't it cool?!" We both exclaimed. 

"Are you racing?" I asked him. He was not, and my grin nearly broke my face when I told him I was. I gushed about the whole thing for probably way too long, but he was into the story, and his excitement on my behalf is one of the things that will sustain me in the darkest moments of Sunday's interminable marathon. He wanted to know if he could follow my progress during the race. Humbled and embarrassed and completely delighted, I told him, yes, yes, please! I can actually feel the support when I'm out there. It makes a physical, not just a mental, difference. 

I spent a few more hours goofing off, including grabbing a most precious afternoon lie-down in the sun by the lake, and then got on my bike. My legs were tired, but the scenery was breathtaking, and it was all I could do not to stop every couple of miles for photos of the mountains, the trout streams, the glacial ponds, the wildflowers, the the the the.

While was pulled over in the golf club parking lot trying to get the sun to come back out for this shot, two friendly local guys pulled up on their mountain bikes. Splattered in mud, gregarious and charming, they offered advice about the race and suggestions for fun in the area. John said he was riding back home, so we said goodbye to Randy and headed up the hill. John then treated me to a backstreet tour of this sweet little town, showing me where to launch a kayak on Lake Placid, the place where they cliff jump, the old foundation of the Episcopal church, now a beautiful garden. 

He told me about his neighbor, Pownie, who is 90 but you'd never know it. She happened to come out as we rode by her house, and he was right--I would put her at maybe 75. Her friend Bobbie showed up, and I was treated to fifteen minutes of total inspiration and hilarity. They are all there, I realized. More than most people far younger. It's all about being present. Yes, they're healthy, and their intellect is sharp, but there's something more than that. These women are totally in their bodies, totally in this moment, totally engaged. I want that when I'm ninety. I want that now. 

It's a big part of why I do this race--the training sharpens my mind and puts me in my body and keeps me present like no other practice. When I asked these amazing women if I could take their photo, I snapped one, and then Pownie declared, "I'm getting rid of this old cane!" and threw it off to the side.

They headed off to a concert at church, and John and I took off for two more stops on the tour -- including the views from the Crowne Plaza resort, built on the highest hilltop overlooking the town. We stopped to admire this scene, and (real estate broker that I am), my first thought was wow, what a tragedy they put this hideous white building right here--it totally ruins the view. 

They really should have protected it--you'd think the resort would have done something! Or the zoning! This is a travesty. "What is that AWFUL building?" I ask. 

"Uh....that's the Olympic Center." John politely replied.

The Olympic Center. The one built in 1932. The, um, whole reason that all of this is possible, really. 

No wonder people hate real estate brokers. We both had a huge laugh at my expense, and it was a perfect end to a most magical tour.

I got off the bike and have the fastest run I've had since spring 2014. 

Oh, Lake Placid. I love you.