Numbers can be funny, and for some of us, may hold special meaning. For me, it's generally been a time - 12:34.
Thirty-four minutes past the mid hour only became relevant for me when my first born arrived in the world at this tick of the clock and I commented that she must already be able to count. Since then, I tend to notice this time on a regular basis, in the middle of performing my daily activities I might glance at the clock in the lower right corner of my monitor only to notice the sequential sequence of four digits is displayed. Sometimes it'll be whilst burning the candle at the other end I'll look over at the clock radio and note that special time (that and it's well past my bed-time). On other occasions I'll check my Garmin only to see I'm twelve minutes and thirty-four seconds into the current interval. Sometimes it appears as the serial number of my race id band.
I am aware that I must look at a clock face at all different times of the day and night, but the number of occurrences it turns out to be 12:34 just feels to be unusually high.
Continuing the numerical theme, a new number has been popping up with unnerving regularity. Enter, the number fourteen.
I first became aware of this new number because of an ironic link to the band Guns N' Roses. Allow me to take you back to my youth. Whilst in high school I was a big fan of the "Gunners" with their album "Appetite for Destruction" being the fist CD I ever bought. When they toured Australia whilst I was in University it was the first concert I ever bought tickets for. It was the "Use Your Illusion" tour and they played at the Calder Park Raceway. The day was incredibly hot to begin with, then massive storm fronts approached from both the east and west of the venue. The show's promoter came on stage and informed us, if the winds got much stronger they would have to move us to the infield, away from the stage and remove the huge banners from the either side of the rigging to ensure they didn't pull the whole thing down on us. We were also told that the storm had tipped a plane over on the runway at a nearby airport!
The rains came, the winds threatened but the support acts played on and just before the headliners were to take to the stage, the skies cleared and the show went off. It was an epic day.
A day I later came to discover my wife had missed out on as she hadn't been allowed to go at the time.
The Gunners didn't last, they released another couple of albums, none as successful as the previous three and that was it - until many years later when another tour was announced!
Ok, so the lineup was slightly different with Slash (and the rest of the original band!) absent but Rose Tattoo was returning, as was Sebastian Bach (if not with his original band Skid Row) but this was as close to the original show as we were likely to get. I got us tickets, it was awesome.
At the time I mentioned to my wife that I thought it funny that it took Axle 14 years to get back to Australia and this was also the name of one of the tracks from the last tour's album.
Fast forward to present day, good, now go back a month - there you go, it's mid November and we are in Shepparton for the half Ironman on Kialla Lakes. This is my third go round on this course, the first was a disaster when I didn't properly hydrate on the bike and literally blew up on the run with leg cramps and spasms the whole way. Year two was much better, resulting in a PB by almost an hour. Today was going to be the tie-breaker between the course and I. Things hadn't begun well as the wife discovered the day prior I had forgotten to pack my bike helmet with the rest of my race kit! A visit to the race expo and $150 promptly fixed the problem and we got through the day unscathed. It's unclear whether it was the new lid, the favourable conditions, or improved fitness but when I crossed the finish line I had taken a further nine minutes of my previous time.
It wasn't until the following week that we discovered that I'd left something behind, during the swim leg of the race, my wedding ring had slipped off my finger and is now hiding somewhere at the bottom of the lake. The same ring that my wife placed on my finger 14 years before.
Rolling forward in time again and we are at my first interstate race. We have packed up the family and road tripped for 9 hours (lots of rest stops) to arrive in the Nation's capitol territory for the Canberra 70.3 Never fear, this time my bike helmet was safely placed in the car days before we left and has therefore made the trip with us. I have everything I need for the race - except triathlon shorts... Crap
So, a quick visit to the race expo and $65 later I have shorts and some extra hydration tablets for my water bottle. The night before the race I lay out all my kit, check over it a couple of times, pack my gear into the race bag and prepare my water bottles with the tabs I've picked up early today. The aero bottle that mounts on the front of my bike tends to leak if not upright so I pack it empty and fill a disposable bottle to take into transition. Very early Sunday morning, as the sun is rising I'm in transition setting up my bike only to realise that I've left my filled bottles back at the hotel room - all I have is the empty aero bottle to mount on the bike. A quick shout to the wife, a visit to the expo and another $15 I have the required fluids to get me through the race.
The swim in Lake Burley Griffin is reknowned for it's poor water quality but today it's clear (as it gets) and the visibilty is not as bad as Shepp (I can almost see the top of my arm in the brown water) and the sighting is great with large landmarks directly behind each turn buoy. Despite the earlier hiccups we are off to a good start and I get back to dry ground in under 40 minutes (a first for me) and into T1. With all of the mucking around before the race I remember that I have forgotten to have my pre-race gel/bar so I grab one of my emergency ones as I'm stripping off my wetsuit. Tearing off the the top foil and squeezing the package I brace for the sickly sweet onslaught of mixed berry goop - only to find I've been a little too hasty and just squirted half of the contents directly into the wetsuit at my feet. Curses!
Correcting my miscalculation and consuming the remainder of my meal I finally kick out of the suit and head out onto the bike course.
Not wanting to be unprepared, I had ridden the bike leg on Friday so I knew off the hills at the back side of the lap and also how "dead" a lot of the roads were, what I hadn't planned on was pushing too hard on the first ascent only to cause my rear wheel to begin rubbing the brakes (the irony here is that, before the race I had swapped in my race wheel and reduced the pull for the brake action too make sure they worked well. Upon dropping the bike off a technical officer asked me to engage the brakes to display their proper working order I thought how it was lucky I had tightened them up)
Three laps of a brutal bike course and the sun came out for the run. A friend and fellow competitor later remarked how there was "total carnage" on that run course as she had never seen so many people walking, or trying to work out various cramps. In my previous races I have taken to try to run light and not carry a whole bunch of extra stuff. To this end, I generally try to utilise the aid stations, grabbing drinks and gels as I run through. This was the final problem of the day, none of the numerous aid stations stocked any gels. Bugger!
I was able to snag one cup of lollies and fortunately I had stashed a couple of gels into the rear pocket of my tri top so I was able to fuel a little conservatively and get through the day - somehow still managing a sub two hour half marathon.
My Canberra race was complete, but more than that, the event itself is done. They were saying there will be ab event of some description occurring, but that was the final edition of the Canberra 70.3, it was the also the 14th edition.
We are back home now after another marathon drive - the time is 12:34 am (really) and I find myself reflecting over the past events. The number of times the number fourteen has popped up and how it generally related to the end of something. I am also increasingly aware of the fact that, no matter how bone headed I am, the woman I married those same 14 years ago, whom delivered that little girl in the same year, is still by my side and still my greatest supporter. As I race, she cheers the loudest, when I'm training, she's there to get me where to or from my session, she is always prepared back my aspirations and to generally save my sorry ass from the stupid situations I tend to fall into.
Without her, I don't know where I'd be.
For the past 14 years, and many more to come.
I thank you Jo Jo
ps just noted, the first and last digits of my special time are also 1 and 4...
Thirty-four minutes past the mid hour only became relevant for me when my first born arrived in the world at this tick of the clock and I commented that she must already be able to count. Since then, I tend to notice this time on a regular basis, in the middle of performing my daily activities I might glance at the clock in the lower right corner of my monitor only to notice the sequential sequence of four digits is displayed. Sometimes it'll be whilst burning the candle at the other end I'll look over at the clock radio and note that special time (that and it's well past my bed-time). On other occasions I'll check my Garmin only to see I'm twelve minutes and thirty-four seconds into the current interval. Sometimes it appears as the serial number of my race id band.
I am aware that I must look at a clock face at all different times of the day and night, but the number of occurrences it turns out to be 12:34 just feels to be unusually high.
Continuing the numerical theme, a new number has been popping up with unnerving regularity. Enter, the number fourteen.
I first became aware of this new number because of an ironic link to the band Guns N' Roses. Allow me to take you back to my youth. Whilst in high school I was a big fan of the "Gunners" with their album "Appetite for Destruction" being the fist CD I ever bought. When they toured Australia whilst I was in University it was the first concert I ever bought tickets for. It was the "Use Your Illusion" tour and they played at the Calder Park Raceway. The day was incredibly hot to begin with, then massive storm fronts approached from both the east and west of the venue. The show's promoter came on stage and informed us, if the winds got much stronger they would have to move us to the infield, away from the stage and remove the huge banners from the either side of the rigging to ensure they didn't pull the whole thing down on us. We were also told that the storm had tipped a plane over on the runway at a nearby airport!
The rains came, the winds threatened but the support acts played on and just before the headliners were to take to the stage, the skies cleared and the show went off. It was an epic day.
A day I later came to discover my wife had missed out on as she hadn't been allowed to go at the time.
The Gunners didn't last, they released another couple of albums, none as successful as the previous three and that was it - until many years later when another tour was announced!
Ok, so the lineup was slightly different with Slash (and the rest of the original band!) absent but Rose Tattoo was returning, as was Sebastian Bach (if not with his original band Skid Row) but this was as close to the original show as we were likely to get. I got us tickets, it was awesome.
At the time I mentioned to my wife that I thought it funny that it took Axle 14 years to get back to Australia and this was also the name of one of the tracks from the last tour's album.
Fast forward to present day, good, now go back a month - there you go, it's mid November and we are in Shepparton for the half Ironman on Kialla Lakes. This is my third go round on this course, the first was a disaster when I didn't properly hydrate on the bike and literally blew up on the run with leg cramps and spasms the whole way. Year two was much better, resulting in a PB by almost an hour. Today was going to be the tie-breaker between the course and I. Things hadn't begun well as the wife discovered the day prior I had forgotten to pack my bike helmet with the rest of my race kit! A visit to the race expo and $150 promptly fixed the problem and we got through the day unscathed. It's unclear whether it was the new lid, the favourable conditions, or improved fitness but when I crossed the finish line I had taken a further nine minutes of my previous time.
It wasn't until the following week that we discovered that I'd left something behind, during the swim leg of the race, my wedding ring had slipped off my finger and is now hiding somewhere at the bottom of the lake. The same ring that my wife placed on my finger 14 years before.
Rolling forward in time again and we are at my first interstate race. We have packed up the family and road tripped for 9 hours (lots of rest stops) to arrive in the Nation's capitol territory for the Canberra 70.3 Never fear, this time my bike helmet was safely placed in the car days before we left and has therefore made the trip with us. I have everything I need for the race - except triathlon shorts... Crap
So, a quick visit to the race expo and $65 later I have shorts and some extra hydration tablets for my water bottle. The night before the race I lay out all my kit, check over it a couple of times, pack my gear into the race bag and prepare my water bottles with the tabs I've picked up early today. The aero bottle that mounts on the front of my bike tends to leak if not upright so I pack it empty and fill a disposable bottle to take into transition. Very early Sunday morning, as the sun is rising I'm in transition setting up my bike only to realise that I've left my filled bottles back at the hotel room - all I have is the empty aero bottle to mount on the bike. A quick shout to the wife, a visit to the expo and another $15 I have the required fluids to get me through the race.
The swim in Lake Burley Griffin is reknowned for it's poor water quality but today it's clear (as it gets) and the visibilty is not as bad as Shepp (I can almost see the top of my arm in the brown water) and the sighting is great with large landmarks directly behind each turn buoy. Despite the earlier hiccups we are off to a good start and I get back to dry ground in under 40 minutes (a first for me) and into T1. With all of the mucking around before the race I remember that I have forgotten to have my pre-race gel/bar so I grab one of my emergency ones as I'm stripping off my wetsuit. Tearing off the the top foil and squeezing the package I brace for the sickly sweet onslaught of mixed berry goop - only to find I've been a little too hasty and just squirted half of the contents directly into the wetsuit at my feet. Curses!
Correcting my miscalculation and consuming the remainder of my meal I finally kick out of the suit and head out onto the bike course.
Not wanting to be unprepared, I had ridden the bike leg on Friday so I knew off the hills at the back side of the lap and also how "dead" a lot of the roads were, what I hadn't planned on was pushing too hard on the first ascent only to cause my rear wheel to begin rubbing the brakes (the irony here is that, before the race I had swapped in my race wheel and reduced the pull for the brake action too make sure they worked well. Upon dropping the bike off a technical officer asked me to engage the brakes to display their proper working order I thought how it was lucky I had tightened them up)
Three laps of a brutal bike course and the sun came out for the run. A friend and fellow competitor later remarked how there was "total carnage" on that run course as she had never seen so many people walking, or trying to work out various cramps. In my previous races I have taken to try to run light and not carry a whole bunch of extra stuff. To this end, I generally try to utilise the aid stations, grabbing drinks and gels as I run through. This was the final problem of the day, none of the numerous aid stations stocked any gels. Bugger!
I was able to snag one cup of lollies and fortunately I had stashed a couple of gels into the rear pocket of my tri top so I was able to fuel a little conservatively and get through the day - somehow still managing a sub two hour half marathon.
My Canberra race was complete, but more than that, the event itself is done. They were saying there will be ab event of some description occurring, but that was the final edition of the Canberra 70.3, it was the also the 14th edition.
We are back home now after another marathon drive - the time is 12:34 am (really) and I find myself reflecting over the past events. The number of times the number fourteen has popped up and how it generally related to the end of something. I am also increasingly aware of the fact that, no matter how bone headed I am, the woman I married those same 14 years ago, whom delivered that little girl in the same year, is still by my side and still my greatest supporter. As I race, she cheers the loudest, when I'm training, she's there to get me where to or from my session, she is always prepared back my aspirations and to generally save my sorry ass from the stupid situations I tend to fall into.
Without her, I don't know where I'd be.
For the past 14 years, and many more to come.
I thank you Jo Jo
ps just noted, the first and last digits of my special time are also 1 and 4...
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