Coming To A Troubador Near You This Thursday...

The Return Of Stefon!

How Far Away Is April Again?

10:00:00...

Is a number I'm starting to see a lot these days...in my sleep, in my head, on the faces of ninos and small animals. It's the number I think it's going to take to be allowed to compete at Kona next year. From what I understand, Cozumel is a slow and windy course. Last year, the last guy in my age group to make it through crossed with a 10:24. He's in Hawaii now, ready to go for this Sunday, the start of this year's Ironman World Championship. I want to be able to say that to myself a year from now...or to some friend when I can't make a sunday brunch - that I have to hop out of town to compete in the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii. Sure, I'm about that a little bit...though a whole lot less than one might think.

It's daunting, not just the 2.4 swim, 112 bike, 26.2 run (yes, miles), but fighting for something that other somewhat talented and hungry 25-29 year old men are going to be fighting for...treating every second like they matter because they all do. Of the hundreds that will be lined up in our age group, I'll worry about roughly 6 of them. They're the 6 who I can see now, every morning and afternoon, before I go to bed at night. They're pushing me every day to find my fights and bleed my miles, knowing that somewhere else on the globe, they're doing the same thing...all of us convinced that we're the ones entitled to this thing, one of the three tickets Cozumel can give to Kona.

Today was a light day. I woke up and hit the road for two hard hours on the new Cervelo. The rain has stopped in Los Angeles, finally (one day and a half), and I was out in time to catch the morning glow before the sun came up. Everything felt right. From there, I dropped my bike off, changed shoes and hit the road again, one hour and fifteen on foot - some hills, mostly quick tempo, mostly with the intention of putting some break in my legs in preparation for friday - tomorrow. Everything felt right. Considering I could barely walk correctly 2 weeks ago because of my blown left calf, I have new and ultimate respect for this process. It's magic and it isn't. I've learned to love the pain of rolling my legs - because if I don't love it and don't do it, then my body has every right to rebel, and I deserve to have everything I work for and desire and dream of taken away.

So tomorrow...

I need to test a couple things - lot of body, mind, some new nutritional elements. For the last 2 weeks, I've been logging 5 hours of training per day for about 5 days a week. The longest singular interval has probably been about 4.5 hours. Tomorrow, I need to get past my body and into my head. So here's what we're going to do...

Wake up at 5:30, ride to Santa Monica and lap Santa Monica before putting a loving hurt on my 7-9 cycling class. When it's over, I'll lap San Vicente before riding home, before leaving my bike and changing my shoes sometime around 10, a 4.5 hour ride. Then, I'll hit the road, aiming for 18-20 miles on foot before running into Equinox on Sunset just before 1, leaving me 7 hours into the day. I'll be drained and pissed and sitting in front of my buddy Colin in a yoga class. He's going to ask me to do a lot of disciplined, difficult, obnoxious shit (amazing too), and I am going to handle it. When my body is destroyed and my mind is on the edge of oblivion, I am going to eat some salt tabs and take on whatever comes like an unstoppable bastard. 8.5 hours. I'll drag myself home, hopefully delusional, eat something, pull myself together enough to head back to the gym at 545 to teach what will likely be the worst spin class in the history of Equinox. 10 hours...

Onward.

Two Of The Best...

I was out to dinner with a friend last night, talking about the moment I begin to have ultimate respect for performers -- when they walk into SNL and just kill it. Dr. Timberlake did that a long time ago. Then he did it again, and again, and again. Jimmy Fallon is the best ever. This is magic...

Sponsored!

Because my game is true, or at least so I like to think...

When it comes to doing things in this world that I deem absolutely necessary, money is not a concern. Meaning...I will gladly trade the stress of debt to travel or train for something I need, like an Ironman, like this promise I have made to myself that says I'm going to make it to Kona, and that Kona will be just the beginning.

But I'd rather not be drowning. I'd rather not carry that stress - I'm carrying enough as is. Last week, I wrote a letter to a friend, laying out my plans for the 2010-2011 racing season. I asked for help. We met for lunch. I said something like I know the last thing your juggernaut needs is help in advertising, but that I would still earn everything you give. He said something like you're a good egg and I like to be able to help people chase their dreams. Then he said yes. I asked if he said yes. He confirmed. I have a sponsor.

This morning, I woke up at 5, ate breakfast, listened to my body, and went back to sleep. Yesterday, I was up at 5, waited for the sun to come up before hitting Sunset for 50 miles on the bike before running for 10 before classes at 515 and 715. My body is coming back together. I can feel myself getting stronger. The worst thing I could do is not have ultimate respect for sleep. Sometimes, discipline means taking the easy route - at least in this situation. Understand though, unless you're training for an Ironman, that excuse is not an option. Sorry.

There's an ease to this morning, as my workouts aren't going to start for about another hour - another 50 on the bike before 2 in the pool before the shoes come on for another 10. I've been saying this a lot in my classes, to ride my bender, that I am as hungry as anyone in this city. Set something huge. Chase something huge. See what happens.

An Open Letter To My Body...

Darling,

Welcome home, welcome home. I am going to speak openly because I know that’s what you both respect and deserve. I understand more than you know. There are blisters and splits on your knuckles, in your palms and on your feet. Your toenails are black – 2 of them. Your left calf is miserable and you haven’t been able to run right since the sixth day of Tokyo. You have traveled the globe, bled across it for the past 4 months. You have been bleeding forever. I know. I understand. You deserve rest, a break, solace. I know. I know. That’s sort of why I’m here. We need to talk…

In the Philippines, something new happened. 70.3 happened, a half Ironman. We stayed in that sun, near 100 degrees and battled for longer than we’ve ever battled before. When it was over, I wanted more. When it was over, I wanted to get out there the next day and do it again, again and again. Fight more. Bleed more. Grow more. Give more. Suffer more. So did you. Don’t forget, I know you too.

Now we’re back in California. Now we’re done slamming our feet across Asia. There’s beautiful and easy access to everything we could ever desire. The rabid dogs are gone…the heat…the kidnapping eyes…broken pedaled and rusted bikes from the 1970’s…posters of Andre Agassi when he had long hair. It’s all gone now. Everything we need is here. Everything we did and everything we saw over these last 4 months has raised us up. I want to draw on it, use it to pick a fight – the biggest one of them all. I want to see what we’re made of, need to see what we’re made of. Both of us.

In 9 weeks, we’re flying to Cozumel. In 9 weeks, on a Sunday, we’re going to wake up to become Ironmen. And I understand what you’re thinking, what you always think for the sake of self-preservation, that Cozumel should be enough. It should. But it’s not. You understand me too. Certainly you saw coming what’s now coming…

Next October, there is a race that happens on an island called Kona, in a state called Hawaii. It may be the world’s toughest. Titans travel from far and wide to line up self-destruction. Don’t play dumb – the Kona fire has been burning for a while now. To get to there, something special needs to happen. There is no disputing that. If what I am about to say seems disregarding, I can offer no apology. You need to ditch this nagging pain and allow me to deliver us. You need to allow my fight every day for the next 7 weeks, and you need to allow it harder than you have ever allowed it before. You need to allow me to break us harder than we’ve ever broken and then come out the next day and break again. You need to simply let go and survive. Be honest with me. Believe me when I say I’ll listen to you, and that I will take care of us. Understand that I aim to chase a beauty beyond capable description, and that great sacrifices must be made. Understand.

To get into Kona, the rules are simple. We have to line up in Cozumel and then finish first, second or third in the men’s 25-29 age group. We don’t stand a chance unless we stand together. I committed long ago. You did too, you just won't admit it. Please consider this - my beg, my plea. Know that I both love you and despise your hesitation, that I am doing this for both of us. Be wicked now, rest is for the defeated…

Finale...

Himeji...

There's this thing I've grown accustomed to over the last 4 months, something I dub travel sickness. It's not exactly a sickness per se, but it's this feeling of moving on...something new approaching, a new country and new adventure on the horizon and spending the last hours and minutes somewhere about to be left behind. I find I see countries as people - all the people I've met and the things I've witnessed and felt as a collective. I also despise goodbyes because everyone else always gets so fucking worked up. So fucking worked up and that makes me kind of sick.

Today, I was riding the JR back from Shibuya, around two, and I actually fell asleep on a Japanese businessman's shoulder. It was probably only for a second but still...fucking still. I am a literal bastion of grace - shit like that does not happen to me. I was so fucking tired I had to force myself to stand, to ride the wave of that whipping train in hopes that it would somehow sharpen me. I came home and I slept. I took a shower. I feel better now but won't sleep tonight. Tomorrow, this thing ends...or really just begins depending on your angle of approach. Me, I'm looking at it from somewhere in between the two extremes...but closer to the latter. Much closer to the latter.

I want to feel the sun set in my home town again. I want Los Angeles, want her like a faithful, shore-lorn sailor. That's what I am. That's what I'm thinking right now.

Ghibli & Kamakura...

I was blasting through the Japanese countryside today after a more leisurely stretch and I was seeing the greens roll beside the parks, full and moving...and I felt it all. I felt the country. Or more particularly, I felt the late summer Japanese weekend. I felt for them what these weekends meant for me back home, growing up or even recently...something rich, something that's quite difficult to put words to, something I believe you can only get out of a country once you've earned it. I'm beginning to believe I have.

Bon Odori...

I'm not sure exactly when I got here, in Tokyo. I was supposed to leave last night or yesterday and then extended a few more days. All I know -- I've been here now for a substantial amount of time and I don't want to leave. I've seen so much. I've seen nothing. A couple days ago, I started leaving the maps at home, finding my own way, following lights or people, sounds or smells or instinct. Tokyo has turned into a feeling, one I already miss. At some point I'll go somewhere. Maybe. I feel like I should. I want to. Or maybe not. This is me confused.

Tokyo...

Is a couple of things to me. It's a suburban playground in a town with a lot of money, enough so they can cover everything with colored foam padding, so that if there's a fall, no one ever really gets hurt. Not really...

It's that dream where you're running from something, in a race but your legs won't work. Not really. Like you're treading water on the ground or floating just above it. Why? Well, there are certain things in this world that speak to me. Haribos on the streets of Berlin, running down the winding coastline of Victoria Drive, the way Brandon Flowers writes a song, the way Matthew Bellamy plays one, driving through empty red Utah, the smell of snow. Because I've lived with myself for as long as I have, I always suspected Japanese girls might one day prove to be one of those things. But I never thought it would be like this. They're fit and fashionable and beautiful and every one of them looks like they're capable of bare-handed murder. I've been struck more times in the past 3 days than I have been in the past 3 months. So then why the dream? Secret of Japan, no one speaks English. They also don't realize that no one speaks Japanese - which I sort of admire. I can't communicate with words and I'm worried about my understanding of the way they play, about coming across a situation where I need something from someone and that my eyes might not be enough...

Ironman 70.3 Philippines...

It was hot, really, really hot. I crossed the finish line and stumbled into the medical tent where the volunteers bathed me in frozen blue sponges. I couldn't say much, just sitting there, trying to come to grips with who I was and where I came from. It was the most unnatural experience...so much heat and then so much cold...so much fight and then so much stillness. Absolutely the most incredible feeling I can ever remember. Apologies to all my former lovers. Yes, even you.

A Bike In Naga City...

I'm so tired of telling the story as to why I was in the Philippines for an Ironman without a bike that this post gets no preface...

So I'm wandering the expo at the CamSur Watersports Complex and it's 530, after wandering since 1 and asking everyone to help me. Bike drop off ended at 5 but they extended it to 7. A girl I met named Karen has sent me to another girl Che Che, both extraordinary, who is stationed at the Bike King tent. I tell her my story. She laughs. She gets on the phone, calls someone, who never calls back. I sit at the tent, chat up the Nature Valley team. Che Che calls someone new, some priest who might have a friend who might have a bike. The sun is setting and I feel like I don't belong. Two guys walk up, a priest and another guy Erick, a bike mechanic from Naga City. He tells me he can build a bike for me. He gives me his number and tells me to call him at 7. I see him on the way out, at bike and bag check in. I talk to the people in charge. They panic. Erick walks up, tells them that he is taking me to his shop in Naga, that he is going to build me a bike and have me back by 9. The people in charge tell us that we will be making everyone wait. Afterwards, a girl tells me not to feel bad - they are going to be there all night.

Me and Eric get in a jeep he built, drive to Naga against the dimming sky and setting sun - the minutes so incredible to me. We pull up to his bike shop on the river, tucked back and away from the main drag - impossible to find so I didn't feel bad about not finding it originally. Erick pulls a frame from the ceiling, a good one and somewhat my size, racks it up, and goes to work. I'm hanging in an alley of the best bike joint in town, chatting up Philippine champions. I go to buy oatmeal and almonds, come back an hour later. My bike is built. I pay 60 bucks and hand over my California ID, ride to a mall, grab a cab to CWC, check in my bike at 840, leave then feeling much, wondering now if all of this actually just happened.

It did. Half Ironman tomorrow morning. Sleep well.

I've Grown...

Tomorrow morning, I'm waking up at 4 to eat oatmeal and almonds before spitting a few thousand words of what will one day become the second novel in a series of three that will define my generation before heading off to CWC with something like 5000 Philippine pesos in my pocket. Along the 7 or so miles it takes to run between my hotel in Naga and this joint in Pili, I'm going to try and find a place that'll let me pay to stay for 4 nights because the place I'm staying now is throwing me out after 11 days because I didn't do something ludicrous like "book in advance with the race organizers." Everything in town is sold out through the gestapo I'm going to refer to as the Philippine 70.3. They wrote me an e-mail yesterday in response to my e-mail thanking them for letting me extend my stay, which they earlier said they would do, saying something like ooh...sorry...we were mistaken...you're shit out...regards...and by the way we are just going to leave it like that...without even the slightest suggestion as what to do...because we care...the Philippine 70.3. I can tell you that my initial reaction was to write a quite colorful e-mail, which by the end, I deleted, knowing I would have to face these people at some point, not wanting to worry, again, about the possibility of my own prosecution in a foreign country.

I'm starting to wonder why I titled this post the way I did, considering everything I have now written serves as an exact contradiction to my self-promotion. I think I started on the theme of growth because I knew the eventual direction of the post, which was going to steer towards a chance encounter I had with some guy named Rallay who told me he had a friend from Manila who was going to be driving down on the 19th in a pickup truck with another friend and their two bikes, and that he might have a smaller size bike I could use for the race, and that maybe he could fit it into the truck. I gave Rallay my e-mail and heard nothing for 2 days until I saw him running laps at CWC. He flagged me down, calling me Mr. Reilly and enthusiastically before telling me he didn't have any more updates but that he would know by the 19th or 20th and that he would send me an e-mail to either confirm or deny. In the meantime, I let all my other hopefuls fall away because they either involved a drive up to Manila or a purchase from some guy trying to make a buck through unloading some dead steel.

So I'm sitting here on wednesday night, about to pretend like I am going to be able to go to sleep early in prep for tomorrow's trying morning. I'm running a half-Ironman in 3 days. I don't have a place to stay. And I don't have a bike. But you know what, If there were a mirror in front of me, I think I would look at myself and think something like, that guy's got it all under control...that guy can handle anything. In the past, I'm pretty sure that entire last sentence would have been my punchline...and it sort of still is. But inside of me, it's not, and I'm really not trying to be that funny. Everything was starting to feel pretty clean around here, comfortable around here. Tomorrow, my life turns to chaos and I can feel it and the potential approaching disaster coming, and hard, really fucking hard. I want it to try and find me. I want hotels to refuse me at every turn. I want everyone to fall through. I want to have to sleep in some poor Philippine family's creekside tent in the country. I want them to make me work their land in exchange for my stay. I want them to send me off before supper on the last night with a live chicken I became friendly with, the patriarch of the family handing me a butcher knife and saying something like now you become a man. I want to wake up the morning of race day and eat oatmeal and almonds with the family, borrow the youngest boy's tireless BMX and his plastic army helmet. I want them to see me off with no understanding as to why I came to the Philippines in the first place. I want to ride up to that starting line, sparks kicking off my rims, fuck you all in my eyes, before I drop blood across the lengths of CamSur.

Naga & Pili...

Raining here. Usually rains here at the same time every day, and hard, so predictable, the organizers of an international event like the half-Ironman can pick a date in the middle of the rainy season and not think twice about it...although I bet they do sometimes. I'm taking the day off today, which today meant getting up, eating, working, sleeping, working, eating, working, sleeping, working, working, eating and sleeping. My body needs all of it, I can feel it, so I'm letting it be okay, before tomorrow, Sunday, a big Sunday to tear back through it all. Such is the life.

Philippines...

I'm sitting in the lobby of my hotel, a fine place on Magsaysay called Caceres. There are two gentlemen sitting across from me holding shotguns. I think they're hotel security. There are a lot of guns in this country and I don't understand why. Everything about this place seems warm and friendly and compassionate. They gave me a room without a window in the corner and I'm finding truth here, if I may rob from geniuses come and gone.

Somehow, there's a gym here, state of the art, with bikes like the ones I teach on at home. In the mornings, I go out running on the roads. The traffic is careful and I can be in the country after 4 minutes. People smile and cheer at me like I'm Rocky. Of course I love this. I'm here for the next two weeks and I am settling and bleeding beautifully, several times over the course of the day. I feel like life is charging forward again. I am writing e-mails all over the Philippines, begging for help in getting a bike, noting "I am strong enough that I will be able to compete in my age group and would be happy to be a part of team (insert their variable) in exchange for a little help."

I am very much looking forward to finding out if anyone gives a shit about me, my plight, my desperate self-promotion. I am very much looking forward to my fully-realized existence in this country.

Macau...

Sometimes, when I put words to these posts, they're split between the place I've been and the place I'm staying. I usually try to get one out and off before moving on to avoid confusion or schizophrenia. Tonight, I'm in Manila, waiting for a flight early tomorrow morning to me get out of the city and south, closer to ground zero of the half Ironman that's happening in a couple of weeks. I spent 30 bucks on a hotel close to the airport. It's a nice joint right in the middle of Manila's cockfighting district. Okay, that's not true. The whole of Philippines is a cockfighting district. Outside of my sixth floor window, there's a massive, hollowed factory or once upon a time lumber yard where a young girl, no older than 12, looks after prize cocks and a mangy dog, always alone. I can't help watching her.

This is my second to last country before I go home to Los Angeles. I've been thinking about that a lot lately...

Hong Kong...

My bed here is perfect, large and white and stainless and everything on it is soft and comfortable and slipping into it is like the realization of an ideal long forgotten. It's so good that when I try to sleep at night, I can't. I love Hong Kong, love it from head to toe, and not only because of what came before it. I want to get a place I can't afford on some steep slope in Soho, fall in love with some girl for a month and then leave before she realizes just how problematic I am.

Jodhpur & Jaislamer...

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Now, if you'll excuse me one moment while I remove these gloves...

And if you want to avoid my poison please, please go. Go now. Forget this place and go back about your day.

That's what I thought. You carnage sluts...

I've been worried about myself lately, that in leaving all of these countries behind, all of these countries and emotions behind, that my nostalgia, fleeting but instant nostalgia will paint every place I abandon in nothing but beautiful colors, even if it's not warranted. I think I was trying to think back to instances recently where that exact thing might have happened and couldn't because I'm both optimistic and choose to see light because seeing darkness is just too fucking easy for me. But now I'm not worried about that anymore, about the objective part of my lens through which I view the world. Because now I've been to India. Because now I'm so lost for a beginning I must so simply just begin.

My only hope in writing this is that I one day blow up big enough so that someone important enough in India will read my words from this day and hence ban me from ever visiting their country again...so that if for some ridiculous reason someone gives me some ridiculous reason for having to go back, I will be able to tell them quite unapologetically (and hopefully with a written certificate) that the Indian Consulate has officially stricken me from their borders.

I was ready for anything here. I've been around. I've been prepped. I didn't care that it's dirty - absolutely disgusting. I didn't care that it's overcrowded - can't tell you how many proclaimed "poor" fathers I met who were also "proud" fathers of 8-13 children. I didn't care that everyone was a snake or a swindler - wait, no, one of them wasn't - a beautiful hostess in the lobby of Agra's Howard Park Plaza. She was magnificent - made me feel wrong for trying to tip her, like I didn't understand the world she was occupying, a world unto herself -- magnificent the way she pranced about that elegant lobby. I should have remembered her name. One. I maybe met or came across enough of 300 people to form an impression of their character. Not a strong ratio. I didn't care that the beacon of this country, Delhi, is set to host the world Goodwill Games in less than 2 months and as a city, was an embarrassment of shambles and responsibility. I didn't care that people don't wait for passing trains of hundreds to pass before pissing or shitting in the open. I didn't care about the smell. I didn't care about the ignorance and faith in their progression as a country on a global scale. I didn't care that every day I had to ferociously watch my back...or that every night, my soul felt like it had been blackened by the world I witnessed. I didn't care that when people asked me to describe it, India, I'd combine words like inescapable death or hell on earth. I didn't care about the constant scroll of beaming words, red, running through my mind, forever on repeat: hopeless, beyond repair, run...fucking run! I didn't care about the ridiculous way Indians waddle their heads when they talk. I didn't care that they struck me as a lazy, inconsiderate, graceless and ambitionless people. I didn't care about any of that...

I knew what I went to india for and I did exactly that - to dip my toe and rape the place for my own growth and self service before abandoning it forever. Actually, that's not true at all. Nothing was pre-conceived. In my mind, laying in bed in Sri Lanka, I most certainly had hopes of the surprise enchantment India might hold for me. I absolutely did. I couldn't wait to get there and take it in. Then, I took it in. But the real clincher for me came the morning of my 16 hour train ride from Jaislamer back to New Delhi...

My Then Conversation With Some Guy Who Didn't Care That I Was Listening To My Headphones And Making It Abundantly Clear I Didn't Want To Nurse His Ridiculous Attempts At English...

America?
Yes, America. Where are you from? (his confusion) Where going?
New Delhi!
Me too.
Very good city!
You think so. Your English is very good.
Thankyouverymuch! You like India!
Sure. Beautiful. Different.
America far. Too far...too...
Believe me buddy, I know.
Culture no. No good! Too fast. India culture. Better.
India culture better than American? Really? So you've been? You've seen? Done what I've done?
India culture better!

Shortly after, he got up and walked to the sink to brush his teeth, which surprised me before he returned with toothpaste and slobber covering his chin, which didn't. That's the moment I started caring...

No, fuck that. I cared the whole time.