Threshold

The past weekend of being on-call brought back memories of residency. I worked Friday night, sleeping less than 2 consecutive hours...awoke to a page from the Clifton Springs ICU Sat morning to get there STAT to put a central line in an obese and confused patient who was thrashing around...ran to the other hospital where I was on call for emergency surgery...engaged in a grand pissing contest with the covering internist Sat afternoon...spent Sat night in the OR from midnight to 4am...drove to Sodus Sunday morning to catch Kevy rolling into T2 for the triathlon...drove to work after the race for rounds.
The residency memory revisited was that feeling of surrender: letting go of being annoyed, irritated, or pissed off at the pager going off every 15 minutes, of one more task plopping in your lap when you're dog tired. There's a threshold that most every resident crosses where he/she just figures: "The endless work, sleep deprivation, unimaginable fatigue...This is my life." I crossed that threshold during the weekend and remembered that I thought that that was how I would deal with Ironman.
Before the big race, I said to myself: "Boon, you've worked for 42 hours in a row without sleep. You've stood for 27 hours in the OR during a liver transplant. You can do an Ironman." I thought I would deal with the fatigue and pain with the same kind of acceptance, knowing that it would end at a definite point in time like when I would be off call or when residency was over. I found out around mile 13 on the run that that was the wrong kind of doggedness to have. The obstacle to overcome was all about a distance to be covered in the shortest amount of time possible. Surrender was NOT the right frame of mind or body to have.
On my long run a few days ago, I dove head first in acclimatization and ran at 1pm in 87 degrees. I overestimated how fast I'd run so turned around a bit farther for my planned 1:45 run. After 60 min of E pace, I ran 30 min at M pace feeling surprisingly strong. With 15 min left, I was too accelerate to and hold tempo pace. My body's drive to cool itself overrode my drive to run tempo. I held M pace for 15 min and happily anticipated the last seconds left of my one hour and 45 minutes. When I stopped I was at least 1/2 mile from where I'd started. I caught up with Kim who convinced me to run the rest of the way. I was hot, thirsty, pooped, and completely without shame when I whined that I didn't wanna run to the end. She convinced me and we brought it home in our blazing E pace. While I'm happy with how I ran the 30 min Mpace section in the heat, I think the real triumph was the shift from time to distance. 70.3 and 140.6 are distances that must be covered despite our time expectations or number of hours we train.
So my homework for the next 6 weeks before Longhorn is to find a different mindset with which to face that fatigue and pain threshold during the race. I should think something like: "My aching feet, this life-sucking heat...the faster you go, Boon, the sooner you can stop! This is your race!"