FitOldDog Is On The Road Again To The Lake Placid Ironman 2013 (#7) With Two Nice Little Scalp Divots

Hi folks! Welcome!

FitOldDog is off to the 2013 Lake Placid Ironman, cooking out of the truck along the way – great fun! Hell! Do I look 70 years old. Sure don’t feel it (most of the time). Photo by Tim

Traditions can be a good thing as long as they truly are good traditions and not unhealthy, unquestioned habits.

Well! I’m off on my summer Lake Placid Ironman trip, which provides an annual 2-week training vacation. I take 5 days to drive there from my little blue office in Carrboro, NC, USA, using the old Chevy truck (odometer now at 325,000 miles) and cooking tasty food along the way. I never seem to feel quite ready for the race, but I do it anyway. This trip has become a family tradition. Sometimes I question the wisdom of such a long race at my age, and then I think, “Hell! I’m not dead yet!”

I stopped at The Fountain Motel again at about 100 miles into the 850-mile drive to northern New York State. I take it easy along the way, doing  taper workouts where and when I can, cooking local farm food on the trusty old Colman stove, reading and writing books, blogging, and generally chilling out. The family will follow me up there in about a week, but my trip up is all about race preparation, combined with contemplation on the meaning of life. I really like these little motels. While cleaning my teeth in the tiny bathroom I noticed two divots in my head. Talk about the meaning of life. One took a few seconds to create and the other somewhere between 30 and 50 years.

The divot near the center of my forehead was nicely sculpted during a swim yesterday. I like to climb out of the pool by swimming strongly towards the wall, using my momentum to pull out of the water, as I just grab the edge and up I go. This time my new Swedish Goggles (the best) were leaking, so at the far end of the pool, where the diving stands for races are located, up I went to rest my arms on the side and fix the leak. Instead, I slammed into the board (forgot it was there!), and thus the more central hole in my head.

The other head divot was more long in the making. A trip to the dermatologist revealed a precancerous lesion (the joys of aging), which was frozen off by the kind Dr. Thompson, also a runner, (thank you!) leaving this small lesion (better than having your whole head eaten away by a squamous cell carcinoma; this reminds me that I still miss my lovely cat, Alobar!)

Moral of the two divots: use plenty of sunscreen and watch where you’re going in the pool.

OK! On the road again. Love that song!

-k @FitOldDog