Musings

Getting ready for the 2007-2008 season

What a busy, busy week this is turning out to be. Everything that I put off to the side in my life as I prepared for the Mt. Taylor Quad is now coming to the forefront and demanding my attention.

After returning from Grants, New Mexico on Feb. 18th, I spent the next 36 hours wrapping up production on a title for the Virtual Training Company. Once completed, I had hoped to take a couple weeks off and get caught up on some sorely needed home and landscaping maintenance. The good folks at VTC, however, want me to get started right away on another title.

Although these projects eat up a lot, if not all, of my free time and can get me in hot water with Mrs. Hak if I’m not on top of my “honey-do” list around the house, they do help kill off the Hak National Debt. Perhaps more importantly, they help keep me in gear for the racing season and the last project did pay for the addition of El Lobo Gris to stable.

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On a related note, one of my new favorite reads is by writer and endurance sports scribe Martin Dugard. He offers some great insights on the sport and appears to be living every writer’s idyllic life. He’s writing and he’s getting paid enough to have a decent standard of living. Then again, if he admits that his wife is a neurosurgeon or tort attorney who makes up 99 percent of their household income, I’ll cry.

Martin’s work has relit a fire in me to get cranking on my own writing. While others struggle to write for copies of the publication or hope their blog gets them a book contract, I’ve been fortunate to have been able to jump in and out of the publishing game at will. I have a knack for being the hired gun brought in at the last minute to fix someone else’s bad idea or worse, being another semi-anonymous contributing author to a Frankenbook. I played that mercenary game for two years while working a full-time job and trying my best to raise two young daughters under five. Then I got burned out.

Yet, those projects can be somewhat lucrative and I do get to stay home with the family while working on them. It beats stocking shelves at the local Home Depot for extra dough. Plus, it does give me a small amount of street creds in the writing community. Actually, I’m quite fortunate. There are far better writers than me who are eating cat food for dinner tonight.

For me to take this work to the next level, I should take a page from Martin’s book and self promote a bit. It’s the only way I can move from hired gun to big gun and do this full time. After all, writing is no different than any other occupation. It’s the rare individual who gets the fat, multi-million-dollar contract out of the starting gate. While everyone waits for their memoir to get featured on Oprah, there is a shitload of sloppy seconds and thirds out there that will more than pay the bills.

That being said, I will have to sit on this self promotion idea a bit. As long as I am a cog in someone else’s machine (i.e., employee), I am very mindful of keeping my 8-5 job and not putting myself in a position where my employer is questioning what I’m doing during the work day.

“Oh, I see you have a book out. When did you have time to work on that? Is that why my report was late?”

Geez. I don’t even want to get started down that road.

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I’m also using this time to get down to the nitty gritty of training for the 2007-2008 season. Last season was all about the experience of triathlon, trail running, a road race time trial and even the exotic winter quadrathlon. I’ve discovered quite a few weaknesses and I want to see what I can do to turn those liabilities into strengths for the upcoming season. Accordingly, just about every training session will have an objective. Coach Ilg has agreed to let me take an initial stab at designing my program and I’ll turn it in for his review in a day or two.

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Oh, and I’m learning to love my left calf again. This guy blew on me last year at this time and after taking the summer and fall off, decided to come back and visit me again at the Mt. Taylor Quad. I found a talented Active Release Technique practitioner just down the street from my office and he’s done wonders. While I’ve tried to break up the adhesions in the Soleus myself, I have not been able to apply the necessary pressure to do so. Dr. Bobby Forsyth, who works in a mostly Chinese-speaking chiropractor’s office on the border of Las Vegas’ Chinatown, has done a great job of turning the two adhesions in the soleus and gastrocnemius into mush. While he was working on my leg during the first session last week, I was grimacing and trying to breath through the excruciating pain. The very charming office manager, whom I’ve only heard speak Chinese, came into the room, laughing, “Need tissue Mr. John?”

“No, Mr. John don’t need tissue. He need shot of bourbon.”

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Looking for some gritty inspiration? Check out Elizabeth Fedofsky’s tale of her race in the recent Desert Duathlon. You have to love an athlete that writes, “I am not so much racing as myself, but as the person I intend to be by season’s end.”

Good stuff. This is why you selected Elizabeth’s work as the Best Triathlon Blog of 2006.

Keep dancing your edge.

hak

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© 2007 The Outdoor Journey.