Sergeant Tony's Blog

When we were kids we learned important life lessons everyday.

You know the ones I mean.

Dirt bad, ice cream good.

Cute little dogs *will* bite.

Cats don’t fetch.

Kissing dogs, good. Kissing girls, better.

In my early 20′s, I ran my first triathlon. I also thought that by 21 I’d accumulated most of all the life lessons I’d need already.

I was wrong.

The triathlon lessons began two days before the race.

At the encouragement of an older wiser friend, I applied a liberal coat of this new rubber enhancing product to my very narrow bike tires. I’d never heard of Armor All, but my friend suggested that I put some of this rubber rejuvenation on my tires because he thought it would increase traction and make me faster. Sounded good to me.

I was wrong.

On a short bike ride two days before the race, and with a nice liberal coat of that new stuff on my tires, I leaned hard and fast into a sharp right-hand turn. In a nanosecond my bike slid out from under me and we both went airborne. But only momentarily.

My whole right side, from my right ankle to my right shoulder, became a human eraser sliding across the pavement.

Good times.

Grinding along the asphalt at about 25 miles an hour, small rocks, pebbles, and other road debris got embedded into fleshy places on my body that weren’t really designed for that. The result was something euphemistically known among cyclists as … wait for it … “road rash.”

Road rash. Yeah. Whatever. (Hey Scot Bearup, sound familiar?)

I lined up for my first triathlon two days later with my whole right side covered in a liberal coat of … Neosporin.

First Life Lesson Learned from First Triathlon: Armor All on bike tires, bad. Neosporin on road rash, necessary.

If you’ve ever done a triathlon you know that the scariest wildest part of the race is the swim start. There’s just too many bodies and not enough water to swim in. It’s chaos. It’s a human washing machine.

Back in those early days of the sport, the race organizers just aimed us toward a small eddy of water in a lake. Then they fired the starting gun, stood back watching the madness, sending hundreds of running athletes toward the same little 16 ounces of water to swim in.

Immediately it became a thrashing and kicking and slapping and elbowing affair, similar to marriage … to the wrong knucklehead. All of us tried to make some sort swimming motion; all of us in this little fishbowl flailing about. You kicked others as others kicked you. You gouged others in the head, as others gouged you in the head. It looked a bit like Moe abusing Larry and Curly, but without the funny sound effects. “Why youuuuu … I oughta … ”

Second Life Lesson from First Triathlon: Don’t take it personally when others kick you. They’re just trying to do the best they can.

Thankfully all of that foolishness at the beginning of the swim start only lasts for a few minutes, though you’re sure it’s taken forever. About 200 yards into most triathlons the field of participants starts to spread out and you can find a little pocket of water to swim in. At that point you can actually start to make strokes that resemble swimming, instead of just treading water and doing kung fu moves trying not to get drowned by your fellow triathlete.

Unfortunately in that initial chaos of elbows and legs flopping about, my goggles got knocked off my face and were up on my forehead and cockeyed. Plus the road rash stung from the water. And even though the other swimmers weren’t trying to hurt me, every time they kicked or grabbed my right side, it hurt more than just a little. But I didn’t dare stop. THAT would have caused all kinds of stupid stuff to happen. Think massive pile up in the middle of a lake cuz one jughead stopped.

“Why am I doing this again?” I asked myself.

Third Life Lesson from First Triathlon: Keep swimming! You’ll drown if you stop!

After about 20 minutes of swimming, I saw the finish line of the swim leg coming up. It felt great to finally reach water shallow enough to stand up in and start running! In a mad dash, we were all running out of the water trying frantically to find our cycling clothes and get into the changing tent.

Yes, the changing tent. Singular. One tent. For everyone. Boys AND girls. Same tent.

In those days we changed out of our swim suits and put on full fledged cycling clothes, as if we were going to race in the Tour de France. Nowadays we compete in one suit, never stopping to change. But that wasn’t the case back in the early 80′s when the sport was brand new and none of us really knew what we were doing. So we changed clothes for every event.

The changing tent was an old nasty giant green army tent from the Spanish American War with very little, if any, light inside. You could barely see anything inside. There also wasn’t a boy’s side or a girl’s side. We all ran into the tent and tried to find a place to change. Once inside, my eyes slowly, but finally, adjusted to the dimly lit conditions and I could actually see the person next to me.

The attractive naked female person next to me.

Jackpot!

Not really.

Ordinarily, an attractive naked woman within arms length of me in a dimly lit room would have been cause for celebration and high fives! I’ve had awesome dreams that started out like that! But such was not the case! I couldn’t have cared less. I was in a hurry to get moving. I hardly paused at all in my frantic fumbling, trying to change into my Tour cycling clothes and get out of that tent! Imagine that, ME running away from a pretty naked woman!

Fourth Life Lesson from First Triathlon: Sorry Sigmund, but it’s not always about sex.

Once I had changed, gotten on my bike, and was riding down the highway, I found some other guys to group up with. Drafting was allowed in the early days of the sport, so we formed up like the peloton seen in professional bike races. There were about 10 of us riding together, taking turns at the front of the pack.

Being the lead rider isn’t being in the lead, is it Gary Thompson and Andrew Foresdick? Being in front is a duty. Being in front means doing most of the work.

See, the front rider in those groups is working hardest because he’s riding against the wind resistance. Everyone behind the lead rider can kind of coast in the slipstream. Group riding etiquette says that everyone takes their turn at the front for a minute or so. It also means that there’s a fresh rider at the front every minutes or so, ensuring that the group will ride faster as a group than a single rider could do alone.

So there we were, riding like the wind on our fancy expensive Italian and French made bikes, wearing fancy cycling shoes, fancy cycling shorts, fancy aerodynamic cycling helmets, and fancy tight fitting colorful cycling jerseys. We were doing our best to imitate those colorful cycling teams seen racing in Europe. And I have to admit, I felt pretty cool, riding fast and looking like a Tour de France dude!

After about 6 miles into this 35 mile bike race, we became aware of a faint mechanical noise somewhere in the distance behind us. Somewhere back there, something was making an awful sounding noise.

It was making a grinding scraping metal mechanical noise. Because we were in a rural area, we thought a farmer had entered the road behind us driving an old tractor, draging an old rusty combine or plow, or something like that. None of us turned around to look. That would have violated proper peloton protocol. And it would have looked uncool too. And we were all about the cool.

As the noise got closer I became aware of a sound that was missing. There was no tractor engine noise. But that sound of rusty, grinding, metal against metal noise kept getting louder and closer. We murmured among ourselves about the noise and the source of it, but none of us could figure it out and none of us looked back.

Finally the noise reached us. And the noise started to pass our peloton. That’s when we got our first look at the rusty old combine.

Turns out that it wasnít a rusty old combine after all. It was a guy on a bike!! ONE GUY!!

We looked to our left and saw him passing us. Yes PASSING us! It was a dude riding a nasty old, rusty, dirty looking 1970′s era Sears Free Spirit 10 Speed “Racer.” And to make matters worse, he was wearing a ratty old t-shirt (that probably had “Cutters” handwritten on it), cutoff blue jeans, a football helmet — that’s right, a FOOTBALL HELMET — and Chuck Taylor high-top basketball shoes … that were LITERALLY duct taped to his pedals. Basketball shoes duct taped to the pedals! WHAT???

And he was PASSING US!!!!

Awwwww haaaal nooo!!!

This would NOT do!

So we stood up on our pedals and started sprinting as fast as we could. We HAD to drop this guy, this upstart hayseed racer wannabe! How DARE he try to pass US!!! Did he not see how cool we looked? How showy?

But the thing is he gained on us and the only thing that kept him from passing us altogether was our united efforts to work as a team and keep him from passing us!

Fifth Life Lesson from First Triathlon (Learned long before Lance Armstrong gave us the phrase): it’s not about the bike … it’s about the motor.

The rest of the bike race was finished without any sign of “Chuck Taylor.” We raced as fast as we could to the end of the bike leg and to the transition of the bike to run. The organizers had porta potties at the transition area, so I ducked into one of them, changed into my running clothes, and started off on the last leg of the triathlon, a 7 mile run up and down some horrible hills.

At about 2 miles into the run I heard another sound. No, not the sound of grinding metal against metal, but the sound of feet. I could hear the footfall of some guy gaining on me.

Since I’m not a big fan of being passed, I thought I’d better speed up a little. I increased my speed thinking that it would hold him off. But I could still I hear the sound of his feet hitting the deck moving quicker than I was.

INCONCEIVABLE!

“OK, time to make this guy hurt,” I thought. So I sped up a little more. I knew one thing for sure, I didn’t know if he was hurting, but I knew that I sure was! I thought I’d just keep that pace long enough to make that sound fade away into the distance.

But nooooooooooooo, this dude kept coming.

“OK man, … you wanna race, fine, c’mon then … I’ll let you get up close and then I’ll really make you hurt, I’ll start sprinting,” I conspired. That’s what I did … right up to the point where she got right next to me!

SAY WHAT??

That’s right. SHE.

And she passed me. Like … whooooosh!!

It was the first time in my life that a girl ever bested me in a sport of any kind. My Neanderthal ego took a big hit that day as the pitter patter of Little Ms. Speed Demon’a footfall passed me, as her cute little ponytail swayed in the wind and her even cuter booty pulled further and further away from me. That’s just … great.

Sixth Life Lesson from First Triathlon: It’s not about gender either.

(By the way, I did this triathlon 5 years in a row and this same girl passed me at the same spot EVERYTIME! By the third year I was paranoid approaching the 2 mile mark. “Where IS she???”)

The rest of the run leg of that first triathlon went as expected. Up and down hills in the sweltering July heat and humidity. The finish line was on a horse racing track inside a fairgrounds. Runners were to enter the fairgrounds, run to the track, and then run one lap around the track to finish.

So with “Rocky,” “Chariots of Fire,” and “Eye of the Tiger” blaring from the big speakers set up in the infield, I entered the horse racing track and tried to pick up the pace a bit. I wanted to finish strong.

With about 150 yards to go, I started hearing a wheezing gasping sound from somewhere behind me. “Good lord, someone is dying back there,” I thought.

But the thing was, the sound was getting closer! What???? The dying guy was gaining on me???? With about 100 yards left the dying guy, with the gray hair, passed me. I tried to keep up with him, but I was spent. I had nuthin’! The old dude was crusin’! No way!!! You have GOT to be kidding me!!!

I crossed the finish line, proud of my first triathlon finish, but very eager to find the dying dude.

You know how people linger after races, eating free snacks and gulping Gatorade. The gray haired dying man was eating a banana when I found him.

“Great race! Congratulations!” I said to the man who humbled me at the end.

“Oh, thanks,” he said, kind of embarrassed.

“You kinda passed me right there at the end … you were moving pretty fast!î

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said with a slight chuckle. And then he added, “I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“Um … I hope you won’t be offended by my question … but, if you don’t mind me asking … how old are you, sir?”

Sticking his chest out with pride, he said, “I’m 65 years old!”

“You, sir, are my new role model … my goal … my new HERO!!!

Seventh Life Lesson from First Triathlon: It’s not about age either.

Those are the things I learned in my first triathlon. Not the lessons I thought I’d learn, but proof that one of the cool things about life and about sport is that there are lots of things we can learn, with or without the humble pie!

It’s certainly not all about sex … it’s not about being showy … it’s not about the bike or the car or the house or the toys or the other crap that can entangle and distort our perception of life … it’s not about gender … it’s not about age. It’s about heart and soul. It’s about desire and passion. It’s about determination and courage. It’s about finding your depth and going deeper. It’s about getting out of your comfortable stagnation and standing in the rain for the experience that getting wet will give you. “Comfort doesn’t always serve us.” (Thanks Hannah Phillips).

“We must remember that one man is much the same as another,
and that he is best who is trained in the severest school.”
~ Thucydides
Historian, “The Great Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC)

Be different. Keep amazing your slacker friends!

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WEEKEND WARRIOR WORKOUT!

Due to circumstances beyond my control, the WWW has been moved to June 5th. Please make a note of it. Come hell er high water, we’re going for it then!! More details to follow.

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SILENT AUCTION BEGINS NOW

The following are items that have been generously donated by Boot Campers and Friends of Boot Camp. Some items already have been bid on. This list is on the USMC Fitness BOOT CAMP website on the Sergeant Tony’s Blog page too. As others donate, I’ll list them there. Check it often to see what else has been donated. Each item, once bid on, will be active for 5 days. At the end of the fifth day, the bidding on THAT item, and that item only, will close. Thank you so very very much.

To make a bid, email me with your bid and I’ll post it on the website blog ASAP.

Item #1 Zoom Teeth Whitening – Boot Camper Dr. John Whittemore has donated this awesome service to be performed at his dental clinic: Germantown Dental Group. This is an $800 value.
Current highest bid:

Item #2 Pickwick Lake House – Boot Camper Lisa Taylor has donated a weekend at her Pickwick Fun House! A 3 bedroom/3 bath house close to the lake. There are pools, bbqs, weight room, volleyball, etc. This house rents for $250 a night. Minimum bid for the weekend is $400. If you want more info before bidding, I can put you in touch with Lisa. Thanks Lisa!
Current highest bid:

Item #3 Facial Chemical Peel donated by Dr. Todd Preston. This is a way to take 5-10 years off the appearance of your facial skin. Many plastic surgeons will charge upwards of $1200 for this procedure. Minimum bid is $100.
Current highest bid:

Item #4 Piano’s Flowers and Gifts will donate 10% of your orders from now until Mother’s Day! This is soooo cool! Thanks David Strong and Nikki Strong. 901-345-7670.

Item #5 Garmin Nuvi 255w auto GPS. Brand new. Donated by brand new Boot Camper, Eileen Paternostro. Thank you Eileen!
Current highest bid:

Item #6 One Year of USMC Fitness BOOT CAMP. $525 value.
Current highest bid: $250 (Anne Kenworthy – 5/5/10)

Item #7 A screening with Ashley Hofeditz, a registered dietitian and nutritionist.
Current highest bid:

Item #8 An Awesome Basket of 4 Bottles of Assorted Rodney Strong Wines donated by Karen Massey.
Current highest bid:

Item #9 Ray Ban Wayfarer sunglasses (black) donated by Dr. Alan Schaeffer. $150 value.
Current highest bid: $40 (Mark Wells – 5/5/10)

Item #10 Beach House for Rent in Atlantic Beach, FL donated by Lou Geib.

Two bed/2.5 baths/pool in Atlantic Beach, Florida. Five minute walk to the beach. The town center with restaurants, nightlife, coffee shops, yoga studios, spa, art galleries and boutique shopping are within walking distance. A skateboard park, basketball courts, soccer fields, racquetball and tennis courts are across the street. Two nature preserves for hiking, canoeing and kayaking are within one mile. Nearby points of interest include St. Augustine, Amelia Island, TPC and Sawgrass PGA golf courses and the ATP tennis headquarters and courts.

Package is four days/three nights. If flying, in/out of Jacksonville. Dates of stay are negotiable with owner. Minimum bid is $300.
Current highest bid:

Item #11 a $200 Gift Certificate to Joseph’s (that wonderful store in Laurelwood Shopping Center!) donated by Barrie Wurzburg!
Current highest bid:

DO YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO DONATE? GOODS? SERVICES? Questions about the above?

Thanks everyone for participating in this! You guys are wonderful!

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HAVE YOU BEEN A BOOT CAMPER IN GOOD STANDING FROM October 2009 to April 30, 2010?

(Good standing means that you were paid up for those months … and hopefully you attended regularly, though attendance is not part of this question.)

Contact me!

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TUESDAY & THURSDAY EVENING CLASS

The Tuesday and Thursday evening classes meet at St. Agnes’ track. These are cardio (walking/jogging/running) workouts and they begin at 5:45 PM.

St. Agnes is at the corner of Walnut Grove and Mendenhall.

Should the St. Agnes track be occupied or the field being used, making the track unavailable to us, we’ll go to St. Mary’s track, at Walnut Grove and Perkins.

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BOOT CAMP DISCOUNTS AND FACEBOOK EXPERIMENT!

So far this experiment has been pretty amazing!
Here’s how it works!

Make a Facebook status update and get a discount!

For every status update that you make that references:
“USMC Fitness Boot Camp,”
“Sgt. Tony’s Boot Camp,”
“Tony’s Boot Camp,”
or something similar, you can take $2.50 off your reenlistment fee!
Up to $20 off for any given month!

Your status update has to be a specific reference to USMC Fitness BOOT CAMP or to me specifically by name.

“Great Boot Camp workout with Sgt. Tony this morning!” is good!
“I love USMC Fitness BOOT CAMP!” is good!
“I love Sgt. Tony and his Boot Camp ROCKS!!” is REALLY good!

You get the idea! Use your own wording and personality, just include the specifics.

Restrict yourself to just one of these status updates per day. You don’t want 8 status updates in a row going out on the same day!

So log on and get started now!

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If you’d like to lose weight. Seriously. Go to www.combatchallenge.tsfl.com

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What would you do if money were not an issue, fear were not a factor, and failure were not an option?

To your continued good health and fitness!

Tony

Sergeant Major Tony Ludlow

USMC Fitness BOOT CAMP, Commanding
Mailing address: 4888 Southern Ave., Memphis, TN 38117
Cell Phone: 901-644-0145
www.usmcfitnessbootcamp.com

http://www.combatchallenge.tsfl.com/esuite/home/combatchallenge/