The Set-up

I’m sitting on a plane as I write this crap. I'm finally heading back home to LA after three trips to the east coast in just as many weeks. Goddamn I'm tired. Seems I spend half my life on a plane. I’m thinking of having the American Airlines logo tattooed on my ass. One large red "A" on one cheek and a big bold blue "A" smack dab on the other. Seems my ass is firmly attached to an American Airlines seat most days anyway. Maybe they’ll pay me. I wonder if I can get an ass sponsorship from American Airlines. I’ll have to look into that one.

The problem is that all this travel has started to wear me down. I feel like I’m getting sick now, which really blows, if you want to know the truth. The last thing I need is sickness or injury. There are no worse ways to destroy my training and overall well-being. Unfortunately I’m prone to both. Lucky me. Of course the past three nights I spent drinking until the wee hours of the evening, with very little sleep to follow, probably didn’t help matters much. Oops.

So let me introduce myself. I’m J. This is my blog where, if you're lucky and I'm not, my life will be changing dramatically. You already know that I’m injury prone and sick prone. During the day, I’m a senior exec at one of the leading marketing/advertising/media agencies in the country. Pretty demanding job as jobs go, if you want to know the truth. I'm also the founder and President of a successful record company. If you're nice, I'll tell you some of my super-celebrity stories at some point in time. That's a photo of me there on the left.

I’m also a triathlete. Which, by the way, is the whole point of writing this damn thing. Triathlon is a pretty demanding hobby, as hobbies go.

Triathlon, for those not in the know, is 50% physical, 50% mental and 50% plain stupidity. It consists of three disciplines: swimming, biking and running. There are really four different racing distances in the sport of triathlon, but it all culminates in the nauseatingly long Ironman distance, which is a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run. That’s a total of 140.6 miles, which for some reason doesn’t sound as intimidating as when you spell it out by individual discipline. Maybe that’s just me.

Anywhoo, after over a decade of wanting to do an Ironman (IM) distance race, I finally decided to move forward with my life and actually do one. So here I am, flying back home from a business trip, ready to sign up tomorrow for Ironman USA 2006, which takes place in Lake Placid on July something-or-other. (I suppose I oughta figure out the exact date at some point.)

As you can imagine, Ironman training requires a lot of time, dedication and commitment. Dedication and commitment - that I can do… Time, on the other hand, presents a bit of a problem. I don’t have much of it to spare. Between the work, the record company, the traveling, the girlfriend, the writing and all of the other stuff I do, there's not a lot of time left. Throw Ironman training on top of it all and that, my friend, is a one-way ticket to trouble. Which is exactly why I am documenting all of this crap.

If I’m going down, I’m taking you with me.

So Ironman blah blah blah, destroying my life yadda yadda yadda….where was I? Oh yeah, on the plane feeling sick. My nose is dripping like a Harlem fire hydrant on a 105 degree day. I’m sniffling so much I think my brain is starting to leak out of my face. And, if that’s not enough, I haven’t exercised in five days. So I feel like shit on top of everything else. I’ve spent the past week stressing myself out with some potential new client opportunities, and then the nights drinking myself silly and gorging on such healthy tidbits as pizza, chicken fingers and jelly beans. Oh yeah, that Ironman will be fun.

I’m considering tomorrow Day 1 – today is kind of a prequel, if you will. And I know you will. Catherine (aka Cat, aka The Girlfriend), Rich (aka The Best Friend) and I are getting together for a bike ride at 7 in the morn. Both Cat and Rich have committed to doing IM USA as well. We’re all going to train together – or as much as possible without killing each other.

Which brings up the whole girlfriend thing, I mean really, how much stressful time can we truly spend together without one of us taking a knife to the other? I suppose this whole Ironman malarkey will answer that question.

So the whole point of this diatribe is really like an Ironman reality show. I will be getting engrossed in the time commitments, using up all my physical and emotional energy every day and tearing myself to pieces as I try to keep my life in balance, and try to maintain enough energy at night to have sex with the same woman I got frustrated with throughout a grueling 7 hour day of exercise. My life may really crumble to pieces. In fact, odds are pretty good that it will. But, goddamit, I'm going to cross the finish line at Ironman USA if it kills me.

Yeah, this is going to be fun alright…