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2017-08-30 7:37 AM
in reply to: Rollergirl

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Subject: RE: Is a finishers medal enough for your hard work?
Yes as well. It's not the medal itself (or T-shirt or towel or whatever) but the memories it brings back. I need a little to jog my memory sometimes after almost 40 years in endurance sports. If the race didn't go well or just wasn't that memorable, I usually give away or repurpose the shirt or medal to charity or one of my students/athletes. I'm not above favoring certain shirts that are "high value" to me, like World Championships, or races that were particularly good or interesting, or shirts that are unique or attractive (my favorite says, "I'm a certified amphibian"). I will admit, I now have 37 years of race T-shirts. (Yes, I have a shirt from a race when I was 11!)

You can get pretty much everything from bras to socks to beer mugs from the Ironman store to show the world you finished an Ironman, whether or not you actually did and whether or not anyone but you and your immediate friends and family actually give a sh..... (Shopping alert for the fashion-conscious Ironwoman--they now have M-dot dresses.) But it doesn't mean much to me to go around wearing a corporate logo as a dress, jewelry, socks, tattoo, etc. (Plus I haven't actually done full IM, but even if I did, I don't think I'd be in the market for a lot of merchandise. I would be happy with the usual finisher's medal, towel, and/or shirt. And even happier with podium hardware.)


2017-08-30 7:43 AM
in reply to: briderdt

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Subject: RE: Is a finishers medal enough for your hard work?

Originally posted by briderdt

Fortunately my company firewall blocks the Google Forms site, so I can't get past that to find out what you're really selling here. Nice first post, though.

Don't worry - we can get there and still can't figure it out.  LOL

2017-08-30 9:47 AM
in reply to: timbig


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Subject: RE: Is a finishers medal enough for your hard work?
I've considered paying one of my kids like $10 to dig up all my race times and either write them on the back of the bibs that are in the drawer underneath the medals (clearly, I have some limited attachment to them)....although, they're not in a drawer. They're in a shoebox in my closet beneath my Boy Scouts "red vest", a puffy shirt (no, I wasn't into Ren fests, we wore them in the bagpipe band one summer when that was in vogue), and my high school/college jean jacket who's name is Neil. He's got a Union Jack themed peace sign button, a Doors button, and a Scottish flag button and I had taken contact paper and cut out the outline of Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull doing the one-legged, flute playing thing and applied it to the back and spritzed a mix of water and bleach on it so I wound up with silhouette of the rock legend on the back. At some point I lose the Lynyrd Skynrd "do rag" that was tied to the back tab. I figured that was a symbolic effort of the buried hatched between Lynyrd Skynyrd and my all-time favorite Rock Legend, Neil Young for whom the jacket was named for.

If I lost my medals...meh. If I lost Neil, I would probably cry. His cuffs are so frayed and the forearms still bear the permanent stains from where my arms rested on the bar at my favorite college joint, soaking up spilled oatmeal stout that I regularly imbibed. I was pretty happy two years ago when I found the original "Harry", which was the name of the black stocking cap that always accompanied Neil in the inner pocket and was a frequent combo in the colder climate of Iowa when I was in college.

I told, you, I have a weird thing with a personal connection to clothing.

That's a long roundabout way of saying....yeah...I've kept my bibs and medals....and always intended to put times to them. But, even though I could dig up all my times in about 10 minutes (which has some value in evaluating my fitness progress), I can get just as much information by going out for a run/ride and digging back through Strava/Mapmyrun/etc.

Also, I enjoy a good bout of keyboard diarrhea and I don't mind sharing embarrassing tidbits with complete strangers. And I'm waiting for everyone to join a conference call.

So, if anyone's got anything else that will entertain me....this conference call will probably be more boring than waiting for it to start.
2017-08-30 11:20 AM
in reply to: timbig

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Subject: RE: Is a finishers medal enough for your hard work?
Man I set the track record (hour) at Rock Hill Velodrome Monday and I didn't even get a finisher medal I just paid to torture myself!
2017-08-30 2:04 PM
in reply to: Left Brain

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Subject: RE: Is a finishers medal enough for your hard work?
Originally posted by Left Brain

Wait - you're supposed to give a gift to your signiificant other that is IM branded because you did an IM branded race?  Can that take the place of remembering an anniversary or valentines day?  Otherwise.......no......hell no.




Interesting story about that…I’ll try to be as brief as possible, and try to hang with me on this one

My brother and I never had much of a relationship with each other. We grew up in an abusive household before my mom, brother and I fled (literally) then spent the requisite time in battered women’s shelters, homeless shelters, sleeping on relatives couches, you name it (still better than getting your arse kicked on the daily, that’s for sure). Life sucked, but sucked less than it did before. Being free and poor is way better than living under constant oppression and on the edge at all times. My mom did what she could to keep us together. As much hell as my dad put us through, my mom’s unrelenting love and devotion to do WHATEVER she had to do to keep us safe, fed and under a roof was an amazing ying to that evil yang.

Anyway, one side effect of all this was that my brother and I just sort of existed next to each other. We never bonded, were never friends. We didn’t hate each other or anything, but I guess we just coexisted through the whole thing. I could point to a million reasons and would probably need a psychiatric degree to really know, but that’s how it turned out. One thing was that he certainly took the brunt of the physical and mental abuse. He was a “husky” kid and always had extra weight and boy did my dad hate that. He would always throw in the “fatty” and “useless” type insults at him during his time as a punching bag. I think he may have resented me deep down for not getting the brunt of it, while I resented him deep down for pushing me away.
Fast forward a lot of years and my brother and I both did pretty well for ourselves, but again, as hard as we tried our relationship was strained and forced at best. We ended up having a blow out about 8 years ago when he didn’t come to my wedding. Again, not for any specific reason, but it just seemed optional to him I guess….we were always that far apart. This was just a culminating event by the way, I had as much, or more responsibility in our “relationship” if you could call it that, than he did. But that was the crowning event.

We ended up making up after that, and tried to have a real relationship but it just never clicked. One thing that my brother did was triathlons. About once a year, he’d do a sprint. He was a total “completer” but it was his thing. With his build and proclivity to endurance sports, it was a pretty impressive feet and there was certainly an abused kid trying to show his dad that he wasn’t worthless somewhere deep in there. Well, after our “make up” I took the family to visit him and his wife the week he did his yearly sprint. Again, the trip was a bit strained and as hard as we tried, we just didn’t click. Two nights before his race, we got drunk….like sloppy, talk-about-everything drunk and he talked me into doing the triathlon with him. So I did it on a bike he rented for me and I was hooked. But something else came out of that. My brother and I had something. We finally had something that we could bond over. It was like a switch went off and the following year we became closer than we ever had before.

Being the type of person I am, I can’t do anything just a little, so I signed up for an Ironman within two weeks. And a week later, so did he. I never road a bike more than 15 miles and hadn’t swam in 20 years and he never did anything but sprints. That, and he simply wasn’t the “type” to do a freakin Ironman!

We trained through the year and talked daily and both of us crossed the finish line in Texas the following May. Ever since we have been thick as thieves. All because of this race, and this sport.

My mom was an amazing person. To talk to her, you’d think her head was 10,000 feet in the clouds. She was an old hippie through and through. And because of that, many people, even myself, tended to think she was out of it a lot. But I’ll tell you that you have never met anyone so in tune with everything around her. Memories still hit me to this day where I’m just amazed at how she seemed to know what things REALLY meant to people, even when they didn’t.

So where am I going with all this? After the race my bother bought my mom an “Ironmom” sweatshirt. It was hands down her favorite single article of clothing. She wore that thing like you wouldn’t believe and had a huge amount of pride about being an “Ironmom”.

It had nothing to do with the race, or WTC or 140.6 miles. The reason she loved that shirt so much is that it represented what brought her two sons together. It mended a deep scar that she carried (among many others) and represented a blue sky after a storm. She finally saw her sons truly become brothers. It also was a final and knock out punch back to the man that relentlessly belittled and beat my brother…he wasn’t a worthless fatty, he was an Ironman.

My mom passed away from liver disease earlier this year. Her demons that tormented her deep down finally caught up to her. She got an infection in her leg and her compromised liver couldn’t hold off the infection. But, she died seeing her family come together, and as silly as it sounds, that race was the reason why. THAT’s why she loved that shirt so much. That’s why it meant so much to her to be and “Ironmom”.

“Ironmom” was the proudest title she ever had. And it’s now etched on her grave marker.
2017-08-30 2:46 PM
in reply to: 3mar

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Subject: RE: Is a finishers medal enough for your hard work?

Thanks for sharing this. Totally awesome.



2017-08-30 3:15 PM
in reply to: 3mar

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Subject: RE: Is a finishers medal enough for your hard work?

Damn, that's pretty friggin awesome.

2017-08-30 3:16 PM
in reply to: 3mar


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Subject: RE: Is a finishers medal enough for your hard work?
That must have been tough to write. Thanks for the nice read on your thoughts.
2017-08-30 3:20 PM
in reply to: LundyLund

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Subject: RE: Is a finishers medal enough for your hard work?

3mar - that's a great story.  As someone who thinks family is the most important thing in the world, I enjoyed every word of it. 

I work with a man who's father killed his mom, bother, and two sisters when he was 9 years old.....he escaped out a window.  He's a hell of a guy and one hell of a cop.  We deal with these monsters every day on some level.  I know you don't need to hear it......but man, knowing full well what it takes from watching it over the years, your mom was an amazing woman to able to escape that situation as she did.

(I still ain't buying any IM gear crap)

2017-08-30 3:32 PM
in reply to: Left Brain

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Subject: RE: Is a finishers medal enough for your hard work?
Originally posted by Left Brain

3mar - that's a great story.  As someone who thinks family is the most important thing in the world, I enjoyed every word of it. 

I work with a man who's father killed his mom, bother, and two sisters when he was 9 years old.....he escaped out a window.  He's a hell of a guy and one hell of a cop.  We deal with these monsters every day on some level.  I know you don't need to hear it......but man, knowing full well what it takes from watching it over the years, your mom was an amazing woman to able to escape that situation as she did.

(I still ain't buying any IM gear crap)




I didn't realize it at much as a kid, but looking back now that I have kids of my own, I have no idea how she did it. She was really amazing.

2017-08-30 3:41 PM
in reply to: Left Brain

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Subject: RE: Is a finishers medal enough for your hard work?
There is a whole lotta love coming out in this thread - sorry to hear about the struggles, but so glad to read about the success !!

  • ..



  • 2017-08-31 8:16 PM
    in reply to: 3mar

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    Subject: RE: Is a finishers medal enough for your hard work?
    First of all not sure how to quote but thank you to 3mar for a thought provoking post. I takes a certain amount of courage to reveal such personal information. Let me just say that that kind of vulnerability is very endearing. I now see him in a completely different light and am glad that he has obviously risen above some difficult beginnings. Wish him the best and continued success and happiness.

    This is my eleventh year of triathlon. I have successfully completed close to 40 races and have enjoyed every race immensely. I did B2B 140.6 back in 2011 and it was without a doubt one of the best days of my life. I am not particularly competitive and have always been content to finish strong and healthy. I still love SBR but am racing much less these days. I have developed an affinity for OCR and am doing more of those lately. I have most of my race bibs and finisher medals hung in my workout room. I have never stood on a podium .and will probably never do so (maybe if I hang around long enough due to attrition). When I'm working out (lifting) these bibs are a constant reminder that I towed the line. I trained, prepared, showed up and competed. This makes me feel good. Probably silly on some level but knowing that I put in the work gives me gives me a certain sense of satisfaction.

    At some point (maybe sooner than later) I will put my race shirts, bibs and finisher medals in a box and hope that when I eventually go to be with the Lord my two precious (grown) children will stumble upon it someday and feel a sense of pride at what their dad "accomplished" but more importantly remember and embrace how much the pursuit of physical endeavors and achievements meant to their father and how interwoven those qualities were to his very being.

    2017-08-31 8:32 PM
    in reply to: 3mar

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    Subject: RE: Is a finishers medal enough for your hard work?
    3mar- Great story. I wish we could "like" posts!
    2017-08-31 9:16 PM
    in reply to: 3mar

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    Subject: RE: Is a finishers medal enough for your hard work?
    Originally posted by 3mar

    Originally posted by Left Brain

    3mar - that's a great story.  As someone who thinks family is the most important thing in the world, I enjoyed every word of it. 

    I work with a man who's father killed his mom, bother, and two sisters when he was 9 years old.....he escaped out a window.  He's a hell of a guy and one hell of a cop.  We deal with these monsters every day on some level.  I know you don't need to hear it......but man, knowing full well what it takes from watching it over the years, your mom was an amazing woman to able to escape that situation as she did.

    (I still ain't buying any IM gear crap)




    I didn't realize it at much as a kid, but looking back now that I have kids of my own, I have no idea how she did it. She was really amazing.




    Omar
    You rock!
    2017-08-31 10:13 PM
    in reply to: 0


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    Subject: RE: Is a finishers medal enough for your hard work?
    Thanks for sharing 3mar. Obviously don't answer if you feel uncomfortable, but what became of your Dad? Was there any kind of contrition on his part, or did you never hear from him again?

    me and my brother had a few strained years culminating in a punch up and we became close after that

    Edited by zedzded 2017-08-31 10:20 PM
    2017-09-01 12:28 PM
    in reply to: zedzded

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    Subject: RE: Is a finishers medal enough for your hard work?
    Thanks everyone for your kind words.

    zedzded, he seemed repentant at first and we had a strained relationship with him over the years (driven largely by my mom's urgings). He ended up remarrying a really nice lady but eventually his true character came out. She left him and after that he began alienating everyone else in his life (myself and my brother included). He is now essentially alone as far as I know. It's been almost a decade since I've even cared to look. One good thing that came out of it was my stepmother with whom we have kept a strong relationship with and she has been an amazing grandmother to my three kids. Which is something they need now more than ever. My mother-in-law passed away from cancer within days of my mother's passing this past winter, so the kids lost both their biological grandmothers within a week. She was also a very considerate and sweet woman. One of the last things she did on this earth was send me a sympathy card for my mother's passing. I received it the day she passed away. Needless to say, 2017 didn't start out all that stellar.

    P.S. I'm lucky that my brother and I didn't end up in a punch up...I would have got my butt whooped.

    P.P.S. One other interesting story (since I'm story telling) is that my mom and dad ran in the 80's and 90's. My mom was pretty good and would regularly place in her AG or overall among women. My dad though, could never be competitive...and my God did it drive him mad. Back then, they'd give out straight trophies, some that were pretty big and elaborate and coming home with one of those suckers for my mom, we all knew there would be a s#*t storm and likely a beating coming for someone after, but it was totally worth it! We often joked about that after we left (I know it sounds weird to say "joke" but you have to laugh off some things). My stepfather (who is for all intents and purposes my real dad) found an old photograph of my mom from a race and had a photographer friend of his clean it up. I'm planning on having a poster made of it so I can put it up in my pain cave. My mom always loved racing, and even as her health declined, she would race walk when she could. I have her favorite pair of sunglasses now that I wear on the runs for all my races. It's been three so far this year since she passed. I do get some odd looks wearing hot pink sunglasses, but my mom would have loved that as well. It's way for me to take her with me. Pics of both included here. We definitely had similarities in running styles, especially in how we carry our arms/hands.




    (5k.jpg)



    (mom2.JPG)



    Attachments
    ----------------
    5k.jpg (42KB - 10 downloads)
    mom2.JPG (87KB - 8 downloads)


    2017-09-01 1:21 PM
    in reply to: Trilogy

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    Subject: RE: Is a finishers medal enough for your hard work?
    Originally posted by Trilogy

    3mar- Great story. I wish we could "like" posts!


    x2. What a powerful story, thank you for sharing! I hope to see you highlighted on the Kona "Faces in the Crowd" broadcast one of these years.
    2017-09-01 1:34 PM
    in reply to: 3mar

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    Subject: RE: Is a finishers medal enough for your hard work?
    Originally posted by 3mar

    Originally posted by Left Brain

    Wait - you're supposed to give a gift to your signiificant other that is IM branded because you did an IM branded race?  Can that take the place of remembering an anniversary or valentines day?  Otherwise.......no......hell no.




    Interesting story about that…I’ll try to be as brief as possible, and try to hang with me on this one

    My brother and I never had much of a relationship with each other. We grew up in an abusive household before my mom, brother and I fled (literally) then spent the requisite time in battered women’s shelters, homeless shelters, sleeping on relatives couches, you name it (still better than getting your arse kicked on the daily, that’s for sure). Life sucked, but sucked less than it did before. Being free and poor is way better than living under constant oppression and on the edge at all times. My mom did what she could to keep us together. As much hell as my dad put us through, my mom’s unrelenting love and devotion to do WHATEVER she had to do to keep us safe, fed and under a roof was an amazing ying to that evil yang.

    Anyway, one side effect of all this was that my brother and I just sort of existed next to each other. We never bonded, were never friends. We didn’t hate each other or anything, but I guess we just coexisted through the whole thing. I could point to a million reasons and would probably need a psychiatric degree to really know, but that’s how it turned out. One thing was that he certainly took the brunt of the physical and mental abuse. He was a “husky” kid and always had extra weight and boy did my dad hate that. He would always throw in the “fatty” and “useless” type insults at him during his time as a punching bag. I think he may have resented me deep down for not getting the brunt of it, while I resented him deep down for pushing me away.
    Fast forward a lot of years and my brother and I both did pretty well for ourselves, but again, as hard as we tried our relationship was strained and forced at best. We ended up having a blow out about 8 years ago when he didn’t come to my wedding. Again, not for any specific reason, but it just seemed optional to him I guess….we were always that far apart. This was just a culminating event by the way, I had as much, or more responsibility in our “relationship” if you could call it that, than he did. But that was the crowning event.

    We ended up making up after that, and tried to have a real relationship but it just never clicked. One thing that my brother did was triathlons. About once a year, he’d do a sprint. He was a total “completer” but it was his thing. With his build and proclivity to endurance sports, it was a pretty impressive feet and there was certainly an abused kid trying to show his dad that he wasn’t worthless somewhere deep in there. Well, after our “make up” I took the family to visit him and his wife the week he did his yearly sprint. Again, the trip was a bit strained and as hard as we tried, we just didn’t click. Two nights before his race, we got drunk….like sloppy, talk-about-everything drunk and he talked me into doing the triathlon with him. So I did it on a bike he rented for me and I was hooked. But something else came out of that. My brother and I had something. We finally had something that we could bond over. It was like a switch went off and the following year we became closer than we ever had before.

    Being the type of person I am, I can’t do anything just a little, so I signed up for an Ironman within two weeks. And a week later, so did he. I never road a bike more than 15 miles and hadn’t swam in 20 years and he never did anything but sprints. That, and he simply wasn’t the “type” to do a freakin Ironman!

    We trained through the year and talked daily and both of us crossed the finish line in Texas the following May. Ever since we have been thick as thieves. All because of this race, and this sport.

    My mom was an amazing person. To talk to her, you’d think her head was 10,000 feet in the clouds. She was an old hippie through and through. And because of that, many people, even myself, tended to think she was out of it a lot. But I’ll tell you that you have never met anyone so in tune with everything around her. Memories still hit me to this day where I’m just amazed at how she seemed to know what things REALLY meant to people, even when they didn’t.

    So where am I going with all this? After the race my bother bought my mom an “Ironmom” sweatshirt. It was hands down her favorite single article of clothing. She wore that thing like you wouldn’t believe and had a huge amount of pride about being an “Ironmom”.

    It had nothing to do with the race, or WTC or 140.6 miles. The reason she loved that shirt so much is that it represented what brought her two sons together. It mended a deep scar that she carried (among many others) and represented a blue sky after a storm. She finally saw her sons truly become brothers. It also was a final and knock out punch back to the man that relentlessly belittled and beat my brother…he wasn’t a worthless fatty, he was an Ironman.

    My mom passed away from liver disease earlier this year. Her demons that tormented her deep down finally caught up to her. She got an infection in her leg and her compromised liver couldn’t hold off the infection. But, she died seeing her family come together, and as silly as it sounds, that race was the reason why. THAT’s why she loved that shirt so much. That’s why it meant so much to her to be and “Ironmom”.

    “Ironmom” was the proudest title she ever had. And it’s now etched on her grave marker.



    Dang dude...you got me choking up reading that. Wow

    So glad you both came together with this sport that we all love.
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