Growing up, my Mum had a word for someone who was particularly lucky; ‘tinny’. If the right cards came up in a game of 500 more than a couple of times, you were ‘tinny’, if you got more than one prize in the Cup sweep, you were ‘tinny’, win a raffle you were ‘tinny’. It was a term often applied to my younger brother…but not to me. I’m a very lucky guy…but just not in a ‘Hey you just won a prize’ way. So I think it’s fair to say that I was pretty freaking surprised when I found that I was one half of the winning team in the Cycling Tips Ultimate Job competion. So now instead of staying up to ungodly hours of the morning listening to the dulcet tones of Phil and Rod and watching the French countryside try to outdo itself in a ‘which area looks the most like a fairytale’ competition…I’m actually going to be over there watching it live…and begrudgingly reporting back to you about it.
So how does it feel?
About 5 years ago I suddenly came to the crushing realisation, that I was never actually going to own a Porsche 911. For some unfathomable reason I had spent the preceding 35 years thinking that seeing as I really liked these cars…I was clearly going to one day own one. Then I suddenly realised that ‘Oh wait…that car costs more than our house did when we bought it, and has fewer bedrooms!’ Similarly last year I came to the realisation that with 3 kids under the age of 10, by the time I could afford to get everyone over to France to see Le Tour (let alone tackle some of the famed climbs) I was going to be too old and fat to actually do it. So to be suddenly told that I will actually be following the tour, on a bike and taking photos and videos is pretty amazing. But at the same time it’s a bit like someone giving me an owl as a present…sure, I’ve always wanted one…but I never really expected to get one, so now what the hell am I going to do with it?!!
Hopes and fears
Let’s start with the fears…because most people come to the internet in order to feel that at least someone out there is more worried than them.
Riding in the Alps- I’m sure most of us had an experience when we were teenagers of drinking waaay too much of an alcoholic beverage (usually a spirit), and then vomiting, and then spending the next five years feeling as though we were going to vomit every time we smelled that drink or even thought about it (Sambuca, I’m looking at you!) Basically your body says ‘Well that was freaking horrible…let’s never do that again’. Well after doing an Ironman earlier this year, I think it’s fair to say that for the last 6 months I have felt about as keen to hop back on my bike and go for a hard ride as I have been to give birth to a chair. So the prospect of suddenly reacquainting myself with cycling via a series of mythically steep hills is not filling me with confidence.
The internet- While I’m more than happy to put my musings online for my normal audience (love you Mum and Dad)…it’s quite another thing to be putting stuff up to a world of internet experts. I’ve seen content that I’ve really liked get ripped to shreds in the comments section. I’ve seen videos that would have taken ages to create, and photos that would have taken a lot of skill to pull off dismissed so cavalierly that it almost made me weep for whoever had created it, and I know that regardless of how many nice things people say about something I’ve done, it’s the person who has a go at me that really stays with me.
My hopes are thankfully a lot less angsty.
Zero responsibility- I won’t have any kids to look after, I won’t have a 9-5 to go to, and at the end of the day, no-one who reads Cycling Tips will be any worse off if my content sucks, because Lord only knows there is enough other content for them to enjoy. So all I have to do is ride, eat, sleep, take photos, make videos and write stories. Which is more than just the ‘Ultimate Job’ it’s pretty much the ‘Ultimate Life’.
Le Tour- I get to watch the tour during daylight hours. I get to see all these guys I’ve only ever seen on TV, in real life. I get to shudder when I realise how fast they actually go…and chuckle when I realise how skinny their arms really are. I get to travel to a country where cyclist aren’t treated like an unwelcome hindrance. I get to ride up hills that until now have only been spikes on an SBS course map or footage from a Sufferfest video. And I will get to see my travel companion Riley’s face fall further and further as he realises that my ‘fluent French’ is in fact just what I learnt from Pepe Le Pew as a child (look out black cats who have had some white paint fall on them!!).
For all of this I’m eternally grateful, and I can’t wait to get over there, soak it all up…and hopefully distill some of it back to you. If there are things that you would like me to talk about, then please let me know. But if you are reading or viewing any of my content for the time that we’re over there, I only ask that you remember that old saying ‘If you haven’t got anything nice to say…you’re going to feel right at home on the internet.’
A couple years ago I spent 12 months focussing on being more ‘creative’. I spent more time writing, taking photos and making videos…hell, I even took singing lessons. The net result was that I think I became a happier human being. I had a creative outlet (even if the world probably preferred it when I didn’t), my problem solving improved (although admittedly the ‘problem’ was normally someone asking me not to sing…and my ‘solving’ was agreeing and apologising) and I started to see creative options where I hadn’t seen them before. But for the last year and a half I’ve been training for the Ironman (well admittedly I’ve spent the last 2 months basking in the afterglow of having completed the Ironman) and I’ve been amazed at how focusing on keeping yourself physically fit, can have massive benefits for your creative endeavours.
The basics
Granted, the actual act of pressing the button on your camera, looking at the screen on the back, sighing, and then dejectedly deleting the photo, is not all that physically taxing (the emotional and psychological onslaught is of course another thing). So you could argue that increased fitness won’t make a big difference to your photography. But a bit of cardio fitness may have meant you walked a bit further to get a better vantage point, a bit of endurance work may have meant that you carried an additional piece of gear in your bag that helped make the shot and a bit of muscle may have allowed you to elbow your way through the scrum and get the best shot of your daughter’s dance recital (Oh sorry other parents, maybe if you’d spent a little more time at the gym you would be the one taking this awesome shot…instead of rolling around on the floor moaning ‘My nose, my nose…I think you broke my nose!”).
Location, location.
While training for the Ironman (and yes I will continue to drop that into conversation wherever possible) I would often head out on 1.5 – 2hr runs. Now don’t get me wrong, running along main roads and having the local bogans loudly question your sexuality as they drive past is pretty awesome. But eventually you will want to get off the beaten track and run somewhere different, and this will open up a world of new photographic locations. Old buildings, new bridges, creeks, graffitied walls, velodromes, rolling hills- you never know what you will find, but you can bet that it’s not something that many other people have used for a photo.
I stumbled across this one morning while out for a run…then scampered back to get my camera.
The early bird
Do you know what’s awesome for photography? Early morning light, deserted streets, sunrise, frost and that crossover between late night revellers and those who get to work early. Do you know what sucks? Getting up early to take these shots when on any other day you’d still be asleep. But if getting up early is now part of your daily routine (because it’s the only time you can work your fitness regime into your family life or work schedule), then getting up early on another day to take some shots really isn’t that tricky.
Admittedly this photo wasn’t taken superearly…but it was early when we started!
The people you meet
I’m firmly of the opinion that the most important factor in taking a great photo is not your skill level…but being there. A photographer with basic skills who is actually there, is going to take a much better photo than an expert who isn’t. But the problem is, how do you meet people to take photos of? How do you hear about events that would be great to photograph? How do you hear the stories that would translate beautifully to the captured image? In short you have to get out and meet people and do things, and getting involved in a sporting group or club is a great way to do this.
Plus, if you are actually doing an activity, you will have a much better idea of where the best photos are going to be. Everyone is going to be at the finish line, but where will the race be won? Where will the hearts break? Where is the bike most likely to stack? If you are actually doing these activities day to day, you will be able to walk up to any event and have an advantage over the other photographers.
Footjam Nosepick,
Confidence
OK, if you’ve made it this far into this post then you’re probably willing to let me get a little tangential. If you are exercising regularly, you will be happier with yourself physically. When you’re happy with yourself physically, this tends to manifest itself in greater self confidence…and you know what is an incredibly powerful tool when trying to convince strangers to let you take their photo? Self confidence. It makes no sense, but I know that for me personally, knowing that I could run 20kms on any given Sunday, gave me the confidence to approach Luke and ask him to pose for a portrait.
Admittedly he does look a little like he’s regretting agreeing to let me take his photo.
Time to think
If you’ve got kids, or a full-time job, or remarkably persistent cats, you’ll probably find that you don’t have a whole lot of time to think about your photography. But head out for a swim, ride, run or gym session and you suddenly have time and space to think, although for the first couple you will just be thinking ‘Christ I hate running!’ and ‘Why am I doing this?!’ and ‘Who the hell put the Wiggles on my playlist?!!’ But eventually you will be able to do the physical side of things on auto-pilot, while you use your newfound firing synapses and endorphins to come up with some stellar ideas.
The best ideas I’ve had for photos, videos and blogs have been while I’ve been out exercising.
Selfish portrait.
In conclusion, your Honour…
Having swung the pendulum between focusing on creativity and focusing on fitness, I have settled on the idea that I need to have a balance of 60% fitness and 40% creativity…with that additional 20% focus on fitness leading to more than a 20% improvement in my creativity. So go out and try find your balance. Before you buy that next bit of gear, buy a a decent pair of runners instead, before you book a photo-tour, go for a run around your local area and see what you find, and instead of putting your head back on the pillow at 5.30am get outside and break out of your comfort zone…your photography will be the better for it.
It can be very easy to think that the modern photographer’s life is one of instant gratification. After all, Ansell Adams often had to wait weeks before he knew if that shot of a rock had worked as he wanted it to…nowadays we can take a photo of the rock, add a few filters and send it to an uninterested world in a matter of seconds. But much like a young tradie being sent to the shop to get a ‘long weight’, there are still a few times that photographers find themselves waiting, and then realising that they are too embarressed to tell anyone about it.
The time between taking the photo and getting to work with it in Lightroom
Pretty much every photographer has had the experience of looking at a shot on the screen on the back of the camera and thinking ‘Nailed it!’, only to get the photo onto a larger screen and realise that in fact it’s soft (slightly out of focus), or noisy (ISO too high) or shit (shit). So there is always a degree of paranoia about your shots until you can load them into your computer and see what you’re really dealing with. After all softness can be sharpened, noise can be reduced and shitness can have 100% clarity added to it and passed off as ‘HDR’. But you just don’t know what you’re working with until it’s loaded onto your computer…and so the wait between clicking the shutter and clicking on the mouse can seem like an eternity.
Last year I shot my first ever wedding. By the time I got home that night and loaded the photos onto my computer it was late and I was too shattered to do any work on them. But then the next day was chock-a-block with family activities, and the day following that involved a 5 hour bike ride. So I spent over 48hrs freaking out that I had no idea if I actually had any decent shots…it was torture.
So if you live with a photographer and want to be nice to them, give them an hour off other duties and let them load in their photos and have a look at them on a big screen with access to some software that can hide their mistakes…it will make them a lot more pleasant to be around.
Waiting for feedback
I think that people who don’t take photos can underestimate just how much a photographer invests in a shot. As the photographer you’ve chosen to take a photo, you’ve composed it, you’ve chosen your settings, you’ve forged a brief alliance with your subject, you’ve taken the shot, you’ve spent time doing post-production on the shot, sent through the final product, and then…well then you’re in the hands of the recipient, and the longer you wait for a response, the more you become convinced they hate it. It can be soul crushing. It’s a bit like finally plucking up the courage to call someone you have a crush on, but getting their voicemail and having to leave a message and then having to wait them to call you back. Or maybe you should call them…to make sure they got the message…or maybe I should I see if they’re available on Facebook…wait, it says they’re logged in on their mobile…why didn’t they answer my call then?… Oh God they must be trying to think of a nice way to say ‘No’…Oh God I feel like such an idiot!…but why don’t they just let me know? Why do they just leave me hanging? What sort of psycho are they?! Screw this, I’m going to send them a really nasty text message telling them that I can’t believe I ever I had feelings for them, but not to worry, I can take the hint, and I’ll never bother them again!
Meanwhile, in the time it took to go to the bathroom, the subject of your desires has received one voicemail message followed a few minutes later by a bafflingly angry text message.
In short, you are a tad vulnerable when you put a part of yourself into a shot for someone else’s judgment, and paranoia + time = teenage boy.
So if you have the misfortune of living with someone who fancies themselves as a photographer, or someone has taken some photos for you, here are a few things you can do to assuage our fears:
Let us know you got the photos. Even if you haven’t had a chance to look at them yet, just let us know they’ve arrived. Sometimes, due to the vagueries of the internet, photos don’t make it from sender to reciever, and there is nothing worse than waiting for feedback on photos when the other person is still waiting for them to arrive.
Give feedback. Look, I know we’re all time poor, but I’ve had photos that I’ve taken hours working on, uploading to a gallery on Flickr and sending through, only to recieve ‘Great, thanks’ as the feedback. What was great?! Which ones did you like? Why?
When I did the recent photoshoot with Luke from the Cobblers Last he actually went through and listed the photos he liked and why. It was awesome because going into a shoot you have no idea what people are hoping for, so it’s great to know how close you came to what they were after.
Oh, and if I’ve seen you write ‘Cute pic’ or ‘That’s so great’ to someone’s clearly out of focus photo of their child on Facebook, your feedback has no weight with me.
Tell it like it is We are precious flowers…but sometimes we need to hear what you don’t like. Yeah, it hurts and we will probably spend the next couple of hours in a huff, but we need to know why you didn’t like a photo. I can pretty much guarantee that if there’s a photo you don’t like it’s either a photo the photographer had doubts about themselves, or there is a specific reason why they included it. As a photographer you take a lot of photos…the real skill is culling them down to the ‘good ones’. The more informed we are about what constitutes ‘good’ the better we’ll become as photographers.
Be our muse Yep, standing a spot while the photographer stares blankly at the display on the back of their camera and then adjusts the the off-camera flash for the umpteenth time can be boring as batshit. But consider it an investment in the ultimate prize; a photo of yourself that you actually like!
So there you go. We photographers are in fact incredibly misunderstood and under-appreciated geniuses who thoroughly deserve your respect and admiration. Just please tell us we’re good…please!
One of the sad realities of getting involved in photography is that you start to see everything as a potential photo. That old guy at the train station is now someone who would make a great ‘street photography’ shot, that derelict old building is now a great potential location for a shot, and that camping trip with the family is now a great opportunity to take some long exposure night photography shots. So when a new shop that fixes shoes opened next door to work, and had guys who work there in clothes that look a tad Dickensian and had two amazing old school shoe shine seats…my first thought was ‘That would make a great photo’.
Now that is normally where the idea stops. After all, the unbridled success of my idea could only be sullied by the reality of me attempting to actually take the photo. But in keeping with my new motto of pushing myself out of my comfort zone, I decided to bite the bullet and ask if the guy who was working in the shop would be interested in posing for a portrait.
Hello complete stranger…can I take your photo?
I have no doubt that once you have an impressive portfolio and you genuinely know what you’re doing, then asking a complete stranger to give up an hour of their time so that you can take a photo of them becomes relatively straight forward, as you know that in return for the hour of their time, you are going to give them a photo that they will like. But when you’re still learning your craft, there is always the fear in the back of your mind that you may be asking someone to give up their time for a substandard reflection of themselves. Fortunately I had an ace up my sleeve, I had some shoes that needed to be fixed, so I could use that as a justification for striking up a conversation…and then smoothly ask ‘Would you mind if I portrait a photograph of you?…I mean take a photo of you?…I mean not now, that would be creepy, ha ha ha…maybe when there’s no-one else in the shop…no wait…I mean…that would be worse…what I meant was, can I take a portrait of you?’
As I said…smooth.
Fortunately the man behind the counter (Luke) said he was more than happy to do it (but I suspect he was mainly saying that to get me out of his shop so that he could press the ‘panic alarm’ button). So we locked in a time a date.
The idea
As I mentioned earlier, Luke had two shoe-shine chairs in the shop, and so as Buck 65’s track Craftsmanship looped in my head I had a vision of getting a shot of Luke on the shoe shine seat- the artisan and his tools. Similar to the shot of took of my father-in-law, I would use an off camera flash on an umbrella.
Sir James,
The execution
We had arranged to do the shoot on a weekday after work. So in the morning I trundled off to work with my camera bag (550D, 50mm, 17-55mm, flash, remotes, battery charger & grid), my work bag with my lunch and drink bottle, my lightstand, my bag with my ironed shirts for the week, my tripod and an umbrella (it was raining).
It was at about Northcote that I realised that the pivotal piece of equipment, the reflective umbrella was still at home under my bed. Perfect. I eventually tracked down a shoot-through umbrella and figured that may suffice.
Then when I got to the shop I realised that the shoe-shine seats were actually a lot higher than I had realised, which meant that it was nigh on impossible to get the flash up high enough to create the light that I wanted. But that was fine….because the shoot-through umbrella wasn’t capable of getting the light that I wanted anyway (in short the spread of the light was a lot broader than what I wanted). So I set about getting a few shots of Luke in action, in the hope that I might have a moment of inspiration in the meantime.
Luke at work buffing a shoe…my shoe incidentally.The hands of someone who does actual work.
Eventually I took the plunge and took a couple of shots of Luke up on the seat
Up on the seat
but it wasn’t until Luke suggested sitting down at ground level as if he was going to be doing a shoe shine that it all started to work. In hindsight, it was never going to look natural with him up on the seat…as that just doesn’t make sense. It’s almost as if the guy who has been doing this for years knows more about it than the photographer who has just swanned in to take a photo…weird.
Suddenly it started to work. It was nothing like the photo I had in my mind at the start of the shoot…but it was starting to feel like it made sense.
The peaked hat was giving me a few problems…but looking to the light always helps.Yep I’ve seen one of these before…it’s a shoe.
In the midst of a few shots, I got this one…and it’s my favourite.
Of all the photos, I think this one carries the most weight.
So what did I learn?
Well first and foremost, pushing yourself out of your comfort zone is definitely the best way to learn…but this is a hell of a lot easier when you’ve got someone who’s patient and understanding to work with. Luke was happy to wait while I faffed around with the camera and flash, provided suggestions, and not once did he say ‘You know, I really do have better things to do with my time!’ (so if you’re in the city you really should get all your repairs done at his shop he’s a pretty awesome dude!)
Also, if your shot is reliant on a piece of equipment…then actually bringing that piece of equipment is a really super idea. If you fail to heed this piece of advice, then you need to be able to adapt pretty quickly to whatever you have at your disposal.
From a technical perspective, I really have to let go of this idea of shooting everything at ISO 100. The 550D doesn’t do high ISO all that well, but shooting at 200 or 400 isn’t going to be a big problem, and does give me a much faster shutter speed.
I’m slowly growing out of the ‘shoot everything at the lowest f-stop because that always looks so cool’ phase. But I’m not there yet.
Presets in Lightroom are still my go to…but they are teaching me a lot about how to use post to make an image pop.
Go with your strengths. My photography still has a long way to go…but my chatting to people skills are pretty good. So no matter how bad I may think the technical side of a shoot is going, I need to maintain that dialogue with the person I’m photographing. Even if I take a really good photo, I won’t be invited back if I act like an aloof dick.
I took over 100 photos for about 20 ‘keepers’ (and in all honesty 5 that I was really happy with)…the Washington Generals have a better shooting percentage than that!
The constant soundtrack for this photoshoot was ‘Craftsmanship’ by Buck 65. So it’s only fair that I finish with a line from that song: ‘There’s a right way to go about your job and a wrong one I find this way is much better in the long run It ain’t about the dollar or trying to go fast Unless you take pride in what you’re doing, it won’t last Craftsmanship is a quality that some lack You got to give people a reason for them to come back’
You can see the full gallery of shots here.
If you don’t already own a copy of Buck 65’s Talkin’ Honky Blues, then go out and buy one…it’s genius.
And once again thanks very much to Luke for his patience and enthusiasm.
After 15 months of training I can finally swan around saying ‘I am an Ironman‘ to anyone who’s silly enough to ask. ‘But what was the actual race like?’ I hear absolutely none of you asking, well let me take you through it.
The lead-up
Regular readers of the blog will know that I’ve wanted to do an Ironman since I was a 15yo watching the Kona highlights on Nine’s Wide World of Sports, and I’ve been training for Ironman Melbourne for about 15 months. So it felt quite surreal after all that buildup to suddenly be only one sleep away from competing in the Ironman. On the night before the Melbourne Marathon I had found it really hard to get to sleep, and so this time I decided I would get into bed nice and early and just relax into a good night’s sleep. So at 8.30pm I climbed into bed and read a book for half an hour, then at 9pm I set my alarm for 4am and closed my eyes. At 10.30pm I still wasn’t asleep, but reasoned that as my body was used to going to sleep at about this time, there was no need to worry. At 11.30pm I told myself that it was ok, after all I had been resting for a good couple of hours, and that was nearly as good as being asleep…right? At 12.30am I started to panic a little. 3.5 hours of sleep was really not ideal before an entire day of exercise! At 1.30pm I started to really panic, which greatly assisted my ability to get to sleep. Some time after that I fell asleep. At 3.30am I woke up and told myself that I really should go back to sleep, an extra half an hour of sleep could be a really good thing…at 3.50am I realised that this wasn’t going to happen, so I got up and began what would be the most physically gruelling day of my life. I was not brimming with confidence.
The swim (3.8kms)
I think it’s fair to say that my favourite part of any of these events is the interminable time you get to spend standing around after you’ve got everything into transition and the event actually starts. It’s a really good chance to realise just how freaked out you are, and how much you really need to go to the toilet…again. So it was awesome to finally just get the swim started. For those of you who don’t know much about Ironman, the swim has traditionally been a mass start. Which means that all of the athletes (other than the Pros) start at the same time. So if you can imagine over 2,000 people all fighting for the same small amount of water, you can imagine just how much fun that is. Fortunately, this year they introduced a rolling start, whereby they basically lined everyone up and started them 6 at a time at about 5 second intervals, which meant that you spent significantly less time being kicked in the face as you swam. The combination of this start and the beautiful (ie no waves) conditions meant that I got into my swim rhythm really quickly, and felt really good for pretty much the entire time.
Going into the Ironman, my swim leg was probably the one I was confident in. I had been swimming regularly with a squad and had done some long swims by myself in the pool. The only fear I had was that I hadn’t done much open water swimming (and by ‘not much’ I really mean ‘bugger all’), but I was quietly confident that my excellent tumble-turns would provide me with an X-factor.
I had hoped to do the swim in about 1.15 and ended up doing it in 1.07, and even though I didn’t know what time I had swum (thanks to a Garmin that had a crack in the screen and could no longer go in water), I came out of the water feeling happy that I hadn’t gone too deep into my energy reserves, and that technically I was one third of the way through the Ironman.
Out of the water. Photo: FinisherPix
The bike (180kms)
Going into the race, this was the leg I was most worried about. The only way you can do 180km on the bike comfortably is to do a lot of long sessions on the bike, and the only way you can do long sessions on the bike is by abandoning the family for 5-6hr stretches pretty much every weekend (and then of course being exhausted for the remainder of the day). With three young kids, and a full-time job, and a pretty strong desire not to get divorced, that is pretty much impossible. So while I had managed a few long rides (including one epic ride with Matt Nelson out to Healesville and back via the hills), I knew that I didn’t have the kms in my legs to dominate the ride. So my aim was to ride conservatively and go into the run with some energy still in my legs.
The bike leg is basically doing two laps of 45kms from Frankston to Springvale Rd out along Eastlink and then back. My aim was to sit on an average of 30km/h. If I did this then I would do the ride in 6hrs. I spent the vast majority of my time on the first lap out being passed by everyone. But I kept telling myself not to worry as all I had to do was ride conservatively, and I would catch a lot of people on the run…besides, these were probably the elite people who were passing me.
I averaged about 28km/h for the first lap, but wasn’t too worried as I was riding into a headwind, and on the way back to Frankston I averaged just over 30km/h so I was still confident that could get close to the 6 hour mark.
On the second lap out, I think it’s safe to say that everything went to hell in a handbasket. The headwind had really picked up and it was getting hot. There weren’t as many people passing me…but all my ‘they’re going too hard and are going to blow up on the second lap’ thoughts were starting too look remarkably inaccurate, and my ‘they’re probably the elite athletes’ beliefs were harder to sustain when men in their late 60’s cruised past. The Mars Bar that I had in my ‘special needs’ bag (this is a bag you can collect halfway through the race) had transformed from ‘frozen’ to ‘disgusting near liquid’, and there was no way I wanted to eat the vegemite sandwich that was also there. I had gone through 3 water bottles and a water bottle with my gels in it, and hadn’t needed to go to the toilet…so clearly I was dehydrating at a rapid rate of knots. On top of this I was getting a searing pain in my left foot known as a hot spot (which is basically where your foot swells in the heat and then gets constricted by your cycling shoe which leads to nerves getting squashed, which leads to a feeling as though someone is putting a blow-torch onto the ball of your foot). I’ve never had this before…and to be perfectly honest, I hope to never have it again. The only way I could get rid of the pain was to loosen the straps on my shoes…but eventually it got to the stage where my shoes were so loose that it was affecting my pedalling. So I began stopping every half hour to take off my shoe and stretch my foot.
I finally made the turnaround point and headed for home. But my average for the third lap was 21km/h, so all bets were off in terms of doing 6hrs. Already my thoughts were turning to my Mum and Dad who were going to be waiting for me in Frankston and were going to be waiting around for about an extra hour, and to Jo Donnelly and her family who had been there when I came out of the water and was probably wondering where the hell I was…and of course to Katie and the kids who were going to be waiting for a long time at Black Rock before they saw me.
But as bad as I felt, I was least heading back to Frankston with a nice tailwind…and if nothing else, at least I wasn’t one of the poor bastards coming past me in the opposite direction into that head wind and looking shattered.
In the end I did the ride in just over 7hrs, and averaged just over 25km/h. In all honesty I should have just set myself the goal of averaging 27km/h and I probably wouldn’t have felt like I was failing so badly for so long. But the mathematical ease of 30km/h proved just too tempting.
On the bright side, I had managed to get through pretty much all of my nutrition and still felt that I had some energy in my legs…so bring on the run!
Pretty sure I’m smiling because as I head off on my second lap, Luke Bell is about to finish his second. Photo: FinisherPix
The run (42kms)
I’m on record as saying I’ve never really been a runner. But if you’d asked me coming into the Ironman to rank the disciplines by preference, it would have been swim-run-bike. Even though I’ve only been running for about a year, I actually came in with a bit of confidence that I could maintain about a 6 minute/km pace for the run leg. After the first 1.5kms I was feeling great. I had found a good rhythm and pace, my parents had told me my swim split which had been a pleasant surprise and I was already passing people. This was going to be a triumph!
Then about 1km later I started feeling sick and had to pull over to the side of the path to vomit. As horrific as this may sound to a non-Ironman, I actually didn’t think this was too bad. I had got it out of my system, and now I just needed to get some more nutrition in and I would be fine…then I had one last little vomit and saw blood. ‘Hmmm’ I thought…’that’s probably not so good’. But I didn’t feel any pain…and I no longer felt sick, so I pushed on. At the next aid station (about 4kms in) I had some electrolytes, some watermelon and some water and then saw my coach (Craig Percival). We ran together and I told him that I had vomited, but was actually feeling much better, and he was saying that if I could hold this pace I would be passing heaps of people as there were a lot of people who had gone too hard on the bike and were now walking. Ahah! I thought. Vindication. Sure that bike leg had sucked…but now was my time to shine! I was running comfortably at about 6 minute pace and nothing could stop me.
Then it did. I got to the next aid station and my stomach was feeling queasy again. I headed into the porta-loo and vomited up everything I had eaten at the previous aid station, and a little blood for good measure. It suddenly dawned on me that this could be the end of the race. I couldn’t do another 35kms without any food or water…and this vomiting up blood thing really wasn’t that awesome either…in fact, I’m sure I saw this on an episode of ‘House’ once. So I stood in a porta-loo halfway between Frankston and Seaford and faced the fact that for the next few years, every time someone asked about the Ironman, instead of having a story of challenge and triumph…I would ultimately have to tell them that I didn’t finish. That all the training, all the effort, all the sacrifice from myself and my family had been for nothing. Then someone knocked on the door and asked if I’d ‘finished in there?’. So I climbed out of the Porta-loo, went back to the table with the water on it, drank a cup of water…and started walking.
I walked to the next aid station and had some water, some ice and some electrolyte and waited to see if I could keep it down. I did, and so I started a slow jog. At the next aid station I had a little more water and electrolyte and picked up the pace, but then my stomach felt queasy again so I slowed down. I basically did this for the remaining 30kms. I would jog when I could, then I would start to feel better, so I would get back into a run, then I would feel sick, so I would walk. But on the bright side I was keeping everything down, and while I wasn’t willing to risk having a gel (they make me want to vomit at the best of times!) I was at least able to eat some banana, or some pretzels.
The daylight faded, the heat dissipated and soon I was past Mordialloc and the half way point. People were still out supporting the runners, and I made sure I acknowledged all of them. The views were stunning and I regularly wished I had my camera. I found myself running with a group of people who were all at about the same pace and the aid stations (which are at 2km intervals) began to tick by.
I tried picking up the pace a couple of times, but again each time my stomach would start to react, and I knew I had to choose between running faster and running the risk of vomiting again (and realistically finishing the race if there was still blood coming up), or running at a slower pace, but knowing that I was going to finish. The reality was, that I was never in this to do a certain time, I was in it to finish it…and so I cruised on.
With about 3kms to go I could see the lights of the finish, and I knew that no matter what happened I was going to finish, and so I decided to just run and see how I went. It felt great. I was back to running at the pace I wanted to and made it all the way to the final aid station without any issues. I took one last hit of water and electrolytes and ran the last 2kms without any issues (I even tapped out a 4’53 for the last km!).
Running down that final chute was something I’ll never forget. The lights, people cheering, Mike Reilly saying ‘Chris Riordan, you are an Ironman!’ and my family waiting just over the finish line. Did it make up for the preceding 13hours and 45 minutes? No…but it did come surprisingly close.
Done! Photo: FinisherPix
Great shot by Luke Vesty of me crossing the finish line
Support
I can’t thank enough the people who came out to support me on the day. From the Tri Nation team who were there at the start of the swim, to Jo Donnelly, Simon and Indi who cheered me as I came out of the water and then were still there to cheer (and run alongside me) about 8 hours later somewhere near Bon Beach. To my Mum and Dad who waited for me to finish the ride in Frankston and then continued to appear at random intervals like inept stalkers for the duration of the run, to Oc and Tara who for once in their lives didn’t sprint past me through Black Rock, to Luke and Matt who waited patiently at the finish line and took some sensational photos, to my coach Craig Percival who was the steady voice of reason and reassurance for the whole run and of course to Katie, Josh, Holly and Xavier who supported me the whole way from Black Rock back to St Kilda (not to mention every day for the last 15 months). And of course to everyone who has given me that look of ‘well it sounds insane to me…but if that’s what you want to do, then go for it’ over the last 15 months- Thank you.
The family at the finishMatt and Luke politely avoid mentioning how sweaty I am.‘While I was out there I was practising my Blue Steel…check it out’
What’s next?
Will I do another Ironman? If you mean ‘Ironman’ as a metaphor for ‘pushing your boundaries and trying new things’, then yes I will. If you mean ‘Ironman’ as a metaphor for ‘setting a goal and working your arse off to achieve it’ then yes I will. But if you mean ‘Ironman’ as in an actual Ironman with a 3.8km swim/180km bike ride/42km run…then no, only a lunatic would attempt that.
A moment of clarity is usually a moment when you see through all the interference and stare at the truth of a situation. Sometimes it’s a drug addict seeing through the haze of chemicals and suddenly seeing what they’re doing to themselves, sometimes it’s someone meditating on a problem and suddenly seeing the answer unfold before them…sometime it’s Jay-Z. For me, my Ironman moment of clarity happened last week when my wife said that she was going to head out on Sunday with a few of her friends to celebrate her Birthday, and my first thought was ‘But that’s going to mean I can’t get my training done!’ Then I thought, ‘That’s not the sort of thing a loving and supportive husband would think. That’s not even what a basic human being would think. That’s what a sociopath would think!’ In my moment of clarity, I saw that achieving something I’ve always wanted to achieve, may mean becoming someone I never wanted to become. The sort of person who sees everything through a prism of ‘How does this impact on me?’ In short, becoming a selfish person.
Let’s not kid ourselves
Becoming an Ironman is a selfish pursuit. I’ve tried to justify it to myself by saying ‘It will be great for the kids to see me apply myself to achieving a dream. They’ll see that hard work reaps rewards.’ But in truth, they haven’t got the foggiest idea what I’m doing when I’m training. They just know that Dad goes away for hours at a time…and returns sweaty and hungry. I can tell them that I’m going to swim 3.8km, ride 180km and then run 42km in a day…but that means absolutely nothing to them. They simply have no point of reference. I may as well tell them I’m going to map the human genome for all the relevance it has to their lives. And it’s not like they can tell their friends ‘My Dad’s an Ironman!’Because, the most likely response is going to be ‘Your Dad’s Ironman?!!!’…and then I’m going to have a procession of disappointed children wondering through my house asking where my metal suit is? And how come I can’t fly? and why don’t I have a collection of luxury sports cars in my garage? and come to that…why don’t I have a garage?!
The simple truth is, if I said ‘Hey kids, would you prefer to have your Dad be an Ironman or actually be around to take you to basketball and circus?’…I’m pretty sure I know what the answer would be.
I’ve even tried to convince myself that I was being a good husband by working so hard on getting fit. But in truth I’m yet to hear any woman say ‘You know my dream man is someone with the wiry and veiny legs of a marathon runner…and the emaciated upper body of a cyclist. Who gets up at some ungodly hour of the morning and falls asleep before I do every night. And who destroys any chance I have of maintaining a diet by eating all day and everyday in front of me…Oh, and if he can bang on endlessly about the sets he did at swim training…hold me back!’
Swimming towards the wave
There invariably comes a time when you are trying to make your way back out through the surf that you see a wave rising up in front of you. You can either sit back, let it break and hope that you can simply duck-dive under the whitewash. Or you can paddle your arse off and hope that you can get over the wave before it breaks. But the closer you get, the bigger the wave seems and the more likely you are to get a serious working over. With about 7 weeks to go before the Melbourne Ironman I was paddling frantically to get over that wave, but it was getting bigger and bigger. The wave was made up of the guilt I felt over the time I was spending away from my family (a few days earlier my 3yo son had walked up to me while I was doing the dishes, looked up at me and matter-of-factly said ‘I hate you Dad.’ then casually walked off), the guilt I felt for missing training sessions, the despair I was feeling seeing all my other hobbies slide into the background, the fear that maybe I wasn’t going to be able to complete the race, the fear that if I did finish the race maybe I was going to spend 13 – 15 hours hating it and wondering why I even bothered, and of course the knowledge that with 7 weeks to go my training load was only going to increase over the next couple of weeks.
The coach
When you’re out in the surf facing that wave, you don’t really have the option to ask those around for you advice. But when the wave is simply a metaphor for all your fears and anxieties about a race, then you actually have the option to talk to someone who has been through it (or at least a variation of it) before and can pass on some sage advice. For me, I was lucky enough to have my coach Craig Percival to talk to. I sent him an email explaining that I was no longer really looking forward to the race, and that in fact my sole motivation was simply all the things I was going to be able to do once I had finished the race, and his advice was simple ‘put the bike away, don’t look at your runners and just take some time off for a few days.’
So I did. I took 4 days off training. I spent time with our three kids. Took them to a movie. Did some photography work. Took my time with the cooking. In short, acted like a normal person, and in doing so, gained a little perspective.
Perspective
My goal going into this was just to finish the Ironman before the cutoff. Spending 15 months listening to people who race Ironman and 70.3 distance races regularly may have got me thinking about an 11hr time versus a 12hr time…but I didn’t get into this to beat a time. I got into this to do an Ironman, and so long as I finish before the cutoff, then I’ve achieved that.
I’m going to have to be selfish in order to achieve this, for the next 6 weeks I’m just going to have focus on the race, but I can try to assuage some of my guilt by giving back on race day. To be that guy who hi-fives the kids who have stood for hours by the road cheering people on, to be the guy who thanks the volunteers at the aid stations for the work they’re doing, to be the guy who acknowledges friends and family who have come out to cheer me on, and to be the guy who is just as excited to see his family at the end of the race as he is to hear Mike Reilly say ‘You are an Ironman!‘
To be the guy who sees what everyone else has done to allow me to live a dream.
The support crew on the train ride home from the Melbourne marathon.
2014 has been an interesting year of photography for me. On the one hand, training for the Ironman has left very little time to get out and take photos. But on the other hand taking part in The Age’s ‘Clique’ photo competition has meant that I’ve been forced to really push myself out of my comfort zone in terms who and how I shoot. Plus I shot my first wedding (there’s a blog on that coming soon). The net result is that I shot a lot more photos that I was happy with this year…so here are my top 10 in no particular order (if you’re having trouble viewing the images you can also find them here.)
#1 X & A
X & A. ISO 100, 50mm, f1.4 1/200
Probably the biggest change to my photography came with my purchase of the Zack Arias video series ‘Onelight 2.0’ It transformed me from someone who swore he would never shoot with a flash, to someone who suddenly saw the opportunities a flash presented. Like capturing that moment when a couple of 2 year olds give each other a big hug. On my normal settings I would have missed this. They would have been slightly blurred…or a little out of focus. But with the flash they were captured in this moment, and they both just look so freaking happy to be in each other’s company.
#2 Lightspeed at the roadhouse
Light speed at the roadhouse. ISO 640, 24mm, f2.8, 8sec
I owe a pretty hefty debt to Luke Vesty for the idea for this one. We were on a two day roadtrip in regional Victoria and had decided to take some long exposure shots. Luke got an amazing shot of a truck driving past so all you could see was a road sign and the trucks red lights disappearing into the distance. Clearly I couldn’t steal his idea…but I could appropriate it! So this is my remix. I set up my shot of the roadhouse and then waited for a truck to come past. When it was about 500m away I took and 8 second shot…and this was the result.
#3 Selfish portrait
Selfish portrait. ISO 400, 17mm, f3.5 and 6sec
One of the Clique challenges was to ‘shine a light on something you are passionate about’. So I had the idea of getting a shot of me out on the cycling trainer with a long enough exposure that my legs would look blurred. In theory the idea was pretty straight forward…but it took about an hour of setting up the camera, pressing the button, then running over to the bike and pedalling until the shot was done, then getting off the bike and back to the camera to see if it had worked. Eventually it did and I love the final shot (the light on the back wheel is coming from my phone which I had set up against the trainer)…but was it worth the numerous mosquito bites? Probably not.
#4 Down at the Nieuw Amsterdam
Down at the Nieuw Amsterdam, ISO100, 17mm, f2.8 & 1/6sec
Another Clique challenge was to take a photo of someone who worked from dusk til dawn, and you had to use available light (ie no flash). I have a friend at work whose husband runs a restaurant in the city called Nieuw Amsterdam and I asked if I could come in and take a photo, and she said no worries. So I traipsed into the city one Wednesday night and headed down to the cocktail bar at Nieuw Amsterdam, and discovered that while the bar had an awesome ambience…it was freaking dark. So I asked the barman if there was any way of getting some more light in to the bar ‘Will this do?’ he asked and put a brulee torch to a block of sugar. *snap* ‘Yep, that will do nicely.’
#5 Maxim
Maxim, ISO 100, 24mm, f2.8 & 1/80sec
This shot was taken at Josh’s birthday party. My children pretty much refuse to do anything that I ask in a photo…but that doesn’t mean I can’t ask other, more polite children to stand under a skylight and look up towards it. I originally wanted to use as a colour shot as there was heaps of brightly coloured lego in the background…but it worked so much better as a black and white.
#6 Show me the boy at 7 and I’ll give you the man
Josh, ISO 800, 55mm, f2.8 & 1/100
As mentioned in #5, my kids have pretty much decided that my interest in photography is just a ploy to annoy them. As such, I have at best 10 seconds to get any shot of them before they walk off…and, no, they won’t be taking any direction…what you see is what you get. And sometimes that is pretty awesome. There’s nothing special about this as a photo…but as a parent it’s exactly how I see Josh, and how I think I’ll see him in about 10 years time. So I’m so glad I’ve got this as a keepsake.
#7 Sir James
Sir James, ISO 100, 24mm, f2.8 & 1/160 (with flash bouncing off an umbrella)
Another big lesson for this year was ‘Don’t be afraid of autofocus’. I had always assumed that pro-photographers eschewed auto focus and manually focused all of their shots. But having spoken to a few photographers about this, they all had the same reaction ‘Wow, you’re focusing everything manually…I don’t do that!’
For this shot I was in near total darkness and had no scope to manually focus and so trusted the autofocus…and lo and behold the shots came out beautifully.
I had hired some flash gear for the weekend to take these shots, so I was shooting with gear I’d never used, following a technique I had just learnt from a video and I was taking photos of my father-in-law. So the scope for disaster was pretty spectacular, but if this year has taught me anything it’s that the more you push yourself, the bigger the rewards. My challenge with any portrait is to try and capture the essence of the person, and so in this shot I think you see someone who is content, confident, a bit cheeky and incredibly comfortable with a glass of wine in his hand. Which is pretty much exactly how I see James.
#8 The big sister
The big sister, ISO 200, 85mm, f1.8 & 1/200sec
Similar to the photo of Josh, this photo is incredibly important to me as it serves a record of how close these two are. Holly’s patience with Xavier is biblical, and Xavier’s adoration of his big sister is equally epic. In time this may change…but I’ll always have this photo.
#9 Harry Potter
Harry Potter, ISO 200, 17mm, f6.3 & 15 secs
I can remember in my late teens I was having guitar lessons, and my teacher had given me a series of scales to learn. He explained that I could play the notes in pretty much any order and they would all work with each other as they are in the same scale. I worked on those scales for weeks…then one day I suddenly started to see the patterns in them and was suddenly able to create little solos by using the notes from the scales. It was like suddenly seeing how the magician did the trick. Suddenly things made sense.
This photo was a similar experience for me. I knew what I wanted to do with the shot, but couldn’t get the camera to do it. So I went to full manual mode and realised what I had to do. I changed lenses, I put the camera on a tripod, I manually focussed on the church, cropped the moon just out of the shot so that the overall shot was darker so that I could use a longer exposure, and I got this shot. Suddenly things made sense.
#10 Footjam Nosepick
Footjam Nosepick, ISO 200, 42mm, f4.5 & 1/1,000sec
The final Clique challenge was to take a shot using a fast shutter speed, which again was something I’ve never really done before. So we headed to the Edinburgh gardens, and after watching the skaters for about 20minutes, I saw this guy on the BMX doing a few runs. He was pulling off some pretty awesome tricks, and so I decided he was my star. I watched him for a bit longer to work out where was a good place to take the shot (ie where I was close enough to a trick to get the shot, but not in the way of anyone else). Then I shot in bursts of 1/1,000. I got a couple of pretty good shots of him doing airs, and one of him grinding…but this was the hero shot.
I really like photos where the more you look, the more you see, and so if you look closely you notice his tatts, you notice the two skaters in the background watching him, and if you look really closely you see that he’s not using a hand-brake to keep his front wheel from moving, he’s jammed his foot between the tyre and the fork – a ‘footjam nosepick’.
In conclusion
So that’s my top 10 for 2014. I was really stoked to have my portfolio of photos for Clique make the final for the grand prize. But I was much happier with how many risks I was willing to take this year to work on my photography. From approaching relative strangers to be photographed, to taking on my first wedding, to trying new techniques and equipment…every risk I’ve taken has given me some reward. Now I just have to work out a way to get paid to do this on a regular basis so that I can afford to get some of these printed.
Thanks for following the blog this year, I know that it’s been pretty sporadic. But once I’ve got this Ironman done (in March 2015) I’ll have much more time to devote to creative pursuits….and hopefully 2015 will be an even better year for photography.
Some of you may have seen my video about preparing for my first marathon (if not you can see it here…go on watch it…I can wait), well I’m now the proud of owner of a medal and painfully sore legs, so I feel I should tell you a little about how the marathon unfolded for me and what I learnt from it.
My time was 4hrs11mins
The marathon really begins at 30km
I heard this quite a few times in the lead up to the run “It’s really two races, from 0km to 30kms and then 30kms to the finish” or some variation on that theme. To be honest I thought that this was just something people who had done a marathon said to sound smart…but sadly for me it was remarkably accurate (give or take a few kms).
I was sitting on a really good pace for the first 32kms, I was running within myself, passing people and feeling really good. But from about the 32km mark my quads started to get sore, my hips were tightening up, my heart rate was going up and my pace was dropping significantly (I had held 5’30” pace up until then…and suddenly dropped to 6’00” pace…then about 7’00” for the last 2kms!). From 36km-39km was a very dark place.
Hurting near the finish line
Trust GPS not your vanity
When I train I have a Garmin that I use for my heart rate and Nike+ that I use to measure the distance. The Garmin also measures distance, but the Nike+ has a nicer user interface when you upload it, and I’ve been using it for longer so I get to gloat about having run 5,000km with it, and I don’t have to find the little ANT+ USB to upload the data like I do with the Garmin…but if I’m being brutally honest, I use it because it’s a little more generous with the distances. Run 10km with the Garmin, and the Nike+ will say ‘Great 11km run’. Go for a 15km run and the Nike+ will say ‘great 17.5km run…you’re running at 5’00″/km pace!’. Which is all well and good until you start basing your estimated run time on these speeds and start saying things like ‘I think that if I have a good day I could run 3hrs30mins!’ because you didn’t want to face the reality that you weren’t running as far as you thought you were.
In the end, my Garmin said I ran 42.67kms for the marathon and Nike+ congratulated me for running 47.5kms. If I’d spent more time paying attention to my Garmin stats than my Nike+ stats I would have known that a 4hr marathon was a much more likely goal.
So I taught Nike+ a lesson by leaving my iPod in my running shorts and putting them through the wash. Genius.
Feigning happiness with a thumbs up
People are awesome
Whether it’s people who come down to see you run (like my coach Craig who had put in a lazy 50km run the day before and my family who braved the throngs of people on the finish line) or workmates who are volunteering at the event and yell out to you as you go by (like the inimitable Lauren Bruce), or the myriad volunteers who have got out of bed early and stood in the sun all day so that they can pass you a cup of water, or the complete strangers standing by the course who clap and cheer you on and tell you that you’re ‘looking good’ (when in fact you later see photos that prove the contrary), to the other thousands of runners in all shapes, sizes, ages and abilities who are going through what you’re going through, and to the amazing masseuses who spend hours in the gloomy bowels of the MCG rubbing the legs of complete strangers who are beginning to understand why the first guy who ran the marathon died.
They may only occupy 3 seconds of your journey, but dear God they’re appreciated!
Into the last km of the Melbourne Marathon
It’s hard
I know that this is stating the freaking obvious. But I spent three hours and 45 minutes of the race thinking that it was challenging but doable…and 15 minutes thinking that it was freaking hard and that walking might be a good idea…and the remaining 11 minutes in a world of mental and physical pain just wishing it would end. But those 11 minutes of mental torture weren’t just the last 11 minutes of the race, they were interspersed over the last hour. So you would oscillate between ‘this is too hard, I should just walk’ to ‘this is too hard, I should just stop!’, all the while seeing people who were doing exactly these things. People hobbling, people grabbing at cramping legs, people being attended to by St. John’s Ambulance staff.
In every endurance event I’ve done there has been a point where I’ve genuinely considered just calling it a day…but for the marathon, there were repeated points…and they felt like an eternity.
But when you reach the finish line…
…well…you reach the finish line. I don’t know if it’s because running a marathon had never really been a dream of mine…or because the reality was sinking in that in the Ironman I would have to do that 42km run having already done a 3.8km swim and a 180km bike ride…or because I had hoped to finish the race in 4hrs and had run 4hrs 11mins instead. But I didn’t feel particularly elated. In real life the footage doesn’t slow down, the inspirational music doesn’t swell up, the spotlight doesn’t fall on you…instead you are just one of a number of people crossing the finish line, and you are too busy trying to spot where your friends and family are, and working out where the medals are being handed out, and trying to get some fluids into you, that you just sort of stumble around for 5 minutes with a whole lot of other people who are stumbling around trying to process what they’ve just done.
There is a real endorphin rush that normally comes with a good run workout…and there is a real pleasure that comes with stopping doing something that really hurts…but for some reason when these two combine for me, I’m not left feeling euphoric…just dazed and light headed. If anything, the real fun begins a few hours later when my brain has processed what’s happened and I can start to get a little perspective. Of course by then, my legs are starting to scream at me for what I’ve done to them and I just have to channel my inner Jens Voigt and say ‘Shut up legs!’.
So it’s done. The guy who grew up hating running has done a marathon…and now I get to focus on the Challenge Shepparton 70.3 (half-Ironman) in early November. A big thanks to everyone who donated to my fundraising for the JMB Foundation. A big thanks to my coach Craig who got me to a stage where I could run a marathon, and the biggest thanks to my family for putting up with the constant training and giving up a beautiful Sunday morning to come and see me run.
When we had our first child, I was inundated with people saying nice things like ‘Oh it’s so wonderful’ and ‘You’re going to be a great parent’. Then when we had our second child, people said things like ‘Oh you’ve got a boy and a girl, the full set!’ and ‘Now you’re a real family’. When we had our third, suddenly people were saying things like ‘So when are you getting the snip?’ and ‘My husband went to a place where you get a free stubby holder’. Suddenly women were putting my genitals and scissors in the same sentence, and with a sense of inevitability that terrified me. Well that sense of inevitability was well placed, as I have just had the snip.
So why do it?
Well, mainly because we have three healthy happy kids, and we don’t want to push our luck. Also, at no stage in the last 6 months have I thought ‘You know, I sure could go for constantly broken sleep and zero time to do anything for myself right now!’
Furthermore, despite the advent of self service counters at the supermarket, purchasing condoms remains as awkward at 38 as it was at 18. It’s just that when you bought them at 18 you looked ‘aspirational’ whereas at 38 and with three kids you look ‘incompetent’.
But mainly because having 4 kids would probably tip us into Tarago territory…and having someone attack your genitals with a sharp object seems a fairly attractive alternative.
Making the decision
Obviously this is a decision that needs to be reached after a lot of discussion and careful consideration. So Katie and I sat down and I said ‘You know I think that it might be time for me to…Josh, I thought I told you to stop watching that video about Minecraft!’ and Katie said ‘I think you’re right, but we need to consider…Yes Holly I can see you on the monkey bars…no I can’t come out I’m just trying to talk to Dad…I know you’ll be quick, but…OK fine I’m coming!’ Then I finished the conversation by saying ‘I just think that we really need to…No Xavier! Don’t put that in there, it will break it! DON’T PUT THAT IN THERE! I TOLD you NOT to put that in there! Yes well of course it’s not working now, that’s WHAT I said would happen. Don’t look at me like that.’
So that pretty much settled it.
Fears
This is not really something that the guys I know talk about voluntarily. One guy I know mentioned his vasectomy because it was the reason he was off the bike for an extended period…and another said his was like ‘getting kicked in the balls…but it lasted for a couple of days’. So clearly I was pretty excited about something that was painful, expensive and was going to stop my Ironman training in its tracks.
But I was genuinely worried about what it would do to both my libido and performance, so I called around all my friends and we sat down and had a full and frank discussion about my fears and about their experiences…nah, just kidding, I interalised it all and chose to hope for the best…THAT is the male way!
The process
First you need to see a GP to get a referral to see a Urologist…then you need to see the Urologist. I think that by definition Urologists are surgeons…but I don’t know for sure. What I do now know is that male surgeons aren’t called ‘Dr.’ they are called ‘Mr.’ So while most Doctors say “I didn’t spend 6 years at medical school just to be called “Mister”!’ when you accidentally call them ‘Mr’…apparently surgeons say ‘I didn’t spend an extra couple of years training to be a surgeon just to be called “Doctor”!’ when you call them ‘Dr’. The long and the short of it is that despite the fact that they may be called something like ‘Mr. Clarke’ instead of ‘Dr. Clarke’…they will still charge a hell of a lot of money for a very short consultation.
They will also make sure that you are getting a vasectomy for the right reasons (for the record ‘because my wife told me to’ is not considered a valid reason), and that you are aware that 1 in 4 marriages end in divorce…so are you really sure you want to exclude the option of having kids with your second and third wives? I explained that I had masturbated into the freezer and so I had a ‘sample’ that I could use if ever the need arose…he explained that that’s not how it works, and asked me to leave his office.
You then book in a time and a hospital and away you go. For me I went privately (mainly because my GP recommended this surgeon) and I ended up paying over $1,000 for the surgery…I’m sure you can do this through the public system and pay a lot less. But the crappy sandwich, cup of tea and ‘Woman’s Day’ magazines from 2011made it all seem worthwhile.
From what I can gather different surgeons do the operation differently, some use a general anesthetic and some just use a local. I had a general, and ironically it was the first afternoon nap I’d had since Josh was born. I checked in at 2.30pm and by 6.30pm I was being driven home, so the operation side of things was pretty cruisey…the ‘fasting’ from 8am until 2.30pm was not so cruisey, especially as the reception area where you wait had a cafe with food and coffee that smelled amazing.
It’s now the next day, and while it certainly doesn’t feel like ‘I’ve been kicked in the balls’…I am moving pretty slowly, and think it will be a few weeks before I get back on the bike (this is not a tawdry metaphor…I really do mean get back on the bike). So I’ll keep you posted on the recovery, and just thank God that on the drive home from the hospital when Josh asked me what the two specimen jars were for and I said ‘to see if the operation had worked’…he didn’t ask any further questions.
Earlier this week our dog Jasper died, he’d been with us for over 12 years and so I’d known him longer than my kids, my workmates…and Game of Thrones. He was the happy face in the morning when I fed him, and my constant companion when I took him for walks at night, and his departure marks then end of an era for our family.
So I think it’s only fair that I take this opportunity to say a few words.
The regal beagle
In the beginning
Way back in 2002 Katie and I were planning our wedding, and while we certainly didn’t think we were ready for kids…we did think it would be a good idea to get a pet to see what our potential parenting skills were like. We wanted a Beagle, but knew how hard they were to train and so chose some Beagles that had been crossed with a Labrador…after all, my Dad’s family had had Labradors for years, and they were pretty easy to train…what could possibly go wrong? The short answer to this is that by combining a Beagle with a Labrador you create a beast that has an incredible nose, and a bottomless stomach. But we weren’t to know this, and so we got two (we knew that Beagle’s are pack dogs and destroy marginally fewer things if they have a playmate). Thus Ceilidh (a girl and named after a Scottish dance) and Jasper (the boy, named after the coffee) were brought home.
Now that I have kids I realise that the dogs actually provided some amazing insights into parenting. Suddenly you can no longer just ‘head off for a weekend’, you realise the importance of routine and consistency, and most tellingly you learn that suddenly you are responsible for the food that goes into someone else’s mouth…and the cleaning up and disposal of that same food about 12 hours later.
The dogs also taught me that two individuals can grow up in the same environment, and yet have very different personalities. Ceilidh clearly modelled herself on Katie and so was a stunningly attractive dog…who was pretty much 100% convinced that her idea was the best. Whereas Jasper was handsome, stoic and remarkably good at being told what to do…I don’t know who he was modelling himself on.
Photobombing…Beagle style.
Over the next four years the dogs were our kids and we had amazing times training them, walking them, taking them to the beach and watching them tear around Chelsworth and Zwar park. I can honestly say that seeing them at full flight on the beach or at a park is one of my favourite and most indelible memories of the dogs.
Then the real kids came
As much as we promised ourselves that nothing would change when Josh arrived…it did. Suddenly the dogs had to sleep outside, I had to walk the two of them (which looked a fair bit like someone trying to waterski behind two jetskis…both pulling in different directions) and of course the dogs had to accept that there was a new member of the pack…and he was above them.
We were incredibly lucky to have my parents take the dogs on regular long weekends at their place where they were lavished with attention (grandparents need to use dogs to hone their grandparenting skills as well), and I was always convinced that it was only a matter of time before I was able to devote the same amount of time to the dogs that I did pre-kids.
But then Holly came along, and suddenly our pool of available time was even shorter. But the dogs never complained or acted up. They just adapted and took the belly rubs whenever they presented themselves.
Then just as Holly was starting to build a friendship with Ceilidh (Holly would help me feed her most mornings), Ceilidh died. It was bloody awful, and left a big hole in our family. It also made us realise that Jasper would now be more dependent on us for affection and attention.
Then Xavier came along.
Then we renovated the house.
The guilt.
I won’t lie. I’ve been feeling guilty about Jasper for probably the last two years. I have this fantasy of me taking him for his nightly walk and half-way through the walk he would stop and say ‘Chris, there are two things you need to know. The first, is that I can talk…the second is that I totally understand why you can’t devote the amount of time to me that you used to, I’m cool with it and I appreciate everything you do.’ But of course that didn’t happen. Instead his nightly walk was sandwiched somewhere between doing the dishes and getting the kids into bed. I would have had my headphones in listening to a podcast, and the only time Jasper would have taken a break from lurching from one side of the footpath to the other in search of what the TAFE students had dropped would have been when he was waiting for me to pick up what he had just done on someone else’s nature strip.
I was so convinced that I would eventually find the time…but I never did, and now he’s gone.
But remember the good times
For all my guilt…my memories are pretty much exclusively of the good times. Having people assume that he was a highly expensive Foxhound, and comment on what a handsome dog he was (with his muscly good looks and Ceilidh’s long lashes and fine features they could have made a Hollywood glamour couple from the 50’s)! Going for walks with Jasper and the kids and seeing them all revel in the fun of being a pack.
The 20 minutes of freedom his walk gave me every night, and the way it forced me to see parts of my suburb that I would never have seen otherwise. The way he would bound around excitedly every time we were getting ready to go for a walk, the way he would sit so regally…and then simply place is paw on your leg and let you know that perhaps it would be a good idea to pat him…and hey, while you’re doing that I’m just going to roll over so that you can rub my chest. The way that even though he was getting old, he would sit at my side whenever we came to a road.
But most of all, the way he remained so loyal and devoted until the end.
So farewell Jasper Jones my faithful hound, you made me a better person and better parent, and our family is poorer for your passing.
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