It's a little early in the season, but with some traveling and holiday food, I guess my brain decided it was time to start the Ironman dreams. In this dream, Ironman Coeur d'Alene has been transformed into a charity event to benefit world hunger. The swim start begins with a world music festival and an African drumming circle.
My swim is fine and I feel like I'm having a great race in the water. As I get out and run to the wetsuit strippers, they direct me to a huge long table where the athletes are supposed to go next. A big sign explains that 70% of the world subsists on eating staple foods like beans and rice, so in T1, we are each given a mixed bucket of dry beans and rice that we have to sort out. My hands are shaking and cold from the swim as I try to grab little rice grains and separate them out from the beans. All the athletes are laughing and joking with each other about how hard this is and how bad our T1 times will be. I finally complete the task and then run to get my transition bag and head out on the bike.
At the bike turnaround is a big soup kitchen for homeless people. We get off our bikes and stack them to the side, then take our turn cutting vegetables into a giant soup pot. After dicing several onions and stalks of celery, I get back on my bike to finish the course. At that point, I wake up.
My take-away: Christmas is a time to reflect on those less fortunate than ourselves and to make sure we're balancing our focus on our own family and on what we might like to give and receive with what other people actually need to survive.
Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Sunday, December 04, 2011
Black Belt Dreams
In the dream, all of us black belts who were there to judge her were sitting in an old-fashioned British courtroom with huge wooden benches and desks. She walked in calmly and then announced that instead of performing her kata for her test, she was going to do an interpretive dance about her journey to the black belt. The dance involved her twirling colored streamers representing all of the different belt colors that she had passed through, and feathers to show her "upward journey". It was very moving and original. And then I woke up.
Fortunately, when the day came the belt test happened in the same room in the dojo that it always does, and she arrived prepared with her kata and bunkai and other techniques, no interpretive dancing needed. Along with a partner, she demonstrated her mastery of the black belt curriculum and she passed! Since we've been training together for many years, I'm so excited for her.
Interestingly, since having this dream (among many other very detailed ones), I came across this post on PaleoOz.com about Vivid Dreaming and Eating Paleo. It looks like I'm not the only person out there to experience more vivid dreams since switching up my eating habits. I'm not complaining, since I always like a good nighttime entertainment, even if it involves interpretive dancing.
Thursday, September 09, 2010
Ironman Dream #4 and My Cheap Attempt at Freudian Analysis
The Dream
I am competing in my 2nd Ironman, I'm so excited. The swim has gone very well, I'm through the changing tents in under an hour, right on my goal time. It's obviously Cozumel because I'm on an island with the sea on my right as I'm bicycling along. I go past a lagoon and Asa is swimming there with her friends. But I don't see Wayne anywhere, and I can tell that the tide is coming in and big waves are threatening to wash over the seawall into the lagoon. Any kids in there when that happens will be drug out to sea. I throw my bike down on the side of the road and go get her out of the water. Of course she wants to keep swimming and starts arguing with me (sometimes dreams are SO realistic!) I finally get her to see the danger and move to a safe place, get Wayne on the phone and make sure he's headed over to keep an eye on her. I get back on my bike and start pedaling, noticing that on my watch I've already lost twenty minutes to all of this.
Once I rack my bike and head out on the run course, I'm feeling good. The weather is warm and the glimpses of the ocean are beautiful. My finish time goal has been compromised though and I feel sad about that. I had hoped to be in the running for a Kona slot and I think that might be out of the question now. As I'm running along, I see an athlete on the side of the road. He's having leg cramps and is hollering and curled up in a ball. I know if I stop again, my whole race plan will have gone out the window, but I can't leave him lying there. I stop running. There's no one around. I give him some of my water and electrolytes and move him into the shade. I massage his calf until it unknots and he is able to sit up and drink some more water. I leave the water bottle with him and promise to send help back.
Now the run course takes a strange turn onto some old residential streets. The houses are brightly colored Victorians with peeling paint. It looks a lot like Key West Florida. The run course goes into a house, we have to run upstairs and down these hallways. We do this through multiple big old three-story houses. There are all kinds of things in the way like kids toys, dogs, and the people who live in the houses. I keep saying "excuse me!" and "I'm sorry" every time I am in someone's way. I think what an inconvenience it must be to these people to have all these athletes running through their house. Now I'm at the run turnaround, I see that it's already eleven hours into the race, and I still have half of the marathon to go. Because of all the stairs and the crazy race course, I'm way off the pace I wanted to run. I know I won't finish in under thirteen hours, way slower than my last Ironman. I feel like I've failed all of my goals for the race. I wake up feeling disappointed and sad.
The Cheap Analysis
I know I don't usually start having dreams about a race until I'm a few months or weeks out. I'm guessing I had this dream for two reasons. One is that I do have a half-Ironman coming up in a few weeks, and the Ironman in this dream could be a stand-in for that race. I could be worried about accomplishing my goals for that race. Also, if I'm going to do an Ironman like Cozumel in 2011, I'll have to sign up in a couple of months. I know that if I sign up, I'll be making big sacrifices again in the year to come.
The first thing that will be compromised is some of the time I spend with the kids and my husband. I think the dream shows that I'm worried about putting more of the family burden onto his shoulders again like I did the last time, and that I worry that without my constant care and attention, disaster may strike my family (as if my vigilance alone holds it off, LOL).
The second thing I worry about is that the Ironman is essentially a selfish goal. The man by the side of the road says I will be forced to choose between being selfish (focusing on my own goals) and being selfless and helping others around me. Friends, family, and strangers will be by the side of the road and I will have to choose to put my own goals first and run on by, or to set my goals aside to help them.
The last thing I worry about is disappointing myself and others if I don't fulfill my goals for the race. If I spend all this time, energy, and money training, and then I fall short of what I set out to do, I worry that it will all be for nothing. Of course, I know that the journey is really the destination and all of that, but you can't fool your subconscious and I know my dream is telling me that my goals for the race will be important to me and there's no getting around that.
Well, that's my cheap analysis of the dream. Unlike my friend Jody Mace, a professional writer who draws her own dreams and puts them on Facebook, regularly causing me to spew tea on my monitor (well, Jody is that kind of funny person anyways), I don't dream a lot lately. Some of that may have to do with the half-Ironman training which is reaching its peak this week. Mostly I fall into something akin to a coma when my head hits the pillow. Luckily, I've been getting a steady eight hours lately, which is probably why I finally got to do some dreaming.
I am competing in my 2nd Ironman, I'm so excited. The swim has gone very well, I'm through the changing tents in under an hour, right on my goal time. It's obviously Cozumel because I'm on an island with the sea on my right as I'm bicycling along. I go past a lagoon and Asa is swimming there with her friends. But I don't see Wayne anywhere, and I can tell that the tide is coming in and big waves are threatening to wash over the seawall into the lagoon. Any kids in there when that happens will be drug out to sea. I throw my bike down on the side of the road and go get her out of the water. Of course she wants to keep swimming and starts arguing with me (sometimes dreams are SO realistic!) I finally get her to see the danger and move to a safe place, get Wayne on the phone and make sure he's headed over to keep an eye on her. I get back on my bike and start pedaling, noticing that on my watch I've already lost twenty minutes to all of this.
Once I rack my bike and head out on the run course, I'm feeling good. The weather is warm and the glimpses of the ocean are beautiful. My finish time goal has been compromised though and I feel sad about that. I had hoped to be in the running for a Kona slot and I think that might be out of the question now. As I'm running along, I see an athlete on the side of the road. He's having leg cramps and is hollering and curled up in a ball. I know if I stop again, my whole race plan will have gone out the window, but I can't leave him lying there. I stop running. There's no one around. I give him some of my water and electrolytes and move him into the shade. I massage his calf until it unknots and he is able to sit up and drink some more water. I leave the water bottle with him and promise to send help back.
Now the run course takes a strange turn onto some old residential streets. The houses are brightly colored Victorians with peeling paint. It looks a lot like Key West Florida. The run course goes into a house, we have to run upstairs and down these hallways. We do this through multiple big old three-story houses. There are all kinds of things in the way like kids toys, dogs, and the people who live in the houses. I keep saying "excuse me!" and "I'm sorry" every time I am in someone's way. I think what an inconvenience it must be to these people to have all these athletes running through their house. Now I'm at the run turnaround, I see that it's already eleven hours into the race, and I still have half of the marathon to go. Because of all the stairs and the crazy race course, I'm way off the pace I wanted to run. I know I won't finish in under thirteen hours, way slower than my last Ironman. I feel like I've failed all of my goals for the race. I wake up feeling disappointed and sad.
The Cheap Analysis
I know I don't usually start having dreams about a race until I'm a few months or weeks out. I'm guessing I had this dream for two reasons. One is that I do have a half-Ironman coming up in a few weeks, and the Ironman in this dream could be a stand-in for that race. I could be worried about accomplishing my goals for that race. Also, if I'm going to do an Ironman like Cozumel in 2011, I'll have to sign up in a couple of months. I know that if I sign up, I'll be making big sacrifices again in the year to come.
The first thing that will be compromised is some of the time I spend with the kids and my husband. I think the dream shows that I'm worried about putting more of the family burden onto his shoulders again like I did the last time, and that I worry that without my constant care and attention, disaster may strike my family (as if my vigilance alone holds it off, LOL).
The second thing I worry about is that the Ironman is essentially a selfish goal. The man by the side of the road says I will be forced to choose between being selfish (focusing on my own goals) and being selfless and helping others around me. Friends, family, and strangers will be by the side of the road and I will have to choose to put my own goals first and run on by, or to set my goals aside to help them.
The last thing I worry about is disappointing myself and others if I don't fulfill my goals for the race. If I spend all this time, energy, and money training, and then I fall short of what I set out to do, I worry that it will all be for nothing. Of course, I know that the journey is really the destination and all of that, but you can't fool your subconscious and I know my dream is telling me that my goals for the race will be important to me and there's no getting around that.
Well, that's my cheap analysis of the dream. Unlike my friend Jody Mace, a professional writer who draws her own dreams and puts them on Facebook, regularly causing me to spew tea on my monitor (well, Jody is that kind of funny person anyways), I don't dream a lot lately. Some of that may have to do with the half-Ironman training which is reaching its peak this week. Mostly I fall into something akin to a coma when my head hits the pillow. Luckily, I've been getting a steady eight hours lately, which is probably why I finally got to do some dreaming.
Thursday, February 04, 2010
If Only It Worked That Way With the Stock Market
This morning I woke up with the theme music to Hawaii 5-0 running through my head. If you're not as old as I am, you might not remember this show, one of the longest running cop dramas on TV (12 years I think). Chances are though you know the theme song, if only from it's ubiquitous use by marching bands. I was having this awesome surfing dream, the kind where you catch every big turquoise wave with effortless ease. It was accompanied by a full-force blast of the theme song apparently, since I woke up with what sounded like the whole orchestra in my head.
Not twenty minutes later, Asa wanders down to breakfast, fires up her iPod and starts her usual round of finding the latest cute kitten and hamster videos on Youtube (if you ever wonder who drives those videos into the millions of views, look no further than the 10-year-old girl contingent). So what comes blasting out of the iPod as the soundtrack to the first video? Hawaii 5-0. This kind of thing happens all the time to me, I can sometimes literally name a song, turn on the radio and it's the next thing that plays. So why aren't I getting cosmic market tips instead of music predictions, that's what I want to know!
By the way, rumor has it that CBS is considering Australian actor Alex O'Loughlin to fill the shoes of Hawaii Five-O boss Steve McGarrett in the upcoming remake of the once-popular show.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Ironman Dream #3
The race is over, the equipment neatly stowed, the dreams of next Ironman (probably 5 years down the line - Ironman Brazil and Japan look intriguing!) are on a back burner... So why am I still having these crazy dreams? Here's last night's installment:
It's the bike-to-run transition, and in my gear bag I don't have my running shoes. Instead, I have my husband's old beaten-down favorite leather deck shoes. Having no other option, I put them on and start running, with their worn soles going flap flap flap on the pavement.
After the first mile marker is a special area where all athletes have to stop. Part of this race is that you have to put on a costume from a play, and you are judged not only on your finish time, but how well you stay in character during the race. I pick out a raven costume with feathered wings and put it on. I start running, remembering to let out a realistic "caw caw caw" every time I pass a judge's stand. A couple more miles into the race, I begin to regret my choice, because the feathered arms are very hard to keep up and look bird-like while I'm running. My arms start to get really heavy and tired, and I begin to lose my voice. I wake up while worrying if I'll have enough voice left by the time I reach the final judge's booth to still "caw".
Analyze that one, I dare you!
It's the bike-to-run transition, and in my gear bag I don't have my running shoes. Instead, I have my husband's old beaten-down favorite leather deck shoes. Having no other option, I put them on and start running, with their worn soles going flap flap flap on the pavement.
After the first mile marker is a special area where all athletes have to stop. Part of this race is that you have to put on a costume from a play, and you are judged not only on your finish time, but how well you stay in character during the race. I pick out a raven costume with feathered wings and put it on. I start running, remembering to let out a realistic "caw caw caw" every time I pass a judge's stand. A couple more miles into the race, I begin to regret my choice, because the feathered arms are very hard to keep up and look bird-like while I'm running. My arms start to get really heavy and tired, and I begin to lose my voice. I wake up while worrying if I'll have enough voice left by the time I reach the final judge's booth to still "caw".
Analyze that one, I dare you!
Friday, September 15, 2006
Ironman Stress Dream #2
I am taking my bike to the transition area (for some reason, it is race day morning) when I realize that I haven't put the pedals on yet. They're not in my race bag, nowhere to be found. So I go back and look in the car for them. The car is full to the roof with our camping gear, however. I am still frantically plowing through sleeping bags and flashlights when I wake up...
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Ironman Dreams
Yep, they've started. The Ironman stress dreams. The first one was last night. I'm in Panama Beach, Florida and the Ironman is about to start. For some reason, it's in a lake in the middle of the city. The streets are warrens, like something out of a medieval European town but with skyscrapers thrown in for good measure, and I can't see the lake anywhere. When I finally find it, I realize that I've left my wetsuit at home. The race officials tell me that wetsuits are required, and I have just enough time to go and buy one before the race start. So I walk back through the maze of streets and shops, but all of the sporting goods shops are closed. The only shop open is a lingerie shop, but they do have a wetsuit in their window. It is light pink neoprene with ruffles all over the sleeve and leg cuffs. I fret that the ruffles will cause lots of drag, and ask for some scissors to cut them off.
Just then, I hear the horn signaling the start of the race. So I got into a dressing room and change into the wetsuit, throw my Visa card at the cashier, and run out the door through the narrow streets to the lake and jump in with the rest of the triathletes. I am the only person in a pink ruffled wetsuit in a sea of black, and all the other triathletes are looking at me like I'm a crazy person. I wake up just as I realize that the ruffles on the pink wetsuit are causing me to swim so slowly, I'm barely at the back of the pack.
Oh, I can hardly wait to see what I dream as we get closer to race start!
Just then, I hear the horn signaling the start of the race. So I got into a dressing room and change into the wetsuit, throw my Visa card at the cashier, and run out the door through the narrow streets to the lake and jump in with the rest of the triathletes. I am the only person in a pink ruffled wetsuit in a sea of black, and all the other triathletes are looking at me like I'm a crazy person. I wake up just as I realize that the ruffles on the pink wetsuit are causing me to swim so slowly, I'm barely at the back of the pack.
Oh, I can hardly wait to see what I dream as we get closer to race start!
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