Slaughterhouse e-mail #3

START 10:33 PM
FINISH 11:43 PM

WORD COUNT 1117 (minus Wikipedia details)


Beth sent over the following:
“In your first two Slaughterhouse blog, you reference obsessive-compulsive. I suspect that this will be thematic through out your posts. Mentioning it outright may be redundant as you progress through your writings. But recent scenes around here have had me thinking about OCD tendencies. Your flavor is different than what I experience around me on a daily basis. So embracing the animal head on, the question begs, if OCD was an ice cream shop, what would be your 31 Flavors?”


I encouraged my friends and family to make homemade signs for the triathlon in Chicago. I stipulated that they had to make me laugh or terrify others, and this led to such classic examples as “Only 139 Miles to Go” before the 10K run began (we’d totaled my race mileage for the remainder of the year), “Soup of the Day – Broccoli Cheese” , and my sister’s contribution, “You Can’t Spell Lyden Without OCD.”


I won’t count this towards the word count, but thanks to Wikipedia, I found out that what we’re actually suffering from is obsessive-compulsive personality disorder:

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Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) is often confused with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Despite the similar names, they are two distinct disorders, although some OCPD individuals also suffer from OCD, and the two are sometimes found in the same family,[1] sometimes along with eating disorders.[2]


People experiencing OCPD do not generally feel the need to repeatedly perform ritualistic actions - a common symptom of OCD. Instead, they normally place emphasis above all on perfection and arranging objects, their own time, other people's activities and their own. They may feel anxious when they perceive that things are not "right." This can lead to routines and "rules" for ways of doing things, whether for themselves or their families, that can often seem similar to the rituals of OCD. Rather than get something wrong, OCPD individuals will make lists of things to do and how to do them. Then they go on adding to the lists, or find new associated things to do, meaning they may never finish what they wanted to do in the first place. This is most of all a problem at work or for students.

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Anyone who has ever watched me complete a spreadsheet organized to ten minute intervals before a triathlon knows that this is right in my wheelhouse. But we’re approaching this as flavors of ice cream with short descriptions, so while I could go several thousand words on the topic at large, I’ll knock it down to five of the major ones right off the bat, the ones that just apply to triathlons. These border on superstition, but I do get anxious if they’re not done.


Culinary Compulsion Crunch: The meal the night before the race will consist of shrimp cocktail with cocktail sauce, grilled swordfish, and a green stalk vegetable or rice (never both) I go to the same restaurants every year for this. In Las Vegas, it’s Tillerman for one fall race, RM Seafood for another. Chicago was Tin Fish in Oakbrook for three years, and they closed it, so I had to go down the street to Parker’s Ocean Grill, and I am praying for their continued success. Tempe has Eddie V’s DC Ranch, three years running. San Diego is Blue Point Coastal Cuisine.

Nannette Nut Crisp: On race morning, I have to hear from, or just hear, my old trainer, Nannette Johnstone. If I hear her voice I’m going to do just fine, even if it’s a saved voice mail message. Usually we talk to each other during the weekend, and she knows if the call comes in before 10 AM, I’m standing in a wetsuit with goggles and a gel pack in my left hand and will be in the water in ten minutes. She’ll pray for me, encourage me, and walk me over that threshold where I’m not sure I’m going to do this…again. I haven’t physically seen Nannette in over a year, as she moved to Mississippi, but for all but one race, she’s performed flawlessly in this role.


Yellow Sunburst Swirl: It started out as a way to be visually distinctive, but now it’s getting a little demanding. I wear a yellow shirt in all my triathlons, sleeveless or not depending on the temperature. I started doing it because I had my family at the race in Chicago, which has 8000 participants, and one way to see when I was coming on the bicycle would be if I wore something noticeable. I now have 6 yellow Dri-Fit shirts and haven’t worn a different color in a race since May of 2007, when I snap decided to wear a sleeveless T (and I couldn’t find a yellow one in time, which confused the daylights out of my friend Lea, who was taking pictures and wasn’t looking at me until I hollered, “Blue shirt today!”) Now, as a veritable trademark, yellow is always present in my running shoes, socks, shirt, and my website. If asked to pick a lucky color that would certainly be it.


Banana Bracelet Blizzard: But it’s not just the shirt. I wear a yellow Livestrong bracelet during every waking hour. One of them snapped off my wrist in San Diego Harbor in 2007; I took off my wetsuit and it was gone. I don’t consider it a coincidence that I was kicked in the head during this swim and had my goggles knocked off with 500 yards left to swim; I consider it a consequence. I spent the first five miles of that bike ride seeing halos around objects – this after pouring a gallon of emergency water into my eyes so that I could see again. And since I didn’t have an extra bracelet in the bag, I was forced to ride and run without it. I spent too much time during that race just looking at my wrist, where it was supposed to be. Now there’s always one in the side pocket, wrapped, just in case.


Transitionberry Twist: I use the same red towel to arrange my gear on. To the right of the front tire of the bicycle, in the front will be a white tub that will be half full of drinking water. The caribiner attached to the tub will face to the right. The bike shoes will be right behind that, with one WELCOME TO LAS VEGAS sign sock in each of them. Behind that, facing straight ahead, will be the running shoes, race number belt and number, and a hat tucked into the right shoe to hold in the number belt. On the right aerobar my helmet will be hung by its chinstrap, and inside the helmet is an Under Armour skullcap, Bell knit cycling gloves, and black sunglasses. Everything – shoes, socks, gloves – goes on right-left.


We’ve hit our word limit, and I hadn’t even mentioned the Scottsdale mall trips, the diner lunch in San Diego, and the way I try to make the days nearly identical for each of those trips. I haven’t talked about the counting, the significance of the number 9, or shouting “Good luck today, gentlemen” exactly three seconds before the start horn. (At Silverman in my first mass half-Ironman start, where the whole damned race takes off at once, I amended that to, “Good luck today, everybody.”) And I haven’t mentioned how any of this intrudes on my real life, where I lock my car doors three times and have to see the lights flash on the last one. But Beth is right; this theme may re-occur.