Some people here need to chill out on the judgements. The whole purpose here is to say things you wouldn't ordinarily tell other people, and laugh at yours and other's foibles. A couple more that I forgot:

-I have an unhealthy obsession with scotch. Not that I drink huge amounts of it, but I have 69 open bottles in a giant oak cabinet at home. I have twice as much money involved in the cabinet and scotch as I do in my bike. My favorites? Ardbeg 1977 and Talisker 20yr.
-I consider my black toenails punishment for shuffling when I get tired on a run. I have several of them. My shoes fit fine when I actually run, not so when I shuffle the last 2 miles of a 20 miler.
-I habitually ride with no helmet, even mountain biking. I'm superstitious and believe that something will go horribly wrong if I start wearing one. I sacrifice my superstition and wear it during races because I have to...and something always goes horribly wrong on the bike leg.
-I never clean my bike...ever. Well, ok I clean the chain and pulleys, but that's it. It is covered with 3 years of sweat, somewhat washed off when it rains on me out there.
-I know that I am slow, but I can go forever. I am seriously considering double-IM races because I think I could be competitive there. My 150 mile bike speed is only 0.5mph slower than my 50 mile bike speed.
-Similarly, I am afraid to "leave it all on the course" this weekend in the fear that as I stumble across the line at a 210 heartrate I'll just discover that at least 1/3 of the field is still ahead of me. At least now I can just look back and think that I could have placed better if I had pushed it, rather than knowing I pushed it and still suck.
-I hate fat people, with a passion. I think it's because my exwife was fat and lazy. I can't understand why anyone with half a brain would let themselves get fat. I therefore prejudge all fat people as being stupid.
-I smoke cigars. Chunky strong maduros and cubans when I can get them. I know this is stupid, screws with my endurance and life expectancy but I do it anyway.
-Having the above two opinions makes me wonder if i am a hypocrite, so I do extra workouts to make up for the drinking and smoking.
-I believe in the 2nd Amendment. A society where guns are illegal is a society where only the criminals have guns. If guns magically all vanished from the face of the earth criminals would go back to knives and clubs like they did before the
-I love going excessively fast downhills and passing cars on my bike...again with no helmet...maybe I do have a secret hidden deathwish.
-Aerosapien's post was the first to bring a tear to my eye. I'm not sure what else I could say to follow that up so I'm not going to try.
-On a lighter note, I am OC about some things and I LIKE IT! Notice I left off the "D" there. :D

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Maybe that is another one to add to my list then... "I yearn to know the secret life of Mr. Tibbs." (and everyone else on that list... OMG, what have I become...)

Although, come to think of it, pretty much EVERY thread could have been a place for Tibbs' secrets. I actually don't think he had any dirty secrets. Probably no secrets at all...

Scout, read "The Last American Male" about Eustace Conway. He could be your true soulmate. I feel both better and worse about myself and life in general when I think about him. If you know who he is, I think you'll agree. And if you don't know, I won't spoil you finding out about him.

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

Done. Just ordered it on Amazon for $.01.

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"Slowman -- although, maybe this would be like finding out Ghandi ate meat when he said was on a hunger strike"

here's the deal. this is an all or nothing endeavor. and, i have the capacity to be extraordinarily transparent. no way am i going to do that here, because i'm a chicken, i've got way too much vanity for my own good, i'm probably too damaged, and my dark stuff is pretty damned dark. and, that's where i'd go. i'd immediately go dark on y'all.

i might say, as an observer, that i'm entirely enthralled by this. i've read every one. best reading in years. you, scout, record10carbon, tootall, demerly, and ESPECIALLY all the women, man alive, it just slays me.

and as i just related to someone, this woman thing, this thread is a confirmation of something i've been noticing over the last year or two. i apparently had my back turned while, all of a sudden, women became cooler than men. i've always been a man's man, hung out with men, thought men were smarter, more emotionally balanced, more courageous, more transparent, more adventurous, and lo and behold women caught up and passed us. i'm going to hang out with women more often.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

See??? It's that metrosexual thing again! Women are pretty dang cool when you think about it. And they smell good; especially the post workout sweaty ones.

OK, dark secret No. 4,566,389

-I love the smell of my wife after she works out and try to get her into bed without her showering. Sometimes she does ;-)

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Mr. Uncaptured External Costs

Fossil carbon is planetary poison.

The thing that amazes me most is the self-awareness everyone seems to have. It makes me think that denial, as a state of mind, doesn't actually exist. At least, it doesn't seem to among the people of this forum. Which makes me wonder about the human race in general. Are people ever really in denial? Or do they just refuse to admit their "dirty secrets" to anyone else? I know I've been accused on being in denial, but it was really that I just refused to admit (or even show a little bit that I knew) that things were wrong with what I thought or was doing. But I knew... And it seems like everyone else here knows those things about themselves too, which I think is pretty awesome, in the literal sense of the word.

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

During my sophomore year of high school, in the same quarter, I got an A in Spanish, and an F in English. Yes, my last name is Byron, as in Lord Byron the poet. Ok, not really a dirty secret, I kinda like to brag about it, in fact.



I could have won the Slowtwitch Sexiest Legs contest, but I would have had to have bent the rules a little bit. Well,… alright, maybe I would have won my age group. Would you believe men over 50 and under 5’4”?



I have been training the last two years for IM fulltime, while I am suppose to be finishing my PhD thesis, with my wife’s semi-tacit approval.



I feel guilty about training full time for IM and not working on the thesis.



I have a hard time living in the moment. My wife, does not.



I shaved my legs for the first time this season today, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I got one of those little Playskool plastic stools with the round stubby little legs, and I sat on it in the shower for half an hour just shaving after my brick.



I love to talk about shaving legs with other male triathletes in front of women who are not tri savvy just to see their expressions.



I am 135 posts behind on reading for this thread, but if I don’t write and post my, ahem, secrets now, I’ll forget about them until my next bike ride.

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Behold the turtle! He makes progess only when he sticks his neck out. (James Bryant Conant)
GET OFF THE F*%KING WALL!!!!!!! (Doug Stern)
Brevity is the soul of wit. (William Shakespeare)

After some thought, here goes:

- I once had a doctor offer to support and adminster an EPO program for me when I was a decent 5k runner. I turned it down, and ran 5th at the Olympic trials and I know that three people in front of me were on gear. During the opening ceremony for that Olympics (2000) I wore my National Uniform that I earnt for World X, and lay on the bed and cried like a baby. Sometimes I reget not taking up the offer, and sometimes I don't.

- I said to my girlfriend that I would stop doing ironman if I broke 9 hours. My best is 9:01. That day I looked at my watch with 5k to go, and deliberately slowed down because I wanted to keep going in ironman. I told her, and she told me I was an idiot, and that I can do what I want with my life and she liked the fact that I trained and raced. I still feel like an idiot as I am not a member of the 8 hour club.

- I stole powerbars from my local supermarket (one at a time) for two years before I got the fear and stopped. They always seem too expensive, but now I buy them.

- I got a 97.5% rank in my Year 12 certificate (meaning that I was in the top 2.5%). I tell people it was 98.5%, because it sounds better. I graduated form school in 1990, but I still use this lie.

- I am a school teacher. I first met my girlfriend when she was my student. A year after she graduated, I met her at a shopping mall, and we have been together since. She is 21, I am 31. I haven't told any of my friends or family that she is an ex student. I don't go work functions anymore, and no one at work knows.

 

It seems that we have a dirty secret in common. I too have inadvertantly killed my dog. My only saving grace is that I was only 2 or 3 at the time. But I still feel really bad about it. My Mom brought home a Springer Spaniel puppy in the middle of summer. I, being the dog lover even then, took pity on the panting dog in the 95 degree July heat. I wasn't talking then, but when Mom asked me where the dog was, I just pointed to the freezer. Yes, I froze or suffocated the poor thing to death.

She went out and got another puppy from the same litter and I never learned the truth until I was 12 or 13.

On a happier note, ever see a 25 pound boy puppy hump an 80 pound girl boxer? Frigging hilarious!

I swung my cat by its tail around several times when I was little (7?). I regret it to this very day. It breaks my heart that I hurt an animal let alone my own.

When I was 12-13, my old, senile dog got around a gate to the basement. I can still hear the sound of her falling down those stairs. I didn't know it until I saw her walking on the cement floor. That sound absolutely haunts me to this day.

On a lighter note:

I wear socks 2-3 days in a row,

Don't mind pooping outside,

Think bathroom humor is freakin' HYSTERICAL and

Love. LOVE John Cusack more than I should. :)

"I think there is some chemical in Guatemalan beer, but I am not sure what it is."


Gallo? Absolutely. No doubt about it. I have had beers all over the mundo and this one has a little something extra. It gives people weird dreams.

The women on here are super cool. I want to be friends with all of them and maybe be scout's timid sidekick. Problem is, as a lot of us have admitted, is we have issues getting along with other women or don't trust other women. We've got to stop that.

I feel like I should put some more secrets out there, don't ask me why:

--I buy a pack of Twizzlers after every race.

--The only multi-sport t-shirt I have so far that I actually wear is from the one race i didn't finish. I feel crappy about that. But as far as race t shirts go, this one is great.

--I got into a fight with another girl. I punched her. I should feel bad, but I was in 5th grade.

--I am afraid of pain and failure. I slept through a race this weekend and blamed it on going to see a late movie the night before. Really, I was afraid I would lose and scared of the pain (it was a sprint).

--I know what I want to go to grad school in but am too scared of failure and rejection to actually try. I scored in the 99th percentile on the entrance exams, but I don't feel qualified for anything more than administrative work, not that there is anything wrong with that, much less grad school.

--Everytime I do a race, I say to myself during the swim portion that triathlon was the stupidest idea I ever had and I'm never doing another one if I make it through this one. Then, after about five miles on the bike, I'm grinning and don't see what (sport) could possibly be more fun.

--I feel like a complete poseur on my bike and am considering selling it on Ebay.

--I am the "fun" girl who always drinks too much at parties.

--My ex-boyfriend was a roadie and could not last longer than one minute thirty seconds in bed. I know that's a bad thing to tell about someone. But he dumped me in front of a Starbucks while sitting on a custom titanium road bike, which he then rode off on. Thanks, I needed to let that one out.

--I never tried my hardest at swim meets.

--I am really glad slowtwitch is full of dog people. The only thing that has truly shocked me on this thread is the "i killed my dog" confession. I cannot put how I feel about my dogs into words.

--I have always thought I would make a good spy because I can get people to tell me anything.

--I desperately want to move somewhere else but have no idea what I would do.

--I'm in the OC(D) camp and fine with that as long as I can do tris and garden (gardening really taps into that).

--I know the movie Legally Blonde by heart.

--I am a literature snob and secretly judge people by what they read (but I can get over their bad taste).

--I hate confrontation and the Greg/ORD-Casey fight on this thread upset me.

Cuidado, brother. After this is over, will your next one also be a student? Hope not. If you like your job, that is. ;-)

 
That is so not cool.

The women on here are super cool."

so that i can get my arms around this, so to speak, can we make a list of the women here? we've got:

snackattack, ironclm, scout, marisol, footballmom, KEJ, AmyCO, Eileen Steil, Kestrelkerri, kittycat, trailbait, AndyPants, wavedancer, Tri1016, flozert, NYtrigal, AZTriGirl, Pam, Slojourner, banana.

you're all spectacular. who'm i missing?

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

You brought back an early memory when I had a strong hunting instinct. I was about 11 or 12, and got my first bow and arrow. We lived near an open field where they were building a new school. I was going to be no threat with this crude weapon, but the makers didn't take my big brain into account. I chased a rabbit into a small, long, exposed pipe. Like shooting ducks in a bathtub, I pulled back on the bow and let the arrow fly into the pipe. The rabbit came out the other end with the arrow through his nose area. To this day, the sight of that rabbit using his front paws to try and break the arrow out of its body haunts me. I never hunted again, and go out of my way to not hurt animals......Probably why I visit the pound so often and rescue the ones with no days left...

"and when training in their team kit"

personally, i think training in your team kit is not the height of cool. training in two disassociated, clashing team garments, as long as they are both official shorts and jerseys from your own past teams, is much more hip.

on the other note, knowing many roadies very well, it is not at all surprising to me that they'd tend to be 90-second men, if that.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

OK, a few more lame ones:

- I love the Weather Channel. Often, I blast music and have the WC on mute while I clean or study or read or whatever.

- I know Nick Cave is brilliant. No one else within 100 miles of where I now type knows this but I do. I would like to believe I am about the only person who likes his music despite the worldwide cult. Just like when I was 15 and thought I was the only kid who listened to Husker Du. Right.

- I would get a facelift in a few years if I was rich. I hate my wrinkles (which aren't that bad) even though women have said they are 'cute.' Those women, they lie.

- I would admit more juicy stuff but I'm too chicken. My excuse is I'm a teacher and the kids' will find it. This could seriously happen, i suppose :-)

"The only thing that has truly shocked me"

so as you know, monty is, as a dog person, a 10 on the 1-to-10 scale. i helped him bury both his dogs. very bad days, those.

he has two dogs. one is satin, a 16 year old that can't hold her pee and can barely walk. he adopted her at age-14, and she couldn't hold her pee then. so he just laid tile in his new house, to accommodate satin and the other dogs.

then he has punkin, the pit bull that showed up at my house last summer after somehow making it thru the desert with her puppy (lucky) in tow. i adopted lucky. i put ads in the papers, put a post here, and could not find anyone to adopt punkin. so monty took her. and, he's got seymour, the 22 year old cat who doubles as the alpha dog at his house.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

>>you're all spectacular. who'm i missing?<<

Sissi from Lisboa
SupportCrew (Sue)
Alicia
Gail glevq (sp?)
Bri

A few other lurkers.

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clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

• I read this bulletin board every day, but very rarely post.
• Most of the time I want to add something, but feel like I have nothing to say that would add anything to the conversation.
• I don't train as much as I want to.
• I frequently skip workouts, and almost always feel guilty about it immediately.
• I think I have a lot of talent, and could place very well if I trained as much as I want to.
• I sometimes think I skip workouts because I'm afraid to discover that I don't have as much natural talent as I thought.
• Despite the fact that a friend of mine trains as much as 4x as many hours a week as I do, it bugs me that he's fitter then I am.
• When I was the goalkeeper on my soccer team in college, I was the fittest guy on the team
• Before every game in college, I secretly hoped that the other team wouldn't show up so I wouldn't have to risk letting a goal in.
• Letting in a cheap goal is amongst the worst feelings I've ever had in my life.
• My proudest accomplishment on the bike is simply finishing a race that I wanted to drop out of. It was a 60 minute, Collegiate A's criterium, and I was dangling off the back 5 minutes into it feeling like I couldn't keep going. 55 minutes later, I was the last person to make it to the finish line, but that was so much more then I ever thought I could accomplish that I'm still proud of it.
• That result was the lowest placing I've ever had in a bike race.
• I've been stupidly successful at my job, but I sometimes wonder whether or not it's all a house of cards and that I'm going to get found out.
• I'm a very confident person, but frequently fight off bouts of insecurity.
• I love my job almost every day, and consider myself to be unbelievably fortunate to make a living doing something I love.
• My wife supports me more then anyone I know, and I should tell her that more often.
• I wish that my wife was more active and in better shape. Not because I wish she was 'hotter', but because lazy people bug me.
• My wife just got home and I don't want her to know I'm writing this so I'm going to stop now.

terrifying secrets? hmmm....

-when I was a kid I saw Ben Hur and it scared the crap out of me. The lepers that is...since then, I am hypocondriac and I am always very interested in watching TV shows about plagues and diseases

-I was a chubby kid, eating a lot of shit...specially anything with chocolate. until I got sick.

-I was a complete nerd. When going to college, I would read all the books we were going to study in during the year before classes start and would then attend other classes. I was a complete ass and loved asking really tough questions to professors to test them...I had one student like that once, and it made me laugh inside.

-an english girl named wendy was my 'initiator' ;-)

-I spend a lot of time in the restrooms and read entire books there

-I stress about lots of things

-I got drank once with vodka. yuck.

-I am a total sucker. I believe people are good. and if someone is mean to me, I get pissed but would never hold grudge and would befriend the person after.

-I do shower. but don't repeat it, I may lose my passport

-I am on the lottery hope list

-my first concert ever was Kool and the Gang (oops...)

-I am the worst downhiller ever on a bike. truly suck.

now something truly dirty...when I was 5yo, I had diarrhea in the pool...sorry ;-)

I once had to stop at the three-mile mark of a 5K because I was having an orgasm. The liner of my shorts had been riding me the right/wrong way.

"I once had to stop at the three-mile mark of a 5K because I was having an orgasm."

see, this is exactly what i'm talking about. how cool is that? women are just so cool these days. i just love knowing women's dirty secrets.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman