Friday:

Cindy and I drove into the city this afternoon. According to Dr. Fox, Wally is improving slightly in terms of the fluid in his lungs, the fluid in his heart and his heart rate. That said, one of the four chambers of one of his lungs collapsed. Given everything else that could have happened thus far, his doctors felt that was manageable. Before I go any further, let me give you a little background on Dr. Fox, Wally’s surgeon.

In case you’re thinking that I’m just some crackpot pet owner who’s just ebulliently thankful to the doctor who has helped to give our Wally the chance to live out the rest of his life, here are a few of Dr. Fox’s accomplishments:

Dr. Fox was one of the lead investigators studying the harm done on search and rescue animals involved at Ground Zero. He is a board certified cardiologist with more than 30 years experience and is the Director of AMC’s Caspary Research Institute. He has a long term relationship with the NYPD serving the needs of their canine officers. In short, he’s a rock star of vet. Cool with me and very cool with Wally.

Many years ago, my sister was playing football on the Santa Monica beaches in California. She laid herself prone to catch a pass and went face first into a volleyball standard, shattering the zygomatic arch and pulverizing the other bones around her eye in the process. Essentially, she turned her face into mush. The good news is that she was playing with some of her law enforcement friends and she was whisked away to nearby Daniel Freemon where there just happened to be one of the best surgeons in the world with repairing and reattaching nerves and rebuilding the structures supporting the eyes. He just happened to be lecturing there. He cut her skin on the top of her head, peeled it forward to gain access to her facial area and picked out the tiniest of bone fragments for hours, before molding bone from the back of her skull into a fake arch to support her eye.

Who knows if that was luck or if there was another reason that Stephanie injured herself on the day that he just happened to be in town lecturing at that particular hospital? Whatever it as, we were grateful and in that same way, we are grateful that Wally is being looked after by Dr. Fox. Even cooler because his name is also that of an animal.

Tomorrow, I’m scheduled to compete in a triathlon event called the Cadence Kona Challenge, an event sponsored by Cadence Cycling Center in NYC and Philadelphia that selected 100 people from across the country and Canada out of a group of 1500 to come to New York to test themselves by cycling and running. Based on the performance tomorrow, they’ll whittle the group down to a lucky 10 who will show up on Sunday to do more tests on the bike, treadmill and in an endless pool. Then a lucky 6 will go on to represent Cadence Cycling and a number of other very prominent sponsors as they train for Ironman 2008.

I appreciate the acknowledgment, and I definitely appreciate the swag, but based on what I saw this evening at a champagne-laden soirée for the semi-finalists, I have no business being in the same room with these folks. I’m going there to enjoy the experience, yes, but I’m also there to highlight the major impact that these adult athletes can make by helping to get kids healthy and active, supporting their ability to live long fruitful lives and positioning them as contributors rather than drainers of our healthcare system. The people in this room are from multiple generations and exemplify what it means to be healthy, balance priorities, extend oneself, and live life to the fullest.

There are clearly athletes with a lot more genetic ability, talent and recent training than me. I’ve never been genetically gifted and I’m a fast-twitch athlete at that. My genetic gifts lie in the area of eye-hand coordination and street saviness. How I had a father who was a world-class swimmer and I swim like a crustacean is beyond me. Any modicum of success that I have had in the past has been due to drive, determination, strategy and the sheer willingness to outlast anyone believing and proving that I can endure a greater level of pain than most.

Therein lies the rub. All of this depends upon serene focus, and quite frankly my focus right now is on our cat, laying in a glass submarine in intensive care on the upper east side with his celebrity cardiologist. On the other hand, I can say that I’ve never felt better than I do tonight about his prognosis but I’d still rather be with him than on a bike or on a treadmill doing something that quite frankly seems to be pretty self indulgent.

So how then do I regain focus, and what exactly am I focusing on. It’s the classic black box scenario. I know I have to perform two time trials tomorrow, and then suck up to the judges who are indeed humans. How they make their decision is anyone’s guess and quite frankly the criteria hasn’t been very well articulated. Hey if they’re looking for an over 40, fast-twitch coach who spends his time being sarcastic and hopefully helping adults and kids to pursue their lives more effectively, then I’m your guy. You notice nowhere in there did I say “athlete”. Oh yes, there was a time many years ago, when I thought I was the shit. I strutted around Los Angeles with guys who’s names you would immediately recognize for their athletic accomplishments. And, yes, I was one of THOSE guys. But that was a loooooong time ago. Heck, we have team members who weren’t even borne when we were terrorizing the courts at Pauley Pavilion, Venice, Adams, and Beverly High. But here I am, saying “Sometimes you just have to say What the FU$% and take some chances.” to quote Tom Cruise in what was his first and best role as an actor. But that was before all of this happened to Wally.

So then, how does one perform when performance requires focus and one’s focus is clearly elsewhere. Well to begin, it requires acceptance that my focus has indeed shifted. Instead of fighting it and viewing that shift as a weakness or sign of failure, accept it first and foremost. Second, figure out if there is anything or anywhere you should be to be more productive around that core issue. In this case, at 11:45am tomorrow morning, not really. Lastly, make your distraction your focus. I know that my strength is in enduring. I’m sure others out there have similar abilities to do this, but knowing what Wally has endured himself has now become my strength, and they simply don’t have that. Seeing Wally with a catheter stick out of the top of his neck, and witnessing every labored breath he takes, I am embarrassed to think that somehow 35 minutes of exercise could be considered endurance. Endurance is what Wally has been going through each and every minute of everyday since this began. Thinking that comfort is an entitlement is both selfish and ignorant. Not once through this entire process did Wally ever complain, ever feel sorry for himself or ever think “Why is this happening to me?” And, yet, that reaction is so common place in the generation of people of whom I am a part. It seems to be even worse with the GenY’s and the Millennials.

So tomorrow, I will ride and I will run and I will do what is expected of me regardless of conditions or circumstances. And if I become complacent in my determination, I will recognize it for what it is, an aberration. And I will focus on Wally knowing that the sooner I finish, the sooner I can get out of there to spend time on the true priorities. Sucking up to judges won’t be one of them.