When the decision is first arrived at, there is such exhilaration and high expectation, but when one stops dreaming about it and stands with their running shoes on looking at the endless road before them, the question of reality becomes apparent. "Is this possible for me" ran through my mind more than once when I registered for my first triathlon. (I love that most athletes say "my first", like we are so confident there will be another!)
I took the leap of faith entering the sprint triathlon the day after I heard my sister's story about her experience with her "first". As she animatedly took the family standing in her kitchen through a detailed play by play, something was burning in my stomach, and it wasn't fear. It was the certainty that if she could do it I could do it! My sister had entered her race with the prodding of a friend with the same confidence that I had, but admittedly she confessed she had skimped on her training and hoped for the best on race day. This of course made for a delightfully hilarious story of using a "noodle" and a "swim angel" to get through the swim, staying in first gear on a bike she hadn't ridden until that day and running with calves like the rock of Gibraltar. This is probably why I was brimming with self-confidence as I said I would be doing the next Tri-Sprint race.
My confidence and zeal were two-fold. First, I knew that I had gotten a regular workout down at my gym, and was able to run a solid mile on the treadmill, and as foolish as that logic was to use for a race that required a 1/2 mile swim, 12 mile bike and a 3 mile run, I was justifying the fact that at least that was a little more training than my sister had done. I wasn't even putting a care into the six year age difference as her senior; it was caution to the wind, zeal trumps common sense every time!
Secondly, I had an epiphany that this race would be my way of proving something that was deeply personal. I think that most runners in races carry this motivation to the finish line, something deeply personal about their reason for running. It carries them through every day of their training; the mornings they could be in bed, the "wasted" time icing and recovering, the denial of junk food, the registration fee and arrangements, aches & pains and the gusto they have to dig from deep down in their spirits to push themselves past their limitations just to prove something deeply personal. For me, I HAD to run this Tri. It was bigger than me, it was harder than anything I'd ever done and it required a strength and resolve that said one thing, "you can't keep me down, I'm alive and I will keep going!"
That day in my sister's kitchen I thought the year before had been the most emotionally difficult of my life. I had a lot of stresses that had put so much pressure on me mentally and emotionally that it had taken it's toll on me physically. I had spent 9 months battling panic attacks in the middle of the night that mimicked heart attacks begging my husband to call 911 convinced I was going to be dead by morning. Heart palpitations during the day led me to my physician who referred me to a cardiologist and at the same time sent me to Moffitt Cancer Center with a diagnosis of Thyroid Cancer. This diagnosis from my physician almost through me over the edge until my Endocrinologist nonchalantly informed me it was "just a hot nodule" and a treatment of radiation should kill it.
Finally, quarantined to a room of isolation in my own home for five days with no physical contact with anyone, I got mad! I was mad at every circumstance that I had allowed affect me, and all the stress that I had allowed to find a place to attach itself not only in my mind and heart but my physical body. I was convinced that the growth on my Thyroid had been constructed over the last year by every stressor in my life and I was determined to not only eradicate it, but to reprogram myself to refuse stress.
I began to systematically clean my mind and my body through times of meditation and prayer, releasing resentments and anger. I began running on the treadmill and kick-up my workouts and implement better nutrition and supplements. I was determined to become strong mentally, emotionally and physically and to "comeback" with resilience! The TRI fit in like the crowning glory of that goal!
This personal determination and motivation were what got me into a swimming pool, not to get a tan which had up to that point been my ONLY reason to be AROUND a pool much less in it. I donned a swim cap and goggles and for the first time in my life attempted an official swim style. When I lost steam in the middle of the pool and an elderly woman passed me by on her swim noodle, I thought to myself....yes, you guess it, "is this possible for me?"
This determination also got me running on a wooded path at a park OUTSIDE in the elements where the Florida heat and humidity rushed over me like a hot shower, and when I barely made it to the one mile marker - which on a treadmill seemed so much easier in the A/C - I thought to myself - "good Lord, the three mile run is AFTER the swim and the bike, is this possible for me?"
That same determination on the day of the TRI got me IN to the murky waters of the Disney World Lagoon, ( I had NEVER trained in open water much less the disgusting waters of a Florida lake), and as I was over run by the 8 waves of 100 women swimming like dolphins all around me. I kept going not just because at that point there are NO other options, which there weren't, but because my resolve to prove "IT'S NOT IMPOSSIBLE" somehow just as magically as Tinker Bell's Pixie Dust, got me to the beach a little disoriented but to the beach nonetheless!
And that determination gave me the strength to at long last to finish the last leg of the three mile run and see my family and my sister at the finish line!
So, the question is: what is getting you running? What will keep you running when you are asking the question, "Is this possible for me?" You are going to need that reason more than one time on your running journey. The cool thing is it will be there in your smile in the picture!
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