This is the letter I wrote to myself the morning of the Hawaii Ironman after just 6 months of training. I wish I would have read this afew times over the last few years.
When I found out I was going to Ironman, I didn’t know what to expect. I wasn’t fully aware of the impact it would have on my life. When you’re sitting on a bike for seven hours, or running down the same road for four, you have a lot of time to contemplate and make realizations that otherwise you may have never picked up on in the cloud of time we call our lives.
I think that is why so many people are hooked on Ironman.
It inevitably gives your mind time to come down and think about your life on a different level. Ironman races and the training that goes into them will take your body and mind to the breaking point and beyond. It has given me the time to think of where I have been and cleared the path to where I am going. It has made it clear to me that the key to a wealthy life isn’t money, and success should never be measured in dollar signs.
It has taught me to key striving ahead but appreciate what I have and all my achievements along the way.
The biggest realization I have made is that life and everything in it has a cycle.
In training you have a cycle of workout time when you feel amazing and you could go on forever. In life you have these same cycles when everything seems to be clicking so well and you literally think to yourself that from that point on, nothing could ever go wrong again. But it is human nature to self- sabotage and that is exactly what we do. In training, you can hit a negative cycle, when training is so monotonous and painful that your body and mind tries to make a quitter out of you. In life, all it takes is one minor glitch in your perfect life cycle to set off a chain of events that what will seem almost irreversible. In training, when you have these moments, you have to take whatever obstacle your body, mind or Mother Nature is going to put in front of you, step back, and understand why it is happening.
Then… deal with it.
If your body tells you to stop because you are tired, this is the best time of your training. This is when you really find out how deep you can dig to get your training back on that positive cycle. In life, it is exactly the same. When you think you can’t work anymore that day, or you are too tired when you get home to do the dishes. Think of the chain of events something that small can create.
It is at these times that if we can dig deep no matter how big or small the task, we can work harder, get more done, have less stress, achieve more goals, and have a great life.
No matter how today goes, I have learned more about myself in these last six months than I ever have, and plan on continuing to dig deep in everything I do to live the life I have always dreamed of for my family and me.
