I thought this was a good opportunity to reignite my blog. I write a ton, for those of you who don't know, and I'm always a bit leery of sharing it. It feels very vulnerable, and if anyone cared enough to pick it apart, I'm sure they'd find plenty of flaws. At any rate, I write too much to keep it to myself, so here we go.
Yes, obviously this is autobiographical. I use the third-person often when writing about myself. It feels like a shield I can hide behind, rather than admitting I am, in fact, the main character in whatever story. This one is no different, and it recounts my journey somewhere around mile 20 of the full marathon run that day at Ironman Arizona, 2018. This was long after any hopes of a decent finish time had passed, and I just wanted to be done. Even now, as I look back, I think to myself, "Why didn't I just go faster??" It seems so obvious, but in that moment, it was all I could do to keep putting one foot in front of the other....
“Water? Gatorade??”
His
head was down. He’d been focusing on his feet, putting one in front of the
other, for what seemed a long time. It took him a moment to realize the
question was directed at him. He looked up and saw a cute blonde, perhaps 16
years old, holding two paper cups in her hand. “Water? Gatorade??” She
repeated. He almost asked if she could rephrase the question. His confusion
evident, her smile faded slightly. He somehow managed to shake his head… He
didn’t remember saying “no” usually being this difficult. He kept his head up,
continued putting one foot in front of the other. Somewhere in his mind, he’d
planned something, and that something required moving forward. That was all he
could focus on.
Finally,
after a line of smiling faces offering various cups, and painfully difficult
negations, he found what he sought. “Coke?” It was a boy this time, younger
than the girl, but no less enthusiastic. He took the cup from the boy with
little more than a curt nod and poured its contents down his throat. It burned,
and nearly came back up, but he coughed and kept it down.
Within
seconds, the heavy blanket of fog lifted from his mind. The words “CAFFEINE”
and “SUGAR” flashed across his vision like a billboard. He remembered riding
his bike as a boy with his father on a hot summer day, and stopping at a gas
station, nearly unable to continue. His dad had bought him a cold coke from the
cooler, and it pulled the stake from his heart then just as it had now.
Suddenly,
he remembered.
This was to be his day. He’d
selfishly neglected social obligations and put relationships on the back burner
for the past six months in preparation for this day. He had trained and
prepared and poured his being into this day, these few hours, to achieve this
goal.
There was pain. Beyond the
physical, there was the love he’d taken for granted, the friendships he’d
wounded, and the family who’d once believed in him wholeheartedly and but by
now had probably written him off.
The physical and emotional pain he’d suffered – largely at his own fault
– these past months had been heavier than he could have imagined. There were
days he barely had been able to get out of bed, but somehow he had.
All of these memories hurt, but nothing like the pain he felt
right now. There was not a thing he owned he wouldn’t have given in that moment
for it to be over.
But there was also power. As he
lifted his head, he knew there was not a soul on the planet who could do it for
him. He was alone in this moment. His family, friends, and loved ones would
support him and cheer for him through his accomplishments, but his failure, his
struggle, his pain right now was his alone. Somehow, this thought brought him
strength. This godforsaken, windswept spit of road without a single stick of
shade was the hill he would die upon… though he hoped that sentiment was only a
metaphor. This was his day. Yes, it had take the support of countless friends
and loved ones to get him here, many of whom he would never be able to thank
enough, but when the shit hit the fan as it was now, it fell upon him to clean
up.
So he put one
foot in front of the other, if for no other reason than it had gotten him this
far.
