Photo by Michael Krabach
posted by Wil at 3:02 PM
Veni. Vidi. Vici... from 10K to Ironman. Start at the beginning to read about what I've learned and how I found my way. As of September, 2007 the journey continues for this married mom, writer, alternative high school English teacher and domestic goddess of the universe - still seeking sanity through sport, balancing it all, and getting away with it.
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| View My Training Log | ||
| 2008 Race Season | ||
| June 27-29 | WIBA | Wisconsin Brick Adventure |
| July 6 | Firecracker Tri | Sprint |
| August 2 | Steelhead | Half-Ironman |
| August 16 | Rolling on the River | Century Ride |
| August 30 | Optimist Tri | Olympic |
| October 12 | Lasalle Bank | Marathon |
| November 27 | Thanksgiving Day Run | 5K |
| Race Reports: 2005-2007 | ||
| March, 2005 | Bride of Zoy | 15K Trail Run |
| June, 2005 | Sunburst | My First Marathon |
| June, 2005 | Mideast Championship | Sprint |
| July, 2005 | Culver | Sprint Distance |
| August, 2005 | Steelhead | Half-Ironman |
| September, 2005 | Niles Optimist | Long Sprint |
| October, 2005 | LaSalle Bank | Marathon |
| May, 2006 | Indy Mini | Half-Marathon |
| September, 2006 | Wisconsin | Ironman |
| May, 2007 | Wildflower | Olympic |
| June, 2007 | Sunburst | Half-Marathon |
| June, 2007 | High Cliff | Half-Ironman |
| July, 2007 | Spirit of Racine | Half-Ironman |
| September, 2007 | Wisconsin | Ironman |
1.18.05
Well, crashing is never fun, and having fallen on my face several times throughout the course of my life, I've learned that there's something to be said for living with a mouth full of dirt: spitting mud is inevitably better than spitting blood, especially when falling in the first place is the result of my own carelessness.
So, I guess that putting up with the grains of sand crunching between my teeth for an eon up the road is just the price I have to pay for the mercy of the trade off. Maybe that's the real meaning of, "grit your teeth" and bear it - clever, in a kind of kick in the head sort of way - but OK. So just get back on the bike.
I will get where I'm going eventually, and at least it looks like I'm on the right path now. 15, 25, 56, 112...the miles don't go on forever. I just have to slow down a little bit and watch for what's up ahead. Low branches go for the throat, and hitting them at a fast pace is usually a race ender to say the least.
Relax, I'll tell myself, covering this kind of ground is always a pain in the ass.
I hate the feeling of other people's bubbles.
Race Day: To give up the day-to-day luxuries of the masses for the luxury of a day the masses will never have.
I will let it roll in and rain down, and I will ride through it.
Shake out the little rocks before they cause big problems in the long run.
Bring me hail and angry skies, ominous clouds for miles and miles.
Wrap the gale around my eyes and let all of the devils loose for a while.
Let them run and stomp my fires, let them come and lock my tires for in these falls I have learned something of pain.
I have learned to absorb it and to get up again.
Physical pain is finite.
Physical ability can be carved, mental toughness can be forged, but passion must be born. It takes flesh and blood and heart and guts. And that's why you have to bleed to be the best.
Get up.
It sucks.
Then it doesn't.
Go train.
It sucks.
Then it doesn't.
Always.
In that order.
Crossroads come along now and then... they're proof that I'm getting somewhere.
If I am to fall, let me fall, for I would not surrender. If I am to bleed, let me bleed, for I would not die unscathed.
Given this, at the very least I can say, as I lie there under the weight of having lost, that I believed this much in myself.
And at the most, I will be remembered a warrior.
Potential is amazing. Determination is liberating. So the way I see it, there's not much out there that need be terribly intimidating...
It takes far more effort to compose a rationale for not doing than it does to actually do.
By the time you've sorted all of the reasons to stay in bed, invented just the right excuse that facilitates the injection of your perfectly prescribed justification, you'd be halfway out the door. Ironically, the easiest way around is through.
Take it out of the 53. Don't make things harder than they need to be.
They say the hardest part of anything hard is starting, and looking back on my life, I'd have to agree. More importantly however, it seems the longer we put off starting, the harder whatever it is we'd like to accomplish seems to become, and I wonder if this were more apparent - if this were the default adage - we'd wait so long to begin chasing down what it is we'd "if only" have.
Clearly had I known this, I'd have undoubtedly just begun.
We are the potential of our strengths and limitations of our weaknesses, and the first step in navigating both is to start embracing them - in their entirety - as our own. I think only then can we ever hope to mold them into what we'd have them be, and ideally, maybe even realize they're already what we've been trying to embody all along.
The less I think and the more I accept, the farther I'll go and the happier I'll be. I will succeed organically, because this is what's in me.
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"First, say to yourself what you would be, and then do what you have to do."
~ Epictetus
"We will either find a way or make one."
~ Hannibal, 247 - 183 BC Carthaginian general
"We have resolved to endure the unendurable and suffer what is insufferable."
~ Emperor Hirohito
"Anything is possible, but you have to believe and you have to fight."
~ Lance Armstrong
"The fear of suffering is often worse than the suffering itself."
~ Paolo Coelho, The Alchemist
"...it's only pain and it's only suffering. It's not going to kill you. And if it's not going to kill you, what's the big deal?"
~ Chris Kostman, AdventureCORPS
"I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough -
Without ever having felt sorry for itself."
~ D.H. Lawrence
"It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees."
~ Emiliano Zapata
"The strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack."
~ Rudyard Kipling
"Good is the enemy of great."
~ Volataire
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming;
but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
~ T. Roosevelt, The man in the Arena
"Somebody may beat me, but they are going to have to bleed to do it."
~Steve Prefontaine
"The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare."
~ Juma Ikangaa
"What we have is based upon moment-to-moment choices of what we do. In each of those moments, we choose.
We either take a risk and move toward what we want, or we play it safe and choose comfort. Most of the people, most of the time, choose comfort.
In the end, people either have excuses or experiences; reasons or results; buts or brilliance.
They either have what they wanted or they have a detailed list of all the rational reasons why not."
~ Anonymous
"As a man sows he shall reap, and I know that talk is cheap. So the hotter the battle is, the sweeter the victory."
~ Bob Marley
"You will be what you will to be; let failure find its false content in that poor word 'environment,' but spirit scorns it, and is free,
It masters time, it conquers space, it cows that boastful trickster Chance, and bids the tyrant Circumstance
uncrown and fill a servant's place.
The human Will, that force unseen, the offspring of a deathless Soul, can hew the way to any goal,
though walls of granite intervene.
Be not impatient in delay, but wait as one who understands;
when spirit rises and commands, the gods are ready to obey.
The river seeking for the sea confronts the dam and precipice, yet knows it cannot fail or miss; you will be what you will to be!"
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"Heights by great men reached and kept were not obtained by sudden flight but, while their companions slept, they were toiling upward in the night."
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."
~ Mark Twain
"I know I can hit, and I know I can get hit. What else is there?"
~ Jimmy Smith (MMA fighter)
"We ain't making no gaddamn cornflakes here."
~ Colonel Charlie Beckwith (founder of Delta Force)
"Second star on the right and straight on 'till morning."
~ Peter Pan pointing the way to Neverland
"I bring my own weather with me."
~ Faris Al Sultan, 2005 Ironman World Champion
"You are what you love, not what loves you."
~ "Donald Kaufman" - Adaptation
"It's lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges, and I believed in myself."
~ Muhammad Ali
"For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
~ Hamlet
"When you go to war as a boy you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed; not you. . . . then when you are badly wounded the first time you lose that illusion and you know it can happen to you.
After being severely wounded two weeks before my 19th birthday, I had a bad time until I figured out that nothing could happen to me that had not happened to all men before me. Whatever I had to do men had always done. If they had done it, then I could do it too, and the best thing was not to worry about it."
~ Ernest Hemingway
"The minute you start talking about what you're going to do if you lose, you have lost."
~ George Shultz
"Anything is Possible" ~ Ironman
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4 Comments:
Short but sweet.
Only a few more days, Wil. I'm thinking about you!
I really like that, is it yours?
JennyC: Yes, and thank you for saying this and for so much more!
I wish you had an email address because the poem you sent really struck a chord with me (I've posted it in my sidebar under "inspiration.")
Please stay in touch ;)
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