Tuesday, June 15, 2021

Ironman Feels

The taper for Ironman Coeur d'Alene has begun and in order to mitigate my pre race nerves/doubts/obsessive vacuuming, I'm choosing to focus on the feelings I have while I'm racing. Without this, my brain will default to focusing on what I'm nervous about. I wrote this for myself, both from past race experience and for future manifestation, and I'm hoping that you'll get something out of it too. 


Race morning, all I can think about is the gun going off. My anxiety is in my throat. I can taste it. Please just let the gun go off so I can stop thinking and start doing.


SWIM


We're doing it! We're in an Ironman! Everyone is frantic all around me. I love the frantic energy and I indulge for a bit. Then I retreat back into the stillness inside me. I fill back up. Drop my shoulders. Remember to breath. I am doing an Ironman!

It's so exciting that I go back into the anxious energy with my people. They are so me. These are the people who reflect my own energy back to me the clearest. It is flawed and it is beautiful and it has brought us all here together. 

That is so special.

I go back in. I think about the video of Alistair Brownlee dunking his competitor (too soon?) and I think I'd really like to do that to the guy next to me. You're ruining our special moment, guy! Get out of my personal space.

I am always so excited to see the blurry large shadowy thing that is definitely not the sky and definitely is the finishing arch. The swim is fun but get me the F out of here and onto the bike where people get penalties for being in my personal space.


BIKE


The stillness is easiest to find on the bike. Simple powerful movements create force and speed. I can feel my center. The contrast between the stillness of my core and the strength of my legs magnifies the opposites.

I am in the energy and the energy is in me. It is hot, sticky, windy, and whatever else has been reserved for race day. The only option is to merge with it. It is too big to resist. I become the heat, the wind, the elements that surround me. It is hard for my body to integrate this energy. I have to remember to be compassionate with my body. To give it the nutrients it needs to sustain integration.

If I am out here forever, will I become the elements
Or will they destroy me
Or both?

I am scared and I am curious.


RUN


The run is where truth finds me.
It's where I find truth.

I've spent the whole day being stripped down. I am raw and I have no defenses. Right away, I can feel that my impending question will be how willing I am to be out of control. All I can do as that question gets louder and louder is continue to give my body the tools that it needs to rise to the occasion.

And then at a time
That seems outside of time
There is a shift.

My body answers the question for me. It allows itself to be overtaken.

This exact moment in time
That is outside of time
Is why I came here.

This is the surrendering.

It has become too hard to exist in a state of resistance. I am completely out of energy to worry or even be curious about what lies ahead. The worry is too heavy. I have to let it go. 
I fill up on belief and I become lighter.

In one dimension, I wish I could be here forever. I'm on the edge of living and dying and again, it's the contrast that brings depth and luminosity to its opposites. I am more alive, more in bliss.

And in another dimension, I feel my body disintegrating. Breaking down. Giving of itself so that I can experience this high of living. 

This feeling is fear.

I acknowledge it and I try not to stay there for too long. Both feelings are getting stronger, together. I have to make sure I'm attuning to each feeling equally. That is the key. It's what I have to maintain until the finish line.


THE FINISH LINE


Only at the last possible second do I allow myself to acknowledge that there is an ending. If I allow stopping into my consciousness too early, I won't be able to maintain my expansion.

When I acknowledge it, I am desperate for it.

The finish line is triumph. It is release and pain and celebration and grief and joy on the most profound level. For this moment, I have no reason to doubt myself, to think little of myself, to believe any of the hurtful lies I've ever told myself about not being deserving of this, and it is overwhelming.

There is not enough room in my body for all of this joy and gratitude and it pours out of me. I want to be able to contain it. It feels shameful to let it out, but it is bigger than me. It has always been bigger than me.
It's ok.

Let it out.
Soak it in.
Share it.

You created this. You lived inside your dreams.





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