About More Than an Ironman
As we traverse a path the trail takes on new meaning
If sobriety was just about not drinking or using, I don’t honestly think I would still be sober today. Likewise, if triathlon was only about crossing the Ironman finish line I most likely would have dropped out of training months ago. In the following paragraphs I talk about a method of mindfulness that allowed me to add meaning along the way thus strengthening my sobriety and solidified my identity.
To be honest, when I started this blog I didn’t know that I would stay sober. I didn’t know I would every actually cross a finish line. In my mind they were just two more lofty goals I had set for myself. I didn’t believe I would be able to meet the demands of either.
I have a post that talks about me jumping into the pool and running home to tell my wife I was going to do an Ironman and raise money for youth while doing so. Looking back, I’m dumfounded and surprised she supported me the way she did. I didn’t have a debit card at the time because I had spent all our money during the course of my last relapse. Nonetheless, she whipped out her debit card and purchased a registration for two triathlons. One Olypmic distance in June- 5 months away and an Ironman 70.3 in October- 8 months away. I was locked in.
I tossed and turned, couldn’t sleep that night. The commitment I had just made was absurdly beyond anything I had ever done and now that she was financially invested I had to give it my best (I’d come to find out she made much more than just a financial investment).
I was profoundly good at putting on an act, but my acts never lasted long, surely not long enough to get my body ready for an Ironman. My inability to hold on and save face while living a lie had just been uncovered in my sobriety. On the outside I was doing everything right. I was not only going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, I was leading them. I’d read passages of the book out loud and tell people how far I’d come, while in reality I hadn’t applied any of the teachings to my life. After the book was closed I left the meeting room walking through clouds of fear, acting in self and denying my insecurities. This is best illustrated in the way I held myself at work.
Shortly after a month long binge where I locked myself in my house with a few gallons of moonshine, closed the blinds and told pizza delivery men to leave the pizza on the front step because I was too ashamed to open the door, I scored a great paying job as a foreman with a landscape company. I had told the owner I was previously a ranch manager who worked hard long hours, knew how to drive a team to get solid work done, drive machinery and pretty much do labor intensive thing a landscape job could throw at me. This was partway true. I had managed a ranch my dad owned, but in reality basically all I did was stand around drink moonshine. Okay, I put a few hard half- or quarter-days on the clock, hung a couple fences and bailed some hay, but nothing noteworthy. Nonetheless the owner of the landscape firm seemed impressed with my presentation and offered me the job. I was prepared to live the lie for the money. I was always prepared to live the lie for money, a good time, or belongedness in the form of friendship, love or sex.
A few months into the gig, my cover was blown. I wasn’t able to drive a two man team and get solid work done. The owners of the properties I worked were unhappy with the performance and my supervisors were beginning to come down on me. Instead of taking ownership, I quit when the smoke got bad, figuratively and literally. You see, wildfires had begun to take over Northwest Montana. Each morning looked like a scene out of Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic epic “The Road.” I blamed my asthma and stopped showing up for my job. When questioned about the poor performance, I blamed my co-workers. In fact, I even got one guy fired because I wasn’t able to keep him motivated. It wasn’t his fault. He was born a little easy going and slow. It was my fault. 3 years of foreman before me were able to get work done with the fella, but not me. I didn’t know how to lead and motivate because I wasn’t motivated myself, so instead I got him fired.
The game was up, the cover had been blown. I would have started drinking again at this moment if Jess, my wife wasn’t already becoming intimately woven into the primordial beat of my heart. Even though my lie had surfaced and I knew I wasn’t the man I had said I was she still believed in me. Each step for the next few months were lugubrious, tiresome and draining as I desperately looked for a place to step firmly on. My identity quaked at its very core. I didn’t believe in sobriety anymore, in fact, I didn’t believe in myself. I was so tired of living lie after lie with every job and relationship I had because each time I was fired it hurt more and my energy was gone. I couldn’t fight any more.
And then I decided to do an Ironman. What the hell. Lets just go ahead and do something that takes more commitment than anything I had ever done. I guess I was so far at the end of my rope I began tugging at anything I thought of that might boost me towards safety and security within myself. If I could do this I could begin to believe in myself. I guess this was my first goal. But, I had no idea it would stick. All I knew is that after a few laps in the pool I wasn’t going to be able to lie about this one like I did Alcoholics Anonymous and the landscaping job. I wasn’t going to be able to tell Jess I was at the gym while sitting at the bar eating a burger and fries.
So what’s the point of all this. I hope the above ramblings made it clear I had been living a lie in every facet of my life. I didn’t believe in myself. I didn’t know who I was, what I wanted, or what I cared about. I had not held a job for more than 3-6 months and quite literally couldn’t see a task to completion if that task was to draw a line across a piece of paper. I’d near the edge and give up. Well the point is that I now had this big lofty goal and had no idea how to complete it, and this is by divine intervention.
Since I had no idea how to get to this goal I had to start following a plan. I had believed I knew how to get sober, I also believed I knew how to keep relationships and jobs (historically none of this was true). Luckily, I had learned a few lessons in my attempts to get sober and one of those was mindfulness.
My favorite task in mindfulness is called mindful walking. You take slow steps with your breath and listen to the leaves crunch under foot. While at rehab I would practice this on a beautiful wooded loop that rolled through a peaceful forest in upstate Minnesota. The goal was to walk the whole loop and it was 2-3 miles. 2-3 miles was a very far walk for me at the time. For the past couple of years I had been walking only far enough to put a needle in my arm and drain my soul with heroin. So this was a pretty lofty goal. So I would mindfully walk it. I’d pay attention the each little step and stop when something unusual happened. These occurances made the 2-3 miles worth it.
One time while I was walking I saw an owl that seemed bigger than a VW bug and it hooted at me and stared at me like it was peering into my soul. Another time I saw a fox. Now, these things may not seem that great, but remember, I was in rehab staring at therapists all day. These things were the greatest gifts that I could imagine. They quite literally lifted me up and set me upon a cloud that let me know I was in the right place (since then I have dubbed Owls as my spirit animal). These little blessings that came along the walk were not only the things that got me through 2-3 miles, they were the driving forces to help me through rehab. The goal wasn’t ever to see an owl or a fox, but it happened.
Likewise, this is what triathlon has bought my life and it has helped me to see the little blessings sobriety has brought my life too. Both sobriety and triathlon are like that loop in the forest. The goal is to walk the entire loop and get to the end feeling refreshed. But it’s not actually the end that feels so good, it’s the blessings of nature along the way that bring the restorative refreshing sense of serenity to fruition. It’s these things that make the journey quite effortless. However, when I started triathlon, I didn’t know these things would occur.
I took the mindfulness lessons I had learned in rehab and just began walking out the plan. Little did I know while walking the path I was in a state of constant becoming. I’d hop into the pool and try to stay calm, slowly I started succeeding. Then, I was able to start speeding up. I would head out on a run and try to just put one foot in front of the next until I made it home, slowly I started picking up my pace. As I did one task after the next the foxes and owls began to show themselves. The blessings began to unfold and the walk became effortless. I looked down at my legs and saw muscles I didn’t know existed and say hmm that’s cool- like seeing a fox on a walk. I’d come to an epiphany while swimming laps in the pool and say, holy crap I finally understand why I have been so frustrated, angry and fearful for so long as the tiles underwater glared back at me like the howl in the old growth Minnesota forest.
This happened again and again and again and it began happening in every area of my life. The next thing I knew I was crossing finish lines, sponsoring other addicts/alcoholics and dubbing more things part of my spirit than owls or flowers. I was now making things like health and wellness part of my life and cherishing things like family time. I’m now starting Integrity Endurance, a health and wellness coaching business to help other people not only reach these types of goals, but to find little nuggets of blessings that become part of their lives along the way. I’m searching for more ways to help youth in the community. I’m involved with a church and family and this blog. What’s even wilder is that I enjoy and love doing it all. I can’t believe it, but just putting one foot in front of the other has opened up my eyes to so many more things than the goal of an Ironman finish line. I never would have thought how much more this thing would become.
So my point? Make a goal, but don’t be limited by it. The goal is just a means for great things to happen to you while travel towards it. If we stare at the goal too long it honestly gets quite tiring and if your anything like me you may think your never gonna get there. You may start thinking that you have just been lying to yourself and others once again. The pain of trekking will come, the goal will start to appear too daunting unless we take it mindfully. Realize the walk in the forest is a moment to find your own owl, your own hoots, your own footing, identity, reality and drive. Soon you too will see- it’s not how much we can yank from the river of life, rather it’s how much we can cram into the stream on the way.
The blessings
The Journey
The finish line