Because it's hard.
Because it's practically impossible.
Because I know I can do it.
I have a drive in me to do the impossible. I simply don't believe that anything is really impossible. When people say something can't be done it simply motivates me to do it.
Now, I have something called a sunken chest. It is why I am so self conscious of my body. It is a physical deformity that limits my ability to breathe during extremely rigorous activity. The best way to understand it, is to just think of it as asthma, although it is different. I never realized I had this thing until I was 11 years old or so and was trying out for the track and field meets at school. I cleaned up in the sprints but once I got to the 400m and 800m races I found myself running out of air and throwing up. I almost passed out a couple times. I went home and told my parents. That's when they informed me I had a sunken chest. It limited most of the sports I played growing up. Anything with consecutive fast breaks and sprinting, like soccer, would drain me so fast I'd be on the bench in 5 minutes. It really frustrated me because no matter how hard I trained it was not something that could be changed.
After I graduated I pretty much gave up on sports. I couldn't keep up. I guess it was more a mental limit than a physical one by that time. Then, a couple years ago, I ran into a guy at work who ran marathons. It got me thinking. I knew I had this physical limitation but I was sick and tired of letting it dominate me. So I decided I was going to run a marathon. There wasn't a lot of time to train and I didn't have a lot of money to travel so I picked the closest marathon, the Calgary Marathon, and trained for 3 months. In retrospect, 3 months was probably not enough time to go from being completely inactive to marathon ready, but I did it. In 2007 I ran the Calgary Marathon. I came in 701st with a time of 5 hours 30 minutes. Now, that's not a great time, but it is a time. The kid who couldn't run an 800m race without passing out ran a marathon. So much for impossible.
Why do I want to do the Ironman? Because I believe I can.
3.8km swim
180km bike ride
42km run
17 hours
Maybe there's a lesson to be gleaned from all of this somewhere. You find it.
3 comments:
Do it. That sounds awesome. Be an example of what is possible when we decide to do something incredibly difficult. The world always needs more of those!
So you'd do the ironman triathlon in Pentiction I imagine. That is the only one in Canada. Who knows, if you have a good showing, you could make it the top ironman race in Hawaii.
Thanks for the encouragement guys.
My goal is just to cross the finish line. Hawaii would be cool but the people who make it there are the semi-pros with sponsors who train for years and years.
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