On Saturday, I felt the sweat sting my eyes as I tried to focus on how my feet were hitting the track while I ran the fastest mile I've run in a decade. I felt like a clumsy 14 year old kid again, struggling to go fast, while falling in and out of my new form. Moments of speed were interrupted by 35 years of bad muscle memory. Afterwards, I went to the fence and hung on, trying not to lose my breakfast. I was miserable, but that meant I'm growing again. The Houston Marathon is 8 months away and I'm only up to 1 mile.
My dad always had a saying that he liked to pull out when I got down and compared myself to others. "Early winners, late losers," he'd say. Once the given endeavor got to the point where the easy points, miles, reports, money, recognition or whatever had been gathered, those who put their heads down and kept going would continue to reap rewards long into the future.
Somewhere, though, in the midst of life, I'd settled into that point of being good enough. Growing meant work, and work meant trials, and trials meant pain, and that frightened me because I don't like to fail. I'd been resting on my natural ability to run, solve problems, and just live life.
Recently, it seems that all of my friends have launched their own athletic resurrections. I've watched each one of them do the work necessary to break lose from the routine of an easy daily life and find out what they're capable of accomplishing. My friend Daniel out in Nashville went from a couch surfing musician to doing 100 mile bike rides on the weekends; my high school friend Cynthia in Colorado is preparing for her first half-Ironman triathlon; my life long friend Jeff in Houston, who always made a pretty good backline digger in volleyball, erupted last weekend at Ironman Texas to finish the 140.6 mile race in under 12 hours. Each of them have weighed heavily on my mind. Without trying, they have challenged me, and I am more grateful to them than they can imagine.
Each of them has answered the question that has haunted me for the past few years. A girl I went out with once asked me, right before Ironman Arizona 2008, "What could you do if you really tried?" I failed to finish that race, falling less to heat exhaustion, and more to my own lack of hard work (and she broke up with me the next day. Good times.) My friends are finding out, and I realized that despite past success, I never really embraced the question, until now.
So, like with everything else in my life right now, I'm starting from zero, literally learning to put one foot in front of the other. Step by step. I had early success based on one formula, but scrapped it all. With faith that God will show me, usually through other people, I want to know how to really live. How to manage my finances, how to love people, how to build a business, and how to discern God's direction in everything I do.
I'm learning how to walk. Eventually, I'll learn to run.
Onward,
JRH
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