We Are What We Strive to Be: My Lessons from the Long Course

By TK-Oh! – South Bend Roller Girls

It's June when I smell rain on the cement, the black dirt that is mineral-musty, clean, damp, and heavy in the air. It's June when I anticipate the sting of sweat in my eyes and the taste of salt on my lips as I climb my bike higher and higher, legs burning and pleading for the final peak of yet another Midwestern mountain. My heart beats harder and faster while everything slows around me. Birds switch branches, squirrels chitter beneath bushes, and I am free to wreck any preconceived boundaries built up over the long, dark winter as to the breadth of my potential. I am an Ironman, and no matter how long or difficult the path, I will make my way to the end of it one stroke, one shift, and one step at a time.

That's what I learned about myself by running the first 10 miles of 20 in the opposite direction of my house just to eliminate the option of quitting when the humidity hit 90%, and the mercy of my front door came within reach. That's the mindset annealed by hundred-mile training rides though hail and headwinds, and by swimming two miles through the ever-icy Lake Michigan chop over and over again until I knew I was ready for anything Mother Nature could imagine come race day.

If you want to forge your mettle for a fall race, you are alone out there in June, July, and August. You push until you are exhausted and have nowhere to go but inside yourself to get out of the rain, the wind, or the heat. You find the steepest, scariest, most arduous terrain, and you chase out whatever doubts dare linger inside your mind so that you have room to crawl in, dry off, warm up, and move on. If you race Ironman in September, by the time you line up with 2,000 others at the shore to await the horn that will set you off swimming for 2.4 miles—the first leg of your race—you will have lived and died a thousand times on all manner of personal battlefields that past summer. You'll have sought out and beaten your fear, you'll have bested your pain, and the only job you'll have left for the rest of the day will be the hardest of them all... to remember what you have done, and what it has made of you.

I think we all have a story like this. Mine here is actually the culmination of life events that just couldn't be put to good use any other way than through endurance sport. Maybe the details of yours are different, maybe it doesn't involve swimming, biking, or running, but I suspect it involves reaching down inside yourself for the strength to push through the obstacles before you. Your story is a personal crucible just like mine in which taking risks, believing, and being stubborn has carried you through the worst of the storms and delivered you here, both stronger and wiser for them. And the hardest part, of course, is remembering those lessons from time to time...often, when you need them the most.

I don't know why I didn't anticipate the progressive phases of derby; the novice phase when you feel like if you could only slow down time, you'd be able to catch the clue bus that always seems to race right by you. You'd finally nail the jump, the fall, the hit; you'd do it right, and everyone would congratulate you on finally “arriving.” But it doesn't work exactly like that. I mean, eventually you approach the benchmark and things start to sink in; you start to see strategy in the pack, you start to remember the rules before you break them, and your elbows finally learn to behave themselves most of the time. You stop tripping yourself so often, and your body works; your body finally works. You actually hear your coach yelling instructions; you catch someone coming for you, for your jammer, and like only the most epically retro of 80s action movies, you swoop into place against the backdrop of Six-Million Dollar Man music to make them all fall down. For five seconds of every ten minutes, it's all perfect. Things start to slow in your mind, and although your heart is pounding in your ears, you can make sense of the noise sometimes, and you can breathe.

Imagine my surprise when I realized this was all just part of the first phase, that the second phase, the third, the fourth, into what appears to be infinity, is yet undefined. There are so many abstract nuances in derby, so many skills that you just have to “feel” in order to do. This is not Ironman. There is no finish line, and I can't fall back on the structure of ticking off time and miles that has pulled me through so many will-building days. But I need to remember that even though I don't know how long the road before me is now, those days and those races have taught me to believe that anything is possible if I work hard enough and believe strongly enough in my own ability to get from point A to point B, physically or metaphorically, come hell or high water—and I, like you, have traversed both often enough to know that I can.

Our draft is coming up, and I have a long way to go before I will even hope to start every other jam. At this phase, I'd be thrilled just to make the charter and skate a lap after they call my name in front of 500 fans. I'd be ecstatic just to be included, to wear the uniform and to warm up with my team, to watch from the bench and feel all those feelings down to my fingertips. But I know the next phase will come soon after this, and I'll want more. I'll want to play at that level because I'll have overcome my nerves, I'll have polished by game, and I'll be ready. No doubt it will be frustrating if my “readiness” timeline doesn't match my captains' and coaches' perception of it, but I've learned nothing if not how to manage the long haul toward an end result. Doubt is a sinkhole. Excuses are counterproductive. Progress is forward motion only, and that involves making decisions, making sacrifices, and honing my skills until I am their only logical choice.

Beyond working hard, we have to believe that we will achieve our goals no matter how discouraging things may seem. I never would have been ready for Ironman had I not choked, crashed, bled, cried, stumbled, and inevitably fallen, then gotten up with dirt in my teeth and a catch in my throat just one more time. It's the getting up that teaches us we can bear the rest. Every time we come up short is a test, and every time we pass it by pushing through and soldiering on, despite the naysayers and excuse makers, we are that much stronger, faster, and smarter than we were before. Whatever happens on the road ahead, our stories have taught us that personal growth like this in and of itself is worth every bit of suffering and disappointment we may encounter along the way.

And who knows? Maybe that's the point of the whole journey in the first place...