Well most days.
Today it was 15 degrees and raining with a chance of thunderstorms. Not exactly a morning I wanted to be outside. Yesterday all day I tried to create a decent excuse for why I didn't need to go. I couldn't ABANDON my family like that. Surely they would want me around for those 3 hrs. Or maybe the lightning was just too unsafe. Can't take a risk like that. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't come up with anything that sounded legitimate so off I went at 7:00 AM this morning.
When I got there it was only raining lightly, so I set up my bike and running gear and dressed for the swim. The skies opened up & we had a good 1/2 hr soaking just before it was time to get into the water (fitting). However once the gun went and we all dashed into the lake all was forgotten. The cold, the rain, my fake excuses all gone. I was doing what I wanted to do for Father's Day and it was going to be OK.
A triathlon is 1.5 in the water, 40 KM on the bike, concluded with a 10 km run. The worst part by far is the first few km's of running. Your exhausted, you've been racing for an hour and a half and your legs jus don't feel like working anymore. Once you get into the rhythm of running it's OK, but there sure is a mental block when you first get off the bike and start to run.
This was far from a perfect race day, but I was making the best of it between short storms and muddy conditions. Then things really got awesome at the 23 KM mark of the bike. My pedal fell off.
It's hard to bike without pedals.
So now I am wet, tired 17 KM from the race site and I have a bike without a pedal
Happy Father's Day.
It was one of those defining moments for me. I had a choice. I could sit there and wait for a race vehicle to find me, have pity of me and carry my sorry self and broken bike back home. Or I could grab the bike by the bars and do what I came here to do - swim bike & run. Remember that even on a nice day when your bike is working fine, this is hardest part - moving from biking to running. But as i said, I really felt like this was one of those moments for me. Am I am quitter or a warrior? Do I pack it in when things look hard or do I persevere?
So I ran with my broken bike for 7 KM when eventually a someone found me. (The police marshals apparently had called the race officials and told them about some crazy man running with his bike). I was still 10 KM from home. I was wet and disappointed that I wouldn't get an official finish on this race. However I handed the man my bike and said thanks but no thanks. I ran my way back home and finished 41.5 KM of the triathlon (They didn't let me go back out onto the 10 KM run course) in an unofficial wristwatch time of 2:59:32.
Real men fall, but real men get back up and keep going.
On Father's Day I want my daughter to see that finishing on your own terms, even after a fall is sometimes more satisfying than finishing 1st when no adversity comes your way.
This is the man and father I want to keep being.
And yes... I went to to the Taylor Swift concert on Friday and loved it. Real men can like country pop apparently as well.
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