Sunrise at the staging area while waiting for the triathlon to begin.. Lots of butterflies and questioning my own sanity at this point.
When was the last time you attempted something hard? How have you gotten out of your comfort zone lately? Are you trying new things and challenging the status quo in your life?
Now I’m not talking about moving to Tibet and becoming a monk or selling everything you own and living in a camper van (unless that’s your jam). I’m talking about turning those challenges that spark your interest into life-giving ways to invest some of your time and attention.
Is there a potential hobby that haunts your dreams? Maybe it’s time to put some dreams into action. I wrote last year about buying our first camper and taking our first long RV road trip. RV camping is lots of fun but also brings along some new problems to overcome, like breaking your nifty steps on the second day of a ten-day odyssey.
Other challenges you take on to prove to yourself you can do something difficult, like competing in a triathlon. Giving yourself physical challenges as you get older comes with some amazing benefits. Multiple studies show that High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) – think alternating walking and running or mixing moderate biking with short, intense bursts of speed – turns back the clock on aging for both your muscles and your cells.
This from a “U.S. News & World Report” article: “For aging adults, supervised high-intensity training confers the most benefits, both metabolically and at the molecular level,” says senior author Dr. K. Sreekumaran Nair, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. It seems that HIIT can help slow the aging process somewhat.
Similar findings were published in 2019 in the European Journal of Sport Science. That study found that older adults who engaged in HIIT sessions three times weekly over a six-week period had favorable adaptations in skeletal muscle and more robust mitochondria.”
On gasping for breath and a broken toe, or inside my first triathlon
It was my first triathlon, and I came close to quitting before I completed the first event.
I’m a life-long runner who enjoyed leisurely swimming, and I knew how to ride a bike. After running a half marathon six years ago, I’d thought about doing a triathlon. I have no interest in abusing my body in a marathon, because that’s what it is. Abuse. But a triathlon, so long as it wasn’t a super long one, had some allure.
Then life happened, and I forgot about my triathlon musings until my daughter confessed a desire to do one. That fanned the triathlon flame to life. We could train together, and I could spend quality time with my daughter while becoming more fit than I’ve been since the half marathon.
Our town hosts a sprint triathlon, which involves a 300-meter swim, a 12-mile bike ride, and a 5K run. That seemed like the perfect beginner’s event. The catch was I hadn’t done any real swimming or biking in decades. But how hard could it be? I knew how to swim, and I knew how to ride a bike.
My first trip to the local natatorium opened my eyes. After hopping into the brisk, cool water and warming up my muscles with some casual side strokes and back strokes, I swam one 25-meter width of the pool with difficulty. I found myself panicking and out of breath before I reached the far side.
This was going to be harder than I thought. I’d forgotten whatever I learned about freestyle breathing in 1975 at the Wichita YMCA. My stroke was weak and inefficient, and I kicked too hard. Thank the good Lord for YouTube tutorials. After several weeks of just figuring out how to swim again, I began to build stamina to swim more than one width of the pool without stopping to hang on the side and gasp for air.
It took several months for me to swim 300 meters without really stopping. At the pool where my daughter and I trained, we each had a 25-meter lane where we swam back and forth.
Then there was the bike riding. I didn’t have a bike and had never biked in any kind of contest. The spring and summer I was 16, I was rehabbing from stress-fractured shins I got in track. The sports medicine folks recommended biking. I’d bike eight to ten miles on the scenic bike path along the Arkansas River in Wichita.
That was really the only time I did any serious biking. But how hard could it be? It turns out I injured myself twice on the first two training rides. I didn’t realize the importance of starting off with the pedals in just the right position. The first time was just bruising in the, um, saddle area. Then there’s the challenge of stopping on an uneven surface with tired legs. The second time I broke one of the less important toes on my right foot. The broken toe slowed me down for a bit, but once the swelling went down, good shoes helped me resume training.
My daughter and I trained for many hours, ramping up distances and intensity as the big day approached. On race day, I felt confident I could do each event. I knew swimming and biking wouldn’t be very speedy, but I could complete the course.
Rachel and I donned our tri-suits (swimsuit/biking outfit/running togs all in one), loaded up our bikes in the pre-dawn darkness and headed to the course. I was nervous but feeling pretty good.
Then I saw the water-logged chaos in the pool. It scared the hubris out of me. They grouped racers by their real or guesstimated 300-meter swim times, with a swimmer jumping in the water every other second or so. Imagine if you will lanes full of swimmers going in a zigzag pattern, some swift and confident and others sputtering and gasping. Guess where I fell on the continuum. People might be passing you, kicking you, pushing you underwater.
At the end of each 50 yards, you had to touch the wall, dive under the rope, flip around and push off. After one wobbly lap, I clung to the side for several precious seconds wondering how I was going to swim five more lengths of that.
Then I just gave myself permission to swim the sidestroke for a while or the backstroke with my head cocked to watch for obstacles ahead. I swam most of it freestyle, but I allowed myself to revert to easier strokes when panic threatened to, well, drown me. And I coached myself, “You can do this. Just keep swimming until you can get out.”
The buoyant relief I felt while pulling myself out of the pool and jogging to my bike made the unfamiliar bike race not bad at all. I enjoyed the wind and speed, but mostly being free from the pool. The swimming portion of the tri went worse than I expected. The biking leg, while not fast, went better than I imagined it would.
My best portion was, of course, the run. Running a 5K is something I’ve done more times than I can count. You do have to practice what’s called a brick workout: riding the bike, then immediately going for a run. Why? Your legs feel like overcooked asparagus when you get off the bike and start to run. You have to get used to that rubber leg feeling because it WILL pass.
When I crossed the finish line, I felt joyful relief and accomplishment.
My daughter and I were thrilled to finish the Monster Triathlon last October. We were encouraged to wear costumes. I was a unicorn and she was a giraffe. Most folks came dressed as triathletes.
Failure is never trying at all
Conquering an intimidating goal is one of the best confidence boosters around.
A “Power of Positivity” blog post on how doing hard things rewires your brain says, “Resolve, motivation, and inspiration do not last. They peter out at some point, and you have to have something stronger than that, keeping you to your goals. Meaningful changes that last are not borne out of something so fickle! What you need is to learn to prioritize commitment over motivation. There will be days where you hate your tasks and don’t feel like doing them, no matter how much you hype yourself up. This is where the values of commitment will keep you going. Patience, consistency and an understanding of the importance of sticking to things are all far more crucial than being inspired even when it’s hard.”
Showing up when you lack motivation is crucial.
I love motivational messages. Cas from Clutterbug, one of my favorite YouTubers on home organization, talks about borrowing motivation. She listens to inspiring podcasts or audiobooks when she’s tackling tasks she doesn’t enjoy. I do the same thing. I’m often looking for ways to amp up motivation and inspiration, but they ARE fickle. You never know whey they’re just going to evaporate.
That’s when commitment can come through for you. If you develop the habit of doing hard things, you’ll start to grow. Appreciate the role of commitment in your life and the perseverance it builds. Why? Because that’s the magical road to hope.
A Bible passage that I like to remember connects hardship with hope: “…we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” – Romans 5:3-4
Then there’s the unexpected benefits of failure. Yes, I said failing can be a good thing.
A blog post on “Why Doing Hard Things Matters” from Desk to Dirtbag says, “Doing the hard things makes us grow. It’s one of the few time where failure still means success. You’re making progress and learning. You know more today than you did yesterday.”
Failure isn’t the end result in attempting something hard. You learn something about the process or yourself that helps you in the future. Failure is never making the attempt. Failure is settling. Failure is camping out in your comfort zone and sleeping on your purpose in this one wild ride of life.
So the ball’s in your court. What hard goal do you want to achieve? Take one small step toward it today.
Sharing is caring! If you enjoyed this post, please share it. I’m dropping a pin below for easy sharing for Pinterest users.
