Well blogger world, November has come and gone and with it, National Novel Writing Month. As previously discussed, I've been working on a book project through the month of November with no real plans on completing it, but my goal was to at least make a decent effort at getting a chunk of it taken care of. With NaNoWriMo complete, here's how "complete" the book is...
I've written 53 total pages, that account for 27,950 words. This isn't even half of the suggested amount for NaNoWriMo, but my own project, this accounts for 14 chapters, which is well beyond my half way point, so I'll take it. I've previewed various sections before. But here was my latest addition as the month came to a close.
...about running triathlons.
There is an expression that life is not a sprint; it’s a marathon. This is technically incorrect. Life may not be a sprint. At least, we hope it’s long enough not to be considered a sprint. But life is not a marathon. I know this because I’ve run a marathon, and while it taught me a lot about myself and about life, I’m sure it isn’t analogous to life itself.
When you run a marathon, a lot of different things happen to your body and go through your mind. None marathon runners don’t think of things like the fact that sixteen miles into a marathon, you may need to re-apply vaseline to your thighs, bra lines, and butt crack to keep things from rubbing against each other. None marathon runners may have never lost multiple toenails at once. None marathon runners may have had hit the metaphorical wall at some point in their life. They may have felt like they were up against some insurmountable obstacle. But the wall is only a very small part of the marathon experience, and it doesn’t justify setting the distance of life’s rat race at 26.2 miles. None of those things are really metaphorical..
The real problem with the marathon metaphor, is that a marathon is all one thing. And life is very rarely all one thing. A marathon is exhausting in both its distance and the endurance required to complete it, but also in the mundaneness of what you’re doing. Yes the crowds are there to add energy and excitement to the experience, and they do. But at the heart of it, slogging through 26 miles only requires you to keep moving your feet, putting one foot in front of the other until eventually you cross the finish line. It’s not a complicated task, and is rather boring in its simplicity.
I guess maybe life is like that. Although if all you need to do to make it through your life is put one foot in front of the other, I challenge you that you’re life is not all that interesting. And how many times in life do we get to define ourselves as just one thing? To finish a marathon you need to consider yourself just one thing, a runner. What one thing would define me in this life? Would I run my whole race as a teacher? A daughter? A runner? A wife?
I propose that instead of thinking of life as a marathon, that life be thought of as a triathlon. And having completed three times as many triathlons as marathons, I think I can attest as to why.
A triathlon is not all one thing. A triathlon requires three separate skills, and it requires you to have the ability to transition between them. A triathlon poses many of the same physical challenges and obstacles as a marathon. There’s still the threat of hitting the wall. There is still the sense of tremendous accomplishment at having succeeded. There is still the pain, and endurance, and perseverance, and human spirit that drives the thing forward. But a triathlon requires you to be three things. You must be a swimmer; you must be a cyclist, and you must be a runner to cross the finish line. You must transition into each role and complete each phase in its turn, and when you’re finished, they don’t call you a runner, or a cyclist, or a swimmer. They call you a triathlete.
But it’s not just the stages and athletic roles that make a triathlon a good metaphor for life. The real reason I believe triathlons make for a good analogy is that in all those phases and stages you race, there is going to be something you don’t do as well as the others. There is going to be something that you really have to work at if you want to keep up, or something that you’re going to have to put some extra effort in to make happen. There is going to be something you have a very real chance to fail at, something that you can’t just slog through to complete. This thing does not have to defeat you, but it might scare you, and it will absolutely push you out of your comfort zone. And in my mind that’s far more akin to what life will throw at you then just putting one foot in front of the other until you reach the end of the race.
While in life, I’ve had many of these moments that have challenged me, in triathlons it has always been swimming that caused me the most anxiety. I signed up for my first triathlon before I went to the pool to refresh my memory on how to do the common strokes. It’s a good thing it happened in this order. If I would have gone to the pool first, I probably never would have signed up for the race.
I grew up on a lake and spent plenty of time in the water, but I was not a swimmer in the athletic sense of the word. I liked lifejackets and inner tubes, and had taken swimming lessons only up to level three, at which point I decided I didn’t want to jump off the diving board, and my parents agreed that I had learned enough of the basics to insure I wouldn’t drown.
When I got into the pool on my first day of training, I quickly learned that not drowning was about all I was proficient at in the water, and I even jeopardized that if I tried to tread water longer than five minutes. A friend and triathlon veteran tried to help me at least float effectively in the shallow end of the pool, supporting my back as I fluttered my hand and feet gently trying to keep my head above water. It was horribly embarrassing and discouraging, but I’d already paid my money and told people that I had signed up. So I had to figure out a way to do it.
The process of learning to swim was endlessly frustrating. I've always been a pretty athletic person, but everyday that a pool workout came up on my training schedule, I dreaded going to the gym to do it. I spent time in the diving well just treading water. I spent time with a kickboard just working on my flutter kick and leg strength. I bought headphones that were safe for the pool to try and muster the motivation to swim very slow, inefficient laps. I wondered what it would be like to drown!
As for the rest of it, I'm a good runner and had become a pretty decent biker, so I wasn’t worried about finish the race once I got through the swim. But if I couldn't get out of the water, I'd never be able to compete in the bike and run. The better my running and stronger my cycling got, the more determined I became not to make a fool of myself in the water. But even as my skills developed, I knew in the back of my mind that on race day, my swim wasn’t going to be fast of pretty. It was just going to be enough to get me out of the lake and onto my bike.
And that’s why life is a little like a triathlon. In fact, life is harder than a triathlon. It's a pentathlon…a decathlon! In life we play numerous roles, take on multiple responsibilities, and must be different things at different times for different people. We must be proficient in each of these areas. If you're weak in one, your quality of life or overall happiness may suffer. It's likely we feel pretty good about some if not most of these roles we fill, but chances are, one of these areas is your "swimming" event, and it's the one that you're going to have to fix and continue to work on as your story unfolds.
The thing about a "swimming" event is that it's not always a fun thing to fix. I wasn’t always motivated to get in the pool and flounder lap after lap hoping to be just a little bit better each time. In fact, some days were infuriating and frustrating. Similarly, when you recognize what you're "swimming" event is in life, it won't necessarily be easy to master it. Maybe it’s a bad relationship that’s draining your energy. Maybe it’s a dead end job that’s no longer satisfying. Maybe it dream you gave up on, or a goal you stopped chasing. Maybe it’s recommitting yourself to your marriage, or your faith, or your kids. Maybe it’s going back to school.
Of course, you could always make the decision to ignore the weakness. People stay in bad relationships. They work unfulfilling jobs. They let their friendships and marriages suffer. They flounder in the lake, just trying to keep their head above water as the world moves on around them.
But I dare to suggest that’s not the best way. For the triathlon teaches us to take that weakness and turn it into, if not a strength, at least a survival skill that helps us move to the next great thing. We don’t have to become experts in our weaknesses, we merely have to plod along, making steady progress until we stop feeling like we’re drowning, and can move onto our bike, and our run.
