I have lost 140 pounds since September 2017, currently down to 233 pounds from 373 pounds on September 8, 2017. This began simply by eating slightly less, eating at specific times instead of "grazing" throughout the day, and just generally being more observant of what I was putting into my body. I have not radically altered my diet and I refused to go into this with any food item or group of items being declared off-limits. I knew that doing so would be seen by myself as a form of punishment, which I suppose I subconsciously knew had been my problem up to that point.
I began exercising in April of this year from being physically totally inert for about seven years. I was a swimmer since I was a toddler until the end of high school, so it made sense to start doing that again. Because I sort of panicked when I turned 29, realizing that there's no more 20-something birthdays remaining, I decided to start living as though it is my last year of life. I want to be able to know deep down, when I'm hit by a car and everything is starting to go black and that it's nobody's fault, just one of those things, that I did what I could. I tried, fuck it. So I did something drastic, and so characteristically me. Actually, as we'll see, this is part of the process of me moving towards the version of myself I see in my mind, moving towards my own level of excellence.
I am going to compete in an Ironman 70.3 triathlon in July 2019. I am scared. I've never done anything like this before. I think I should be scared. If I'm not scared when I'm about to start - or pretty much the whole week leading up to it - then I don't understand the magnitude of what's before me and I should not race because I'm not prepared for what's coming.
Fear is okay. Fear and the darkness within us comes from a part of us that is genuinely interested in our survival, in our continued existence as living entities. But I realize that I am fearing fear itself.
Fear that my training hasn't been sufficient, that I will experience a medical event, that I will simply stop to make the pain stop. That I will give up after so much preparation. After I've invested so much of myself.
I tell myself that this was a very good first try. I made it well past T2 and that honestly, given the fact that I went from totally sedentary to Half Ironman in a year and a couple of months, that's way more than I had a right to complete. Better athletes than I tried their first Ironman and did not finish; there's no shame in it. It's a testament to my fortitude and dedication that I made it this far. No one doubts for a moment how much work I've put in. Quitting doesn't change that. My family is very proud of me. My friends are all very proud of me. Several of them are there, back at the transition zone with the other spectators. I know that they won't be disappointed no matter what, since they know I've done my best. I know there's another one here next year and I can try again then. Hell, there's others going on around the nation and several adjacent states. If I'm willing to travel, I can go to another one this same year to try again after some more preparation. This starts sounding good, really convincing actually, and I start listening. I may very well not make it past that point, and I see it. I see me having the thought that I Can't Do This for the 500th time, and finally deciding to listen to it seriously. I realize I'm actually very seriously contemplating stopping, and I knew I would be get to this point. It's as though it's preordained. I have raced 61 miles so far, I have driven from home to the race, I have driven back and forth to gyms to train, I have grown from a child to an adolescent to a young adult, lived all 11,264 days of my life, all for me to meet my destiny this day, the destiny that has been waiting for me since before I was born.
Things collapse rapidly because of the feedback loop of my fears being realized. I stop. I might kneel. I might decide to sit. I figure I may as well piss and take a shit, if I need to. I'm breathing so hard, I feel the respiratory acidosis coming on again like that one time, and the thought of having a serious cardiac event on the race course brings me to the verge of panic. I'm fully into my panicked state for a couple of minutes. I'm being pestered by others, volunteers and other triathletes, telling me to go, that I should at least walk. Keep moving, they encourage, with bright faces and voices. It's getting annoying. I consider raising my voice. I'm not permitting myself to realize that I might be giving up. After about four or five minutes, I realize that I am annoyed with the others because they are saying the same things my inner voice is telling me, and that I am diligently ignoring. I scornfully ask myself why I couldn't have had the same diligence in my training that I do when I accomplish mental acrobatics to avoid taking responsibility for my choices: to attempt to believe that it is some external force acting upon me, rendering me incapable of going on. I stew with this for a minute. Self hatred is there, burning strong. I consider getting up and going full sprint until I collapse and maybe do have a medical situation. It would serve me right. I deserve that, because I'm quitting. I don't deserve my life. I'm a quitter.
I'm quitting.
Wait. What did I just say?
I'm a quitter? I'm quitting?
Am I?
No.
No.
(You aren't a quitter, Rob. You have worked so hard. You belong here, this is your rightful place. This is the place that we've been coming to after so much suffering, doubt, confusion, and self hatred. We've been dying to come to life. And here we are. I've watched you over the past year and you haven't quit. That's because we're living again. So I know you're not a quitter. I love you, Rob. What a privilege to be with you.)
I invested so much of myself into this.
I did not come this far to give up.
No.
No. No, no! NO!!! IT DOES NOT END HERE!!! WE! ARE! GOING! NOW!!!
I'm floating, feeling like somewhere between a seizure and a dream.
We're moving again. The commanding voice is the strongest. I now know that the voice telling me to give up is going to be there for the rest of the race. It is going to express itself in a hundred excruciating ways, from the chafing of my tri suit against my shoulders and pecs and crotch, to the unreal blisters on my feet (it literally feels like my skin has sloughed off on parts of my feet. That might actually not be an enormous exaggeration. Don't think about it until we finish), to just plain tiredness and exhaustion. I will wonder how high I was when I decided to do this. After all this effort, I may quit multisport after this race, maybe it's just not for me.
That voice isn't going away. But I went through the worst a few minutes ago. I know that if I can continue after THAT happened back there, I will keep going from now on. I may indeed need to slow my pace, walk, or even stop just momentarily. I doubt I will choose to do that often, since moving again after coming to a complete stop is a titanic effort. But we're moving. I Can Do This won't be drowned out by I Can't Do This again this race.
I have a buffer zone of time, probably not a luxurious amount of time, but enough for me to walk every few minutes for a few seconds. I have some gel and water. This is agony. But there's nowhere else in existence that I want to be right now. Where I need to be. Here, right now, doing exactly what I'm doing.
This is going to work.
The finish line. I am there. Coming up on it is surreal. I actually thought that it was a very real possibility I wasn't going to be here, and it was. I'm here. I cross. "ROB -----, YOU ARE AN IRONMAN." A high-pitched whirlwind of sound around me. A roar that came from within me that surprises me. I am grimacing, sobbing, and smiling ecstatically at the same time and I fall to my knees, pretty much incapacitated. I earn my medal but I'm only barely sensible enough to understand even what I've done. I'm there, with the medal that is so real I can feel it now. I run it through my hands. I look at it and turn it over to look at the back, and turn it back to the front and stare at it for a few seconds. I'm still crying. I put the medallion to my lips, and sweat and tears roll off my lips, onto the medal, onto my fingers, down my arms. I'm tremoring slightly. The medal has a smell now that it's covered in sweat and tears, not unpleasant, almost like metal in an old box in the garage. There, too, along with the voice that says I Can't but much quieter, is the voice growing louder, steady, and confident, declaring, I Absolutely Can Do This.
Here I Am.
This is for me and for no one else.
February, 2020. I am nearing the end of my undergraduate education. I already have more than one very promising lines of inquiry open to me in pharmaceutical research - by this point I may be actively working with established scientists on novel molecular targets that I began to devise in early 2018, around the time when everything else in my life began to come together like the meshing gears of a machine. I will be deciding on my direction - I will have already been looking at medical school, graduate school, or would let myself be scooped by someone in industry. I've decided that being an Eli Lilly scientist would be enough. That is a worthy goal. A dream, really.
I used to wonder just how many people I need to save to consider my life worthwhile. I suffered for so long, I want to give back to the world by using my gifts to help produce new drugs that can help people get their lives back - hopefully faster and more surely than the long time I spent lost. How many people do I need to save? A million? A Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology? A multimillionaire pharmaceutical startup founder and CEO? Why not just stick a Nobel Peace Prize onto that, for saving the world. Well, a hundred thousand? A thousand? Just one hundred? Fifty, a dozen, a handful? Three, two?
Can I even save myself?
I was convinced of the possibility that I wouldn't survive until I could figure out how to save myself.
I became certain that I could save myself, the only life I ever could save, in the past couple of years. I took my life back by committing to live again, no matter how much of a shitshow things invariably are sometimes.
I achieved this in part with beginning to be physically active again. My body and mind don't operate correctly without physical activity with a reasonable intensity. For this reason I will choose to continue to do triathlons, hopefully (relievedly) mostly Olympic and sprint races, and a 70.3 here and there. I'll be working towards a full Ironman because I like punishment. It will slowly dawn on me that the voice of I Can't Do This hasn't been quite the same since my race, quite a while back now, but seeming like just yesterday. That voice has been...well, damaged. It's mangled. It's leaking like a sieve. It no longer holds substantial weight. Actually, it's funnier than anything, insofar as something ruined can be humorous. And the funny thing is, I won't realize that until I remember I wrote this, that I wrote February 2020 as the date of the epilogue. I'll reread this, and reflect for a moment.
Yeah, it's not the same. That's funny. How much I've grown, even in the months since the race. The incredible things around me, blooming into life. Discipline and effort brought these fruits. It's time to cultivate them and make my garden grow.
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