LETTER TO MYSELF

I. BODY:

Dear body...,

It's me. How are you doing? Did you know that it is ironman build time again? So soon?, you say. Not soon enough if you ask me. Finally, is what I would say. It has been a long year.

And yes, we are one year older. But we managed to lose 10 pounds while in the south of France this summer, and we didn't even have to cut out wine! We are a good team, you and I.

I know I ask much. And, for the most part, you deliver. And this is about you anyways, at least in part. This whole ironman thing is about how far we can go together, how much I can fight against gravity, time, genetics. It is about how you and I can challenge the odds, go against time, get faster, leaner, fitter, sleaker, and more chiselled as we approach and crest 50. These things are not supposed to happen, but we can do it. I believe in us. I believe in you, mostly.

Ok, there are a few trust issues. But that is mostly old news. You have let me down before. In fact, you almost killed me in my twenties...but I don't blame YOU. That lymphoma was probably the result of some nasty virus...but who knows? And there was the slight issue with my knee, and then my ankle. And how about that two years of chronic back pain?

But we got through that, thanks to trigger point, foam rollers and thousands of dollars in accupuncture, chiropractic and massage.

The fact of the matter is that while I can't quite shake the perpetual fear of receiving the worst from you, I have come to expect the best. It is a little like a spouse, who was cheated on and then treated like gold afterwards, in perpetuity. Memories lurk in the shadows and bad memories can put us in darkness for moments. But that is it.

So, my friend, it is ironman time again. Yes, I will be asking you to sit for 5 hours on a tiny seat, on top of a bike in the basement. Yes, I will ask you to do without sleep. Yes, I will ask you to reek of chlorine and shiver on the cold deck of a swimming pool in during autumn nights at our new master's class. Yes, I will ask you to run when your feet are sore and your legs don't want to move.

I do these things out of a kind of love blended with compulsion, madness, anger and lust. But without your buy in, none of it happens. You are the core, the centre. I really, really need you to cooperate.

II. MIND

Dear Mind,

This was all your idea in the first place. You are the one who was so captured by those images of Julie Moss crawling across the finish line in Hawaii, by Dave Scott, your hero, and Normann Stadler, looking like a bronze G-d on his blue and yellow Kuota, sailing through lava fields during a tropical rain shower.

It was you, mind, who first dared to dream about becoming a triathlete, qualifying one day for Kona. You have a big imagination. You are a bit daring, and a little blind.

Could you not see that you had no background in swimming? Or that you had spent the past decade of your life, expressing your narcissism by pumping weights and that maybe, you were a bit more muscular than the heroes you had chosen to internalize?  Maybe not. You are great at denial, especially in the service of your dreams.

I am always amazed at how you keep yourself occupied during a solitary 6 hours of training. Ironman suits you, you Pisces loner you. You just love any platform that allows you to escape the world for a while and be with yourself. You are a hopeless narcissist.

Sure, ironman fits with your futile dreams of omnipotence, but it is so boring, tedious, painful and full of disappointment, that I often wonder at your stick to-it-ness. I guess it beats the horrible pits of inactive self destruction you used to indulge in. Ironman is about excess, self-denial/indulgence in equal measures, and let's not forget over-striving. All things that you are made of.

So, mind, in so many ways, the rest of us follow your lead. This is your initiative. Without you, we fail.

It doesn't matter if you are working through primitive rage, out-dancing existential anxiety, or bursting through the dysthymic wall of your own personality disorder, just keep doing it. We are getting closer, year by year, to living out the dreams you have concocted in that misty head of yours.

III. SOUL

Last but certainly not least, although definitely least understood, Dear soul, I am not really sure how you fit into all of this. But you have me thinking about that Kona broadcast a couple of years back, when they highlighted a French athlete who crashed his bike on the Queen K, sustaining serious injures, and completed the race nevertheless, by walking the entire marathon. I remember how fit he looked, like he was there to race and reduced to just finishing. But he was up to that which the day had thrown at him, and he finished at night, under the lights, with the 15 plus hour crowd; he limped his way across that hallowed line in Kona and held his head in his hands and cried. There is something beautiful that was expressed by that man's soul that day, something in his tears that reflected a simultaneous apprehension of the pain of existence and something almost like pride at being able to endure it. Imagine the years of training, racing, learning, sacrificing, building that it took to live out that one day, which went nothing like he would have planned or hoped for, but rather, became a source of pain with each step through the lava fields. Imagine what his soul endured as his body failed and his mind rebelled.

May this Ironman, be, above all else, a chance for you, soul, to struggle, to endure, and in so doing, not to transcend, but to more fully become and to be fully present in your own becoming.