The ones we lean on
Everyone helps us along on our journeys.
In some ways, it may be obvious. Joining you on a run. Cheering you on at the finish line. Treating you to a delicious dinner after your race.
In other ways, it’s not. Sometimes you are sacrificing time away from one another in a relationship. Sometimes co-workers have to deal with your cranky, fatigued self. Maybe it’s someone who really doesn’t care for the fact that you have to pee sooo bad you just do it on the side of the road and hope they aren’t looking while you drive past.
Yeah, that’s someone’s yard, I guess. Hopefully their kids aren’t watching.
The deeper into the rabbit hole I go, the more I realize that training really isn’t just a hobby. It’s really a lifestyle.
There’s a constant focus on how well you’re sleeping, how well you’re eating, how well you’re balancing your life, how well you’re performing, and making sure you’re constantly out there actually training. There’s really no way to half-ass it. (Well, OK, there is, but we know that’s not going to give you the best results.)
And so you, the not-half-assing-it athlete, have a pretty big effect on everything around you, and everything around you has an effect on you, too.
Sometimes that means your partner will try to con you into joining on the cookie and ice cream spiral of doom. Or eating take-out with your family at a not-so-body-friendly restaurant. Or the neighbor’s midnight fireworks — COME ON IT’S ALMOST AUGUST!
That also means that people are forgiving when you feel like you’ve just gone too far off the deep end and are not in the best mood. They will bring you your favorite food for dinner to cheer you up. They will cheer you on and tell you to keep going. They will build you up and support you every step of the way.
I think that’s special.
I’ve always struggled to believe in myself. I always thought that I’ll never be good and I shouldn’t even try. It’s something I’ve struggled with for a long, long time, and something I still do have a hard time with.
I’ve said before that I don’t feel like I’m particularly breaking new ground or doing anything crazy extraordinary. It took me a long time to make peace with the fact that it doesn’t have to be … just that it has to matter to me, and it has to be something that puts me in a place I have never been before.
And every single one of you who is coming along with me: It means the world to me. Even if sometimes you do try to talk me into bad things like a cookie coma.
Even to those who have not helped me along the way (I’m looking at you, fireworks homies), thank you for helping me to find a way to overcome, a new way to test my patience, my understanding and my problem-solving skills.
If coronavirus has taught me anything, it’s taught me to appreciate all the people in my life so much more. It’s taught me that not every day is a good day, and sometimes you just need to go to bed at 8 p.m. and deal with it tomorrow. It’s taught me that I love my family so, so much.
And it’s certainly taught me that I can plan for something, have my plans be completely demolished, restored, rearranged, questioned and then given the green light and somehow I can stay on track through all of that. In other words: GOALS, baby. I’m such a goal-oriented person, it’s kinda crazy.
So, I raise a toast to you, and I hope you do the same, for all those people we lean on, in good times and bad, during training and rest, while planning or just going with the flow. We may be putting in lots of work, but they are truly the ones who make it happen.
Photo credit: 719 Ride, www.719ride.com