Those who know about my recent love of Spartan Racing find this fact quite odd, given that I scale 10 foot walls and 20 foot cargo nets. Yet, I am. I think as racers we subscribe to the theory of,"what happens on the course, stays on the course." This means my intimate racing team of five is really good at keeping my dirty little secret. They have not shared that what happens to me at the top of the cargo net is I turn into a shaking, screaming ball of fear. It is so evident that complete strangers offer words of encouragement. "You got this!" To which I have a standard answer screamed in a panicky voice,"I DON'T GOT THIS!" When my feet finally hit the ground it is the attitude of,"nothing to see here", and my team and I take off again, ultimately completing our mileage and jump the fire at the finish line with pizzazz as the badass racing bitch my persona would suggest.
As every race approaches, I find myself haunted by the damn cargo net. I always hope it will get easier, and maybe I will even curse less at the top or not have a pro shot with the absolute look of fear on my face. This week I have been in Corolla, Outer Banks, North Carolina. Here, they have a brand new attraction which my logical brain told me was the solution to my dirty little secret. A ropes course, Corolla Adventure Park. I had never done this in my life as my fears had kept my feet firmly on the ground. As we pulled up, suddenly the ropes seemed so high, the obstacles difficult. I was afraid. However, I kept replaying the two acronyms for fear in my head: Face Everything and Rise, or Forget Everything and Run. Well, in my real life I run a motivational health and fitness company based on me holding the take no prisoners attitude to my own health and finally winning a four decade long battle with obesity. I subscribe to the shark mentality and help my people embrace this to get healthy. In fact, I arrived to the course wearing my own logo. Probably using the run aspect of the second acronym would not make for great marketing. Brett the owner, met my son an I at the door and his staff got us ready to go. I tried my best to appear brave, in fact, I pulled it off well until I got strapped in and walked out to the obstacles. I felt my nerves kick in as I stepped off the first platform. However, the first level went pretty well. I made it through the obstacles and was not feeling too bad.
However, then I got to the second level. The obstacles were harder. Thin wires to cross, a teeter totter to walk across, which in the middle of Brett called out to me,"try not to look terrified, and I will take your picture." Boards that seemed so far apart as I held on to just a rope. Boards that swayed beneath me as the wind blew. At times, I found my legs were shaking, the "I don't got this" screaming in my head. At other times I felt simply stuck and had to convince myself my vacation would be over in a couple of days and parking it on the second floor of the ropes course was likely not an option. However, my guide Becky kept encouraging me. She gave me tips to help me to get across, and I did not need rescuing even once. Little by little, obstacle after obstacle, fighting the fear, I was able to make it through.
The other side of all of this is this, though was a concept my terrified brain would not embrace, I was wearing a harness. I was strapped in and the very worst thing that would happen is I would fall all of two feet at my harness would catch me and I would just sail along the wires to safety, thus making my fear here quite irrational. I began to think about how many times fear keeps us exactly where we are even if it is not a great place. I fought obesity for 45 years mostly due to what I now see was the fear of what it would actually take to be the fit person I am now, along with the fear of what would happen to my relationships as I became this version of myself, and the fear that I would fail yet again as I had so many times before. Those are just the first things that come to mind, with the battle of obesity there are dozens of other fears. What I did not know though, is that I had a safety harness all along. None of these fears if they came to fruition were fatal. I probably was not going to die increasing my exercise, and giving up the junk I used to fuel my body with would likely not kill me either. Rather these things were simply fears that I had run from as the acronym would suggest keeping myself figuratively paralyzed.
However, right there at Corolla Adventure Park, I didn't. I faced my fear of heights, shakey legged and all and I would love to say I rose. I did rise to the third level, and after scaling the Corolla sign, walking through stilts and stepping stones 50 feet in the air, I did not rise, I descended. I descended along the most amazing zipline I have ever seen finally free of the fear that kept my feet firmly on the ground before today, once again allowing me to ask myself, if I can do this, I wonder what might be next. One thing is for sure, I need to clear myself all together of the phrase,"I don't got this" as clearly when facing fear, I just might have it, maybe not with grace or without a few shaky moments, but I just might have it. No matter what, though, it helps me to see that the best is truly yet to come.
