You Only Get What You Give

“ I broke my ankle.”

This is a phrase I hear multiple times a day as an emergency provider. In fact, it was a phrase I used myself following the tragic Duplo Block incident of 1997 where I tripped on a lego coming down the stairs with a full basket of laundry.  Much like me at that time, the person uttering said phrase usually has an ankle the size of a watermelon that is actively turning colors right in front of me, and has convinced themselves of the shattering of bone that clearly lives beneath this mess. However, about 90% of the time the X-ray reveals no break and I am left wrapping up said watermelon ankle as the patient asks me over and over if I am sure it is just a sprain. Am I sure this ugly looking leg is not broken?  I am sure.  In fact, the radiologist and I are both sure.  At times arguments ensue as people are incredulous that something that looks like this could truly be incrementally better in the two weeks I am promising them. Yes, it is quite a process at times with sprains.

Which brings me to the actual mangled ugly fracture I saw this week. Not a speck of bruising, a wee bit of swelling to where I was questioning the drama of her being in a wheelchair when she arrived. Yet, what lived underneath was a mangled mess that will only be walkable again with a huge amount of hardware and a painful surgery that will take a while to recover from. On one of my two hour commutes this week I was thinking about how paradoxical this clinical picture actually is.  Well, to be fair, I was trying my best to get my mind off a text I had sent that morning.

You see, I have an accountability partner. The person I promise trainings to when I simply don’t want to do them. That particular day, I was coming off a 72 mile commute three days prior leading into a three day stretch of 32 hours, only to commute 2  more hours to my next site and gear up for a 9 hour day the next day, followed by a two hour commute home. I was tired. I was hungry. I missed the kids, and most importantly, I didn’t want to train. This was going to be really ugly.  The,”I don’t wanna” screamed through my thoughts alternating with my disdain for the text I had sent, as well as some misdirected anger at the person I sent it to. After all, it was hard to let down someone else. It would be much easier if it were just me. When I arrived at the hotel, I would be reminded by said text recipient, of the big hairy goals that lie months from now on the back end of this training .  Profanity slipped out and echoed off the walls of my hotel room as I laced up my Hokas and hit the rickety hotel tread for a benchmark run at a 9:00 minute pace rounded out by the New Radicals,”You Get What you Give” through my wireless headphones. 

Don’t give up,

You’ve got a reason to live

Can’t forget

We only get what we give

Don't give up.  My partner would not allow that and I wouldn't let him down.  The run on an old hotel treadmill proved to be aggravating to my hip full of hardware and was not outstanding. It was ugly, uncoordinated and not what I was used to.  At the same time, it was faster than two weeks ago, a run I also considered ugly at the time.  Much like the watermelon ankle, I am wondering how many times we allow what appears to be ugly and hard to stop us from realizing that just about anything we take on may be that way at first, but we are not broken underneath, and with practice, will be a whole lot better in two weeks if we just stay the course?  How many times do we choose instead, to rest on something that looks perfect from the outside, choose to take on no ugly challenges and submit to a complacency in our journey that is ridiculously broken underneath and then suffer the fallout of truly only getting what we gave. In the end, I would send my partner my stats, suddenly seeing myself one step closer to the big goals in the distant horizon, grateful for the text I had been pissed about all day long and suddenly thankful to the partner who holds my feet to the fire to make me better.

You've got the music in you

Don't let go

You've got the music in you

One dance left

This world is gonna pull through

Don't give up    

So, friends, today, I think the trick is to find the music in you and embrace the ugliness that comes along with any hard challenge and then tell someone about it. Tell someone you would be mortified to let down, and get after it regardless of the amount of profanity it may take to get yourself out there.  Only then can will you truly see what you are capable of.  In those moments you will know with certainty, the best in yet to come.

You Can't Always Get What You Want

When my oldest son was 17, all he really needed in this life was a Jeep Wrangler.  He dropped hints relentlessly that Christmas until I finally did what any mom of 5 does.  I used my well developed sarcastic skill set and bought him an RC Wrangler and wrapped it up from "Santa".  I do believe this is the very occasion I started routinely quoting The Rolling Stones every time I had a child who "needed" something equally as unnecessary.

No, you can't always get what you want,

You can't always get what you want,

You can't always get what you want,

But if you try sometime you find,

You get what you need

Ironic this song would come on as I was reflecting on the events of the Chicago Spartan Super of last weekend.  It was my 11th Spartan Race.  My partner Karl and I knew how to do this.  We round up the newbies from our motivational group Team 1DOS for the weekend.  We do team bonding on Friday night, this time Cards Against Humanity, which is a whole other topic of hilarity...  We get up early, get to the venue, calm the nerves of the newbies, get everyone off and moving, over the walls, under the wire, over the fire, medal, shirt, beer and a fabulous dinner and after party.  Yes, we are seasoned at this.  Taking people to races and watch them conquer their biggest fears is as near and dear to us as it was when we raced our own first races.

Then it happened.  Right at the crest of the hill of mile 7.25 in an 8 mile race.  A woman in a red Spartan shirt just beyond the Z Wall suspending the race.  There was lightening in the area.  She assured us the clock was stopped and we simply needed to wait it out under the trees.  Well it damn well better be stopped.  We were at 3 hours flat and 15 mins from the finish.  We had never done this course in less than 4:45.  To be fair, she was just carrying out the directive by the Spartan officials.  Poor thing did not stand a chance trying to hold back 100 Spartans less than a mile from the finish.  People pushed past and went anyway, not realizing a suspended race did not mean an actual finish when you cross the line.  Others were angry.  Others repeatedly asking if we would get the medal or the shirt. 

But I went down to the demonstration,

To get your fair share of abuse,

Singing, "We're gonna vent our frustration

If we don't we're gonna blow a fifty-amp fuse"

Ultimately, we would stand around for about 45 minutes until another official would announce the race was simply over.  Dangerous storms were moving in and they had to call the race.  We were shown a back way to bag check and would walk past the finish line where the clock was still lit up, suspended for the day.   The tents past the line were locked up, as in the tents that held the precious swag.  Many of my fellow racers did demonstrate some fuse blowing ugliness.  The guy refusing to follow procedure at bag pick up and telling the volunteer to,"F#&k off!" was downright embarrassing.  There was another guy who approached the survey kiosk on the way out of the exit tent, angrily slamming the buttons for a negative review saying the same aloud but directing his commentary to all of Spartan Race.  From there, we would head to an open field where the dangerous storm would arrive soaking us to the bone, shivering as we waited for an empty school bus to finally take us to our car, which would also not be without peril, as it got stuck in the mud and two of my teammates had to push it out, one of whom had already taken his race socks off and was barefoot. 

I suppose it has taken me some time to put together my thoughts on this experience.  We had a plan.  We had a routine when it came to racing with our clients and it all stopped right there at the Z Wall.  I would have to find a different shirt to wear to the airport, the bragging finishing shirt that was our norm was gone.  I emptied out my race bag, which for the first time did not require a trip to my medal rack.   I had no PR bragging rights that we were sure we would have this time.  In the days that followed, Spartan did their level best to make it up to me.  A free Super was offered. Well, I did have a team going to Boston, I suppose I could do that. I have raced with all of these people before after all.  In fact, I believe I took almost each and every one of them to their first Spartan Races at one time or another.  It could be really fun to race together as a seasoned tribe.  This is an opportunity I would have missed had things gone according to plan. 

As I thought about missing the opportunity to post a PR, I originally let my disappointment cloud the fact that we were on track for by far the best race we had ever done finishing or not.  As I considered that, I began to realize that maybe, just maybe, all my time spent helping others in this process, and following the plan race after race, I had missed the fact that I had grown as an athlete and it's probably time for bigger, hyperventilating, scare the crap out of me personal challenges. Maybe what I really needed was to abandon my rigid corporate planning and find a better balance between being motivator and attacking my own goals

 No, you can't always get what you want,

You can't always get what you want,

You can't always get what you want,

But if you try sometime you find,

You get what you need

This all makes me wonder how many times in life we have a plan that gets absolutely destroyed just shy of our destination.  How many times we give up on our goals when circumstances change, rather than taking the opportunity to see the lesson and learn to change trajectory.  I can honestly say, I have a closet full of race shirts and a wall covered in medals, which truthfully, I "need" about as much as my son needed his cherished Wrangler, or the RC version for that matter.  What I needed was to be left shivering in the rain empty handed in order to realize sometimes "according to plan" is actually just complacency in disguise and it's time to go back to the start and try again, only this time a little stronger, a little wiser and to push myself a little more because clearly I am way more capable than I ever thought.  So, here's to a new Super with some badass people I am blessed to call friends, and to new goals I never dreamed possible because the best is yet to come.