Turn it Up

Once there was a thankless leader blinded by a golden ring,

Now there's no more peaceful gatherings

- Hootie and the Blowfish,"Turn it Up"

So, if I am being completely transparent here, I suppose you could say I have been throwing myself a pity party of epic proportions as of late.  Last week, I took on the Dopey Challenge.  A 5k, a 10k, a half marathon and a full marathon in four days.  Forty-eight point six miles of running through the most magical place on earth.  It was my second time around with this venture, and altogether different from the first.  My team had scored much higher corrals than I did, and I would find myself  marathon morning in the last corral just ahead of the sweepers.  It was 87 degrees with 97% humidity that day.  Despite the 5:00 am start, or in my case 6:00, simply standing in the corral, I was drenched with sweat due to the humidity.  I would take off running with the other Galloway method runners for about the first two and a half hours, until the sun was up and I literally felt like I was baking right there on the road.  I would slow to a brisk walk as I could feel the blisters forming on the bottoms of my feet.  At mile 19, I uttered a sound I was pretty sure I had never made before, when the giant blister on my right foot popped.  The runners around me all asked if I was OK.  Let's go with no on that.  Later, I would lose a mile and a half at the end of the race when the number of heat related illnesses on the course caused officials to red flag the race just as I hit mile 21.  We were diverted away from one of the parks on the original course and sent directly to the finish instead.  At the time I was grateful.  Headphones dead, phone dead, feet hurt, and I was pretty sure I left part of my soul right there in the most magical place on earth.  I found myself bursting into tears right there at the finish.  

I ended the day with the bling anyway.  I tried to take credit for the mile and a half walk from my car to the start line as making up for the shortfall of actual course racing, but somehow the bling had lost a bit of its luster, when I knew I didn't totally do what I set out to do.  Add to this the gigantic blisters on the soles of my feet making even a walk to the kitchen for coffee difficult all week.  Damn that coffee was so far away these days.  Added into the mix were other equally challenging trials of life. Yes, I had the makings of an epic pity party.  Some motivational fitness leader I was.  I couldn't even walk to the bathroom.

Take me 'cross the aisle now baby, let me see how y'all get down,

Take a  hopeful sound and make it loud

Yesterday, I decided I had to do something.  It was time to fake it til I made it.  After all, I had 367 Sharks to not disappoint.  I did my best to put my proverbial fin up and dipped my toes back in the water, and try a modified workout.  A mile on the stepper with 800 feet of elevation, plus an arms and abs workout in my home gym led by a ridiculously peppy virtual Nike trainer, oh she was getting down alright.  As I progressed through the workout,  heart rate up, a little sweat, a little heavy lifting, gradually I began to hear the slightest hopeful whisper of the beyond Dopey me that is to come.  I would follow that with a much harder power day at the gym today.  As my feet are not run ready, rowing and biking it was to be.  I was slow at first, making sure I could do this today when it dawned on me.  This class ends in an hour.  Not in six hours while the sun beats down on me, while the skin on my feet wears away to the bone....  One hour.  Not 6.  I may not have run the full distance last week, but I did slog my way through 47 miles, which is not exactly a small number.  So....I turned it up.  In fact, I turned it way up.  Power rows over 300 watts,  standing up and pedaling that damn bike at over 200 watts, I turned that shaky whisper of something better into full blown vision.  

Turn it up

'Cause I've had enough

I take a lot of teams to races.  Watching people conquer their goals is a passion of mine.  This year, though, I trained for and did a race with my management team.  A team building exercise that reminds us that it is easy to lose sight of our own goals when you are busy motivating others.  In doing so we learned crushing our own goals makes us so much better for everyone else.  When I got home today, I printed out a picture of my 2020 1DOS management team challenge.  A mountain.  A BIG mountain.  It sits on my desk as I type this.  A real time daily reminder that no matter what happened in races leading into this, this right here is on the horizon.  I am slated to take on elevation I have never experienced before, and obstacles I have failed at in the past.  I have been able to renew my resolve to give my training hell to not fail this time.  It's big and scary, and as the phrase goes on my original race shirts,"if it excites you and scares the crap out of you at the same time, it probably means you should do it."

I said, turn it up

When I've had enough

I wanna feel the love

Ah c'mon, turn it up

I have spent part of the afternoon revamping my training plan, finding my mojo screaming so loud in my head that I have nearly forgotten about the pain in my feet or the missing mile and a half last week. It would seem there times in life that we feel we do not measure up, the road seems too long and hard, the blisters too big and the coffee too far away.  Perhaps the trick is to decide you have had enough of the pity party and find the whisper.  Find the quiet voice that says,"Wait a minute.  None of that matters. Pick your head up, focus on the horizon, put one foot in front of the other and realize you got this," and crank that shit up as loud as it will go.  Only there will we  move forward, find our best selves, feel the love and know for sure, the best is yet to come.

There is Power in the Banana

Today, I find myself racing around attempting to put the house in order as I prepare to be out of town.  I double stocked the essentials, milk, bread and bananas.  Ah yes, bananas.  It would seem I can never have enough of these in my house as they always go quickly.  My mom had always told me that the mushy banana makes for some amazing banana bread.  I wouldn't actually have first hand knowledge of that as they never last that long.  There seems to be an art to buying bananas.  The minimal amount of green, not quite ripe, wrap the end in saran wrap to keep it fresh longer....  it's quite a process.  As it turns out, a kid school project I did, well the politically correct phrase is "helped with," taught me bananas are actually a berry, really?  What about that thing resembles a berry? They range in sweetness from the starchy plantain to regular dessert bananas and emit small amounts of radioactivity due to their potassium content.

In just a few days, my team and I will once again take on The Dopey Challenge.  It is running a 5k, a 10k, a half marathon and a full marathon in four days.  It is a fairly tall order.  For some of us it is the second time around, and for others, the first.  I have found my mind reviewing the races of last year, there was the 35 degree chilly start to the 5k, the beautiful sunrise over Epcot with a friend during the 10k, my first half running with my son, and ultimately the enduring of  that special area of hell last year during the full marathon known as mile 17.  This is the exact spot I entered ESPN Wide World of Sports for what seemed to be three of the longest miles in my running career.  Back and forth, weaving in and around all the various sports fields in 87 degree heat, but never seeming to get anywhere.  It felt never ending, and every time I would check my mileage on my watch it didn't seem to move.  It was like being trapped in a vortex of exhaustion with no end in site.

Then it happened.  Mile 19.  The single greatest thing that my team would talk about for the entire year.  The banana.  The magical banana.  At mile 19 there was a guy in a banana suit handing out bananas.  They were cold, the peel had been started and we suspect they were laced with something,  because it was the single greatest tasting banana of my entire life, any of our lives really.  I have never tasted anything like that before or since.  That banana, plus the encouragement of an amazing teammate got me exactly where I needed to be, the finish.  The glorious time of happiness and celebration with people who matter a whole lot to me. 

A couple of weeks ago, I boldly challenged the universe to hit me with it's best shot.  I was operating on the assumption that incredible growth comes out of adversity.  That adversity was really more of an opportunity.  I should have known that the universe is always up for a challenge, and in the last few days our family has lost a close member for no good reason and other extremely difficult crises have cropped up.  All these things showed me maybe testing the universe for a lesson in adversity was not the greatest idea I ever had, as the last few days have had me working my way through a seemingly endless exhausting maze wondering when it was going to end. 

As I took some time to catch my breath today, I realized that I really did have a collection of proverbial banana guys along the way.  They came in various shapes and sizes with different levels of sweetness like the flowers from a coworker, a ride home for the kids while I was at work, the silent taking over of the daily chores of my business for a bit by my partner, or the positive radiating simple texts from distant friends and family sent to light up my day.  Maybe I haven't quite seen the glory of coming out the other side of things just yet, but focusing on the banana men along the way has certainly made the struggle a little bit more tolerable. 

So, going forward, maybe the trick is to try to not get lost in the vortex of the adversity. Instead realize things may not always be as they seem, after all a banana is a berry.  That through the adversity  resuscitation of spirit can happen even in the absence of the grand gestures.  If we look hard enough we see it is the little tiny offerings of others that collectively have the power to push us forward right into the aftermath party where we can celebrate with our own banana tribe.  Because I am sure in THAT celebration it will be a whole lot easier to see that the best is yet to come.