The Greatest Danger

I was not happy with this blog for awhile.  In fact, I have four more started that stemmed from my ramblings in the below and yet it is still so long (really, really long).  It's a good read though :)   

About a year ago Stacy Martinez posted a quote on Facebook.  Now, I do admit I am a sucker for quotes and there are some very inspirational quotes out there.  Every once in awhile I’ll post one, but I’m not a quote addict and as motivating as they are, in this great age of Social Media, they can be overdone.  There is also the great advice of Abraham Lincoln.

Stacy posted a quote by Michelangelo, “The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”  WHO DOESN’T LOVE THIS????????  It is so true! 

Something clicked for me when I read that quote.  I fell in love with it.  I read it over and over.  I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE IT!!!  I subsequently found a custom jeweler and had a leather bracelet made for myself and for Stacy.  I wear that bracelet every day and she wears it every time she races.  Reading that quote was a breaking point for me and every morning when I get up and put on my bracelet, I read it.  That’s a lie, I have it memorized now, so I just say it.

We are programmed at a young age that failure is bad and that not achieving the goal we set out to concur is failure.  Another great quote (caveat, do not really take this seriously), “If you ain't first, you’re last” (Reese Bobby).  What do we spend most of our lives doing?  Trying not to fail.  Many times we don’t focus on trying to succeed because of the fear of failure.  Our focus ends up being NOT failing. 

We are taught to set goals for ourselves that are measurable and attainable.  But how do we know what is attainable, what is truly within our reach?  How do we know how far we can push ourselves and how much our body truly has to give?  We set those goals off of what we know our body can achieve from past occurrences.  Then we add just a bit and that becomes our new goal.

 If you are reading this and you’re an endurance athlete, you know what I’m talking about.  If you’ve ever been a spectator at an endurance event, you know what I’m talking about.  You’ve been there.  You’ve experienced it or you’ve witnessed it and afterwards you’ve asked “how did I/they do that?”   

I got my start in this new universe of endurance athletics because a college roommate of mine, Susie Sanderson, talked me into training for a marathon.  We were chatting on the phone (she was living in Virginia and I in Texas) and she said “let’s train for a marathon and then meet up somewhere to run it!”  My response, “Sure!  That sounds so great!!!”  After I hung up the phone I realized I hated running.  The longest run I had ever done was during high school as punishment for our soccer team...I don’t remember how far we ran (or even what we had done wrong), but it.was.soooooo.far.  Thank you Paul Rogers and Jason Hill for that.  So I started my training.  How in the heck was I going to run 26.2 miles???  I had never done anything close to this.  After a bit I worked my way up to 5 miles and at that point I figured there was no turning back…Don’t ask me why this mental break through came at the 5 mile mark.

A few years ago, I set a huge goal for myself.  I wanted to qualify for the Boston Marathon.  This meant I had to knock 24 minutes off of my Personal Record (PR).  My best marathon time had been 4:04.  I had to run a 3:40 (or under) to qualify for Boston.  I was told, by someone, whose opinion in running I highly valued, that I couldn’t do it (not in those exact words, but there was no confidence any time I spoke with them).  I went ahead and set that goal for myself anyway.  Not only did I set that goal, I verbally told people about it.  I was scared to death.  What if I didn’t do it?  What if I reached high and missed?  It would be so much easier to just have a goal of running under 4 hours.  That only meant taking 5 minutes off my time.  That was much more doable, right? 

Rock 'n Roll San Antonio (2009)

I ran my heart out that marathon and successfully completed it thanks to Carlo Capua who ran me in the last 4 or so miles, and kept running with me, even when I stopped acknowledging he was there, even after he said he was going to let me run the rest of the way in on my own.  I think he told me this four times, but stayed by my side because he knew I just needed someone there. 
I missed Boston.  I missed Boston by 4 seconds.  Yes, you read that right, 4 seconds.  If you just teared up there it is ok, I tear up every time I think about it.  They say golf is a game of inches and I say Boston is a game of seconds.  4 seconds to me.  Everyone I trained with knew what my goal was and when they heard I didn’t make it they were upset for me.  They told me to petition my time, after all I was so close.  I appreciate their support and I feel the same way for each of them when they don’t quite achieve their goals.  But I wanted to earn Boston and I flat out didn’t.  I was close, but a lot of people are close.  Boston is elusive.  Boston, in my mind, must be earned, fair and square.  You know what I did that race though?  That no one, but me, focused on?  I PRd by a ton.  I knocked 23 minutes off of my previous best time.  23 minutes!!!   That is huge.  That day, in San Antonio, I failed at achieving my goal.  I aimed high and I missed it.  But, I will go back and will take my 4 seconds back.  And I will earn Boston.  


Fast forward two years and a new friend posted a quote by Michelangelo.  A quote that allowed me to believe that I could qualify for the 70.3 World Championships, even when I was told by someone close to me that I didn’t deserve it.  I am sensing some sort of pattern here.  This person later told me they thought this would motivate me, but two weeks before my qualifying race nothing more training-wise could be done.  If I didn’t deserve it at that point, nothing I could do in two weeks would allow me to deserve it.  I am, apparently, not good at listening to people sometimes.  This was one of those times.  Their comment frustrated me, it royally pissed me off.  I had been working damn hard to be where I was.  So I let it go.

Repeating Michelangelo’s quote during Branson 70.3 is what made me jump off my bike and run it in the last mile to T2.  I had a flat, it wasn’t just a random decision I made and thanks to Chris Wright there is a pretty hilarious video of me pitter-pattering my way into T2 in wet socks, which are forever stained.  I have failed at achieving my goals before (oops, did I just admit that…) and I’m still around.  If I didn’t push myself past those measurable and attainable goals, those goals that are a bit beyond what we HAVE done, but just far enough past that to be considered a new goal, a new accomplishment, how would I know what I could really do? 

My confidence collapsed when I flatted, my heart dropped.  I literally had a sinking feeling, Worlds was gone.  But I couldn’t let a little deflated air get in the way of a dream.  Two seconds later my shoes were off and I was flying at the speed of light (might be a slight over exaggeration here, but there was A LOT of adrenaline at this point) with my bike towards T2.  I was choking back tears, I still thought my chance at qualifying was gone.  The kindness of my training buddy Jack Ogle who turned around (yes, turned around and came back) on the bike course, at one of the toughest bike-legs of a triathlon I have ever done, lifted my spirits, got me to T2 and off on the run. 

The suspense at roll down was nearly as hard on my heart as the 70.3 miles I had completed earlier in the day had been on my body.  Heather stayed with me as they begin calling names in my age group.  There were two slots, 1^st and 2^nd place had not accepted them.  I placed 7^th.  That meant at least three of the next four people had to decline.  When they called my name I jumped up, like I little kid (reference my previous blog about Christmas…it was somewhat similar to this).  I can’t remember the last time I was excited like that.  I had qualified for WORLDS!

All this rambling really just leads to one point.  Go for it.  You may (ok “may” is being nice), the odds are in your favor that if you go for it, you will fail on your way to succeeding.  But is it truly failure?  Or have you just not quite reached success yet?  The “failures” will hurt, they may hurt bad.  But they will build you up and when you achieve your goal, and you will with hard work, the emotions will far trump anything you have ever felt when you didn’t quite make it. 

 I have a blue sticky note stuck to my bathroom mirror. It has four things written on it in pink Sharpee (the color of the sticky note and marker are totally irrelevant): 

Earn Worlds ~ Nationals ~ Boston ~ Kona

Remember that the greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.  Aim high kids.  The rewards are far beyond anything that can be described in words.  

Swim Start Area at Kona...someday :)