I'LL BE DAMNED...

Want to know something depressing? I signed up for The Spudman (I like to call it the "sput-men") triathlon twice, and didn't show up... twice.
Depressing. I know.

Skip ahead to November 2012 and I had a free entry offered to me for the Ogden 1/2 marathon. "Sure!" I thought. I can totes train all winter for this bad boy and I'll be ready by May of 2013 for shizzle. So I bought me a treadmill on black friday. I was too chicken to use it for about a month. Then I finally did, and I was committed, every morning I hopped on that beast and watched an episode of the biggest loser while I calculated how many more weeks I had to race day. Then my kids got sick, over and over and over -  for months. From January 2013 to April 2013, someone in this house was constantly sick. So I chose sleep over treadmilling each morning.

Skip ahead again to May 2013... two saturdays ago. It was race day. The universe had given me EVERY SINGLE opportunity to be a "NO SHOW" for my third race in a row. But I'll be damned if the emotional scare of a marathon bomber across the country a month prior, or a puking baby the night prior, or a downpour of rain the day of... was going to make me prove a failure - for the third time. So nothing was going to stop me from showing up at the start line, and crossing the finish line. I would use any means to accomplish the 13.1 mile difference between the two.  And it sucked every drop of mental energy I had for three and a half hours, but I did it.

It's not a finish time to be proud of. It's rather humiliating actually. My results were pathetic.  I think only a handful of the 3,500 racers finished after me. Like I could count on my fingers and toes the people that finished behind me. I've failed a lot in my life. At almost everything I've ever tried actually. And some day, I hope, after all these decades of failing and trying again... I hope to actually win.  But with failure comes choice - and two weeks ago, at least I chose to show up.

And here's what happened......
(to be continued)