WEEK 10, DAY 6: 2k swim, 5mi ride, last night a DJ saved my life

Most of you don't know me well enough to remember the days when I first started training, or when I first started getting sick. If you want to catch up, you can go here to one of my old MySpace blogs about one of my bad weeks: http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=18976920&blogID=234868254&Mytoken=BEC2CB3E-C165-4B9A-A920AC17F6C50F9E59506680

Otherwise, take my word for it when I tell you I was once 30 pounds lighter, and months of being sick and on salt pills and medicine made me bloated and lethargic and irrational about my diet, and I got to the weight I am now. There was once a time when I was so sick, I almost puked during a race. There was once a time when I couldn't ride 5 miles to the lake, swim300m, and ride back without getting sick. There was once a time when I could only manage 1 workout a week. And there was even a time when I couldn't work out at all.

Those days are gone.

As I was pushing through the lake this morning, I couldn't help but smile every time my face broke the water (breathe from the hips, breathe from the hips). There I was, someone who couldn't even work out about 4 months ago, swimming 2km in the beautiful Florida sunshine in this lovely lake on a goregous morning. I realized my arms are tan, I'm not dizzy, I'm living completely in the moment, and I'm loving it. And I felt alive.

You can call this mumbo-jumbo or hooey, but I believe I got sick because I was full of negative energy and empty of gratitude. Though I never knew it and didn't act like it, I took everything I had for granted and I was mad at the world for robbing me of my sunny outlook and causing me to make bad choices. I can even tell you the run that started it: I was training for the Celebration of Running 5k, and I was pounding the pavement pre-dawn. And I heard my own voice in my head, clear as day, say, this is your choice. This is under your control. You choose to go to school full time while you work, and you choose to run. You are in control. And that voice wasn't just talking about the run, or school. It was telling me to look deeper at the choices I - no one else - had made in my life.

You might think that's when I started to get well, but I got even sicker for a while. When I started racing, I started pushing all those toxins out of my body, and getting them out was more painful and powerful than just realizing they were there.

I come to the starting line for the same reasons I come to the yoga mat: yes, to get stronger and faster and leaner (although I'm only gaining weight, but I digress), but also to get present. To live in the day and the moment and the second. To use my body as a show of gratitude that it was given to me to use. When all is said and done, when I get through this first year of racing, maybe even when I start training for my first HIM, I know I will look back and say with all honesty that triathlon saved my life. (Ok, so maybe it wasn't a DJ.)