The company I keep

"I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away."

Talking to yourself. It's a good thing. Some of the most important conversations we have during the course of our lives are with ourselves. And most valuable among those are during times of trouble.

How do you speak to yourself?

What do you say?

I kept myself company on Sunday. And more than anything else, this is what I said:

"Yes."

I felt like quitting. I was sure I was going to. I was on my bike and everything hurt. My ass. My shoulders. My neck. Every time I hit a bump the pain would shoot through me like an electric current. I had been able to maintain my heart rate at threshold during my first lap, but I couldn't do it after just the tiniest toe dip into my second. "What is wrong with me?" I thought. "If it hurts this bad on the bike, and biking is my strength, how can I run?"

"You can do this," I said. "Tuck your chin to your chest and breathe. You can't maintain 155, so maintain 140. It's OK. Save your heart for the run. Criticism will get you nowhere. Believing will get you to the finish. So believe."

I pulled into T2 and handed Pink to a volunteer. "You ok?" he asked.

"Yes."

I hugged my transition bag to my chest like a football and I ran to the change tent. I slid into my running shoes and pushed my visor onto my head and drank three cups of water. I shoved potatoes and Perpetuem into my pockets, thanked my volunteer, took a deep breath, and stepped out into the light.

"Are you ready now?" I asked.

"Yes."

So I ran.

And it hurt. The first three miles were excruciating. My ankle screamed every time my foot struck the pavement. "I don't know I don't know I don't know," I thought. "Can I?"

"Yes."

Sha told me once that pain, specifically the pain of Ironman, is all in your head. My doctor had told me before I left: "You're cleared to run, but it's going to hurt." I thought about that. What he had said gave me permission to feel pain without fear. Hurting became benign. Empty. And then it ceased being physical. Hurting, at that point became all mental. So yes, it hurt, but I could control how that pain affected me by controlling my perception of it. It could not overwhelm me because I wouldn’t let it.

And then I remembered what my friend Mandy wrote to me in her goodbye/good luck note:

"Relax your hands. Like Denny."

Denny is the character in the book I'm reading: The Art of Racing in the Rain. He is a race car driver. A good one. From him, I learned that to do well, a racer must relax his hands.

I did.

And then everything came together.

I never doubted again. I wasn't winning. I wasn't fast. I was just me, out there, doing my best to keep going. My pain would speak to me and I would comfort it. My mind would wander and I would call it back. My body would get mad and I would settle it down. And I just kept running.

I finished Ironman Arizona in 12 hours, 41 minutes and 25 seconds. Exactly 41 minutes and 25 seconds after I had aimed to finish before injury and sickness forced me to reconsider. But I can honestly say that I have never been happier with a race time. On Sunday, I proved to myself not only that I am strong and that I can endure with the best of them, but that believing in myself and thinking positive are very, very powerful tools; that by simply saying Yes I can welcome possibility; and that, more than anything else, I am a really, really good best friend.

"I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments."

- The Invitation, Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Photo: Matt Hart