Ironman Reflection.

Someone I know has been reflecting.  Reflecting on her/his sport.  Ironman. And reflecting, why did she/he want to do Ironman.

It's really quite simple.  

People don’t do sport because it’s fun.  Ask any athlete, most of them hate it much of the time, but they couldn’t imagine their life without it.

It’s part of them, the love-hate relationship.  

It’s part of their reason of what they live for.  

The training days;  the good ones, the bad ones, the social get together, the coffees, the warm pies on the rides, the driving to events, the camaraderie with training mates and with complete strangers who are doing the same thing as you.

The equipment, the swim suit, the bike, the shoes, the lake, the sea, the endless washing, the bags of gear, the carbo biscuits, the sticky drinks, the chaffing, the coach.

The training, the aches, the pains, the road rash, the wetsuit chaff, the black toe nails – ah… the badges of honour, almost.

They live for the way they feel when they have a good training day, a good ride, a good swim.   Those days make up for the bad training day, the bad ride, the bad swim.

They live for the day they finally cross the finish line and then think, “I wonder if I had not skipped those nights running in the dark in winter whether I could have shaved that 2 minutes off my damned good finish time!”

They live for how their training mates have become almost a family, a unique and odd sort of family, but family.

And all those countless songs they sing in their head when out training for all those hours.  All those memories that flit across the brain when pedaling those miles.  All those reminder notes that pop into their head when they are on the last hour of their 3 hour runs.

And then of course, they live for enjoying how their body and mind feels.  How they have developed, changed and turned their own special body into one healthy, human machine that they have quietly become quite proud of. 

And the brain, the brain they note has become sharper, lighter and more functional.  It’s that body and that brain which created a whole refreshed, personal soul.  That body, that mind, that spirit.

The spirit that turned the mind, that turned the body.

And the self-respect.  That self-respect – no more nor less than what they earned.

That’s why they do it.