I'm an ironman, who the hell are you?

Last night I ditched the soggy homos to go to swim practice with my gym's triathlon team for the first time. I can't usually make it to the practices, but I needed to talk to the team's manager about getting me federated (is that a word in English?), so I skipped my usual Friday night practice with the water fairies to splash around with the triathletes for a while. I'd never seen so many perfect bodies gathered together in one place. They were all lean muscle and definition in their speedos. Any one of them could have been used as an example in a human anatomy class to teach the skeletal muscles. Their muscles were so cut with none of that loose skin look that runners get, not too much of that swimmer's thickness, and no legs being forced apart by overdevelped quad muscles. There's something intimidating when you join a new group and the only thing they talk to you about after asking your name is explaining the workout. And then they put on their caps: nearly all of them from races. When one guy put on his cap with IRONMAN stamped on the side and it slapped into place across his forehead it was like a slap in the face to me. I'm used to not being the fastest one in the group, but at least I'm always the one who spends the most time working out. There's nothing I hate more than feeling weak, or letting people think I'm weak.

I was the slowest one, but I was able to keep up with the workout. I was feeling tired, though. My lungs were sore from sucking too much cold air after taking a wrong turn on the bike this morning and taking the steep way up a hill. I wanted to make it an excuse, but then I realized that these guys probably wouldn't have been impressed with my ride since it's one of the standard routes around here. I wanted to say my arms were tired from braking the whole way down the hill, but I realized that this would probably show that I was weak at descending ("only pussies and novices are weak descenders," the voice in my head said). I wanted to say that my back and shoulders were tired because this was my third day swimming in a row, but that wouldn't have cut the mustard either. Even though I really didn't feel it anymore, I wanted to use my marathon last week as an excuse for my weakness, but I realized that I might not even be the only one who had done that either. I didn't have a single excuse to hide behind, and had to admit the worst: I was weaker than these men. So in my last 400 (that was supposed to be a 500) I began to think, why do I need to make excuses? Because I'm weaker than these guys? No, I have to accept the fact that I'm weaker and train to be up to par. If I don't like being left behind, I have to stop making up reasons for why that is, and just train harder and smarter than everyone else to be able to keep up next time. Especially in endurance sports, the one who wins is the one who trains harder and trains better than anyone else out there. I have no god-given talent, but if I can stop making excuses I'm driven, dammit. So from here on out, I'm going to take responsibility for my weaknesses. No more excuses.

It's kind of liberating, don't you think? If I stop thinking about my weaknesses as unfortunate, unavoidable truths, then I can actually improve them rather than avoiding them like an old injury. Wow, that's a new idea.