Enduring to the End

"Life is a mountain, not a beach" read my prophetic fortune cookie from last night's tasty Chinese food dinner. Upon arrival to Lake Mead for my first Olympic distance triathlon, the sun peeped over the mountains making them appear more drastic in contrast to the stillness of the lake. Open water swimming for 1500 meters is not that much of a mental game. You basically have two options: swim or drown. Quitting is never an option for an open water swim. Biking 24.8 miles up the side of a mountain IS a mental game because there are many other options. The option to turn around and speed quickly down the mountain seems grander every time you are forced to switch into a lower gear. But why go backwards when you worked so hard to get to this point? The option to just stop and rest for a little bit and avoid forward progression is equally enticing. However, if you stop your bike while going up the side of a mountain, you lose momentum. Stopping isn't a good idea because you'll just have to start back up again. Enduring to the end is like biking straight up the side of a mountain. Eventually, if we realize that our goal is to get to the top of the mountain then we cannot allow ourselves to halt forward progression. And we certainly can't let ourselves take the easy path back down the mountain. For the record, I don't put much stock into fortune cookie messages. This one just struck me as very profound because right now at this point my life is a mountain and not a beach.

Rachel Roark