Accept the Awesome

Assuming that you are passionate (to any degree) in regard to training, racing, triathlon, Ironman, or the human psyche, I have an excellent article to share with you today. It is Jordan Rapp's (pictured at left) victory speech at the Ironman Canada awards banquet Monday night in Penticton. It is about (pronounced aboot in Canadian), why we (triathletes) do what we do. The reasons behind it, motivation, transcendence and, of course, a spin on pain and suffering. It is brilliant and I wish I and a MP3 audio file to go with the text, but I think you will quickly get the idea.

Not wanting to nitpic, but Rappstar, gets one of his examples slightly off. I have no problem with the Latin, and for the sake of the forest and not one tree, Aristotle's observation that we are what we repeatedly do, is not entirely correct either. However, when it comes to The Four Noble Truths, there is a big difference between saying that life is TO suffer (his metaphor for racing hard, digging deep and pushing past pain) and the actual Truth (Number One) that Life IS suffering. It gets ever better when we examine Truth Two: Once accepted, it is no longer suffering.

HAVE WE HEARD THIS SOMEWHERE BEFORE?

Remember way back when (dark ages) when we called our spinning dojo the House of Pain? What is it now, cara mia? House of Mirth. Transcendence? But this is trivial. His speech was profound, inspirational and elegant. As was his race the day before. Using the Buddha as a reference during an Ironman speech connects some very important dots in my mind, not to mention, body and spirit. My feeling is, if you win an Ironman, you can say whatever the heck you want on the podium. I have seen grown men weep on the championship dais. Ironman Champions reduced to tears. It is emotional. Everybody knows what you did and how much it hurt. Have YOU ever been the beneficiary of a standing ovation? It is pretty special. Your peers giving it to you. But you have to suffer a lot to get there.

Congratulations to BOTH Jordan and Mary Beth Ellis on their stunning wins. Kudos to MB for her THIRD IM win in eight weeks. WOW. And a huge tip of the RCVman do-rag to Rappstar for his mention of TFNT in a tri setting. Awesome.

Also today is this groovy video of the first swim turn at IMC, aka Chaos Corner. From this POV you will see why it's called what it's called. Swim is suffering, accept it.