Yeah, the medal was cute, but it's not what made me a winner.
This piece is dedicated to the late Fatman Scoop, whose voice on “Drop” by Timbaland was the singular driver of so many of my training sessions.
On the 25th of August, I became a triathlete.
At the shriek of the whistle over the cheers of hundreds of spectators, I hustled down a set of steel stairs into Lake Michigan to begin my half-mile swim north. After 41 minutes, with several breaks punctuated by the loving support of my friends on the seawall, I scaled an identical set of steel stairs to emerge from the northern end of Monroe Harbor. I jogged/walked three quarters of a mile to the transition area where my bike awaited me. 15 minutes after the end of my swim, I began my ascent onto the Randolph Street onramp to Lake Shore Drive for a gorgeous but difficult 15 mile ride. 69 minutes later, I returned to the cheers of my friends and racked my bike for the final portion of my race: a 3.1 mile run. It took me 58 minutes, largely because it was more a walk than it was a run, and I did not stop until I completed the race.
I crossed the finish line at 12:15pm after swimming, biking, and running for a total of 3 hours and 13 minutes.
And while the cheers and the celebrations and the support I was showered in during and after the race meant the world to me and kept me encouraged from beginning to end, that is not what made it worth it. I did not come to Chicago to get a shiny finisher's medal or to gather my favorite people in my favorite city.
I came to Chicago to defeat the critic within me that said I'm not ready, I'm not able, I'm not enough. I came to Chicago for me. I came to Chicago to win the victory in my heart and mind, not just the one at the corner of Balbo and Columbus. And that victory will never come with a medal, but it'll be worth it. Every time.
Training for this triathlon is, without a doubt, one of the most difficult things I've ever done. It consumed five months of my year, with me training 6 days a week, 1-2x a day for the first three of those months. I got stronger, as you can imagine, physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. And that strength allowed me to, when it mattered most, endure. For resistance produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope. (Romans 5:3-4) And that is my victory, friends: hope.
But that victory was hard fought, let me assure you. The pictures were cute, the learnings were not. They were hard and messy and honestly I still haven't processed them all the way. But what I know for a fact I've left with? Discipline, balance, and self-trust.
My relationship with discipline during the early days of my triathlon training can be adequately summed up in this training journal entry:
Day 48 of Training
Any rest I got during the holiday weekend surely hasn’t prepared me for this week. Between heightened demands at work and in my social life, I feel like I’m spread quite thin. I didn’t do any training today and that guilt and frustration are picking at me, mostly because I didn’t enjoy the evening I had enough to make it worth skipping out on my swim. On top of the guilt and frustration I feel for not declining the invitation initially, I left the function feeling self-conscious, ignored, and invisible which is such a triggering way for me to feel and not at all what I need right now mentally. I hate when I feel like I waste my time. But I suppose that’s a risk we all take. I will take my L today and try again tomorrow. It just all feels quite daunting at the moment. I know it’s a give and take, but I feel like my time is so precious these days that I have to be more stingy, more conservative with the risks and sacrifices I make.
I very literally don’t have time for this. I can’t afford to do this again. I just want to train, man. I’m deeply disinterested in experiencing the rest of the feelings that today brought up. Miles Davis recorded Giant Steps (1960) for days like this. I just need a break.
All I hear out of my mouth is excuses and I’m getting tired of that, man.
My mindset was brittle and anxious, hyper-focused on what I lost from not following through on my plan and the regret I felt from not being as locked in as I felt I should have been.
What I learned in my training period is that discipline rooted in fear can lead to obsession and fixation. Turning discipline into a fearful desire for control was beginning to breed a negative relationship between myself, my body, and my time. I was stressing over one slice of pizza as if it was going to tank my 5k time or ruin my race performance three months out. It took me a while, but I eventually learned to embrace moderation and not use discipline as a venue for self-harm.
I didn't want to lose myself in my goals. I didn't want to lose myself in the process of getting stronger. I wanted to be able to enjoy watching myself grow and learn. I wanted to bear witness to what I'm capable of when I consistently choose discipline over a prolonged amount of time. I wanted to have fun, enjoy life, and tighten up all at the same time. And when I started training, I was spending so much time trying to figure out what I was doing that I didn't focus on how I could be disciplined in a way that strengthened me, not tore me down.
So I started to give myself a lot more grace. I started talking to myself with a much gentler voice. I stopped panicking over every missed swim or run and focused on proactively and holistically progressing forward toward my goal. I didn't give up or let loose completely, but I decided to pursue discipline out of love and compassion, not fear and force. That required balance, though. A lot of it.
The hardest part about training for my triathlon was balancing the choices I made about how I spent my time. At the beginning, finding that balance was gruelingly manual, with my brain having to churn at full speed every time I sat down to integrate the following week's training into my work and social schedule. Every week, without fail, something had to be sacrificed, something had to be moved, and because I was still understanding what was a good balance for me, getting it right every week was harder than staying in zone 2 on a run! But eventually, day by day, session by session, I started making more balanced decisions faster, more easily.
I stopped degrading non-training related activities as "distractions" and decided to treat them as perfectly meaningful and valuable options for how I could spend my time, even if they didn't directly relate to this particular goal. I started thinking about my time differently and chose to prioritize in a way that felt neutral, focused, and balanced. For example, I quit German class because, while a great exercise of neuroplasticity, it wasn't getting me any further to my goal of bilingualism and it was taking me away from my goal of becoming a stronger swimmer by being on the same night as swim practice. Or in contrast, I skipped a run to allow an evening with a friend run longer than originally planned because I was enjoying the communion so much!
Training taught me that balance is a muscle that must get stronger as the demands on your resources increase. Strengthening that muscle in training also helped me better approach balance in my finances, which I was in an eerily similar season of focus and discipline to achieve a specific goal.
Transparently, I cried so much during the week of the triathlon, before and after. That is when the critic got the loudest in my ears, after every run and bike, specifically. But it was also the very same time that I had to make a choice. I had to decide to believe that I was enough, that I did train enough, that I deserved to be out there with everyone else, that God was indeed with me, that just because I didn't look like what people think athlete should look like didn't mean I wasn't one.
I had to trust my own word, build its value in my ears. I said I would do a triathlon and now was the time to see if I could be trusted. I had been calling myself a triathlete all summer. Now was the time to see if I was who I said I was. For so long I felt like I had to prove myself to the people around me, but it wasn't until the morning of the race that I finally stopped and looked into the eyes of the only person I needed to see this victory: me. I realized that it didn't matter if other people thought I was strong or fit or beautiful or fast or whatever. None of that ever mattered. What mattered from the beginning was can I trust myself to do what I say I will do. This race meant so much to me because it was a chance for me to show myself that I can exist outside the expectations of the people around me. It was an opportunity to show myself that I don't have to listen to that critic and its lies about who I am and what I'm capable of.
Self-trust is a critical element of self-confidence and self-esteem. Seeing yourself as you are requires seeing yourself through an untainted lens, striving to be the reliable narrator so that no matter what happens or what anyone says, you know who you are and what you're capable of.
Mentally? The shirts I made my friends and family read "Best I've Ever Been" on the front, communicating an alternative to trying to be the greatest of all time. I wanted to release the pressure for me to be the best person in a particular category. I just wanted to do my best and be my best in that moment. The shirt is honest. I really am the best I've ever been in nearly every way. I'm so up right now and I worked hard and prayed harder to make it to that finish line. I'm really grateful to God that I'm here at all. It's an honor to grow. It's a blessing to be able to do these kind of things. I'm really, really grateful to be here at all and it means a lot to have the people I care about bear witness to God's work in me.
Sports wise? I'm starting tennis lessons next month and am excited to start hitting with friends new and old as I begin my tennis journey. I'm also going to get back into strength training because I know I can be a better triathlete, a better athlete, and just better overall if I'm physically stronger than I am now (try learning how to swim with weak triceps. It ain't fun, I assure you.)
I'm not abandoning triathlons altogether, but will likely stick to 1-2 races per year with shorter distances and one sprint as a relay.
Growth ain't linear, God is with me, and as for right now, today, I am victorious and can't no critic, no hater, no nothing take that away from me.
I'm up. All that paid off.
Thalia, 25, is a triathlete but will soon transition into a hybrid athlete, dabbling in all sorts of activities to keep her mind sharp and body strong.
