Why Do it...

I am often asked why I enjoy doing the Ironman. It comes in several versions:

“Why would you do that to yourself?”

“How could you possibly enjoy that?”

Or

“I don’t get it; I could never do that.”

And if I am not in a great mood, I might reply with something curt, such as “If you have to ask, you’d never understand.”

Or if I don’t feel like expanding, I might reply with an honest but short answer: “Because I can.”

But if I am in the right mood, I am more than willing to give the true reason why I love the Ironman: “To prove that anything is possible.” And, if asked, I’ll expand on this thought:

Think about swimming 2.4 miles. Think about cycling 112 miles. Think about running 26.2 miles. Then think about doing them all in a row. In under 17 hours. It does seem impossible when you think about it.

But it starts with a commitment. A commitment to wake up each day and be at your best. A commitment to constant improvement. A commitment to hard work.

If you start with this commitment, and stay committed for the long term, through the ups and downs, you can end up at the start line of an Ironman, looking ahead and thinking, “I can do this.”

And then you might suffer some more.

But, in the end, you wind up becoming an Ironman. You wind up taking something that seemed impossible and making it happen. You prove that, with the right commitment and hard work, anything is possible.

Anything is possible.

It’s powerful to own that statement.