Thankful

I did a triathlon this morning. It’s been a minute since I did one, as the kids would say. I am not sure what year it was last time, but I do remember being in the water ready to start the swim and realizing my car keys were in my back pocket. Oops.

I signed up for this race because it was close to home and I could ride my bike there. I wanted to feel the positive energy of race morning, and I found it. I was feeling a quiet sense of gratitude for two things: a colleague who lifted me up and got me started on this path, and a body healthy enough to do this.

Twenty three years go, I was a “grad school widow” when Ron was working full-time and doing his MBA. I read about the Wendy’s Triathlon and I wondered if I could do that. I liked riding my bike and swimming and running but I wasn’t fast. On the inside, I was still an awkward chubby kid. Not only did my colleague Barb Jerman assure me that I could do it, she got on the phone and called the race director who sent me a beginner training plan in the mail.

I trained for it and race day arrived. It was June 1998. Race morning was like this morning – it had rained and the clouds were still looming. It wasn’t the greatest race, but I did it and I was hooked! I signed up for another one in July. Ron and I spent many weekends racing before we had kids. I still trained for races after I was done nursing babies, usually only one or two a year. In recent years, it fell off my radar screen. I have not missed being on a training schedule. As I get older, I am happier just doing my own thing, whatever makes me happy at the time. But I did miss the energy and camaraderie of a race.

The other thing I was grateful for this morning, especially the last mile of that run when I was dragging, was how fortunate I am to be able do this. In 2009, I did a running race the day after I attended a funeral for an infant, the daughter of family friends who died of Spinal Muscular Atrophy. I stood in the start corral with a heavy heart and cried because how lucky am I to have a healthy body with everything working? My primary care practitioner Stephanie summarized it well when she took my health history the first time I saw her. When she learned that Adam had Type 1 diabetes, she said “it sucks and it’s not fair.”

So those were the two things I was thankful for this morning. Barb, lifting me up 23 years ago and starting me on a path that led me to the race this morning. This healthy body, lower and slower than it used to be, but taking me everywhere I want to go.

#thankful