The Guiltiest Hour And A Half Of My Life

The guiltiest hour and a half of my life happened last Saturday. In fact, every year it has become tradition to watch 90 minutes of television and feel horrible about myself. It beats the feeling of guilt I had when I stole a candy bar from the mini-store when I was a kid, or when I stepped on my dog’s tail, or the guilt I felt after watching one of the Twilight movies and thinking to myself this wasn’t one of the worst movie I had ever seen. It even beats the guilt I felt when I told my daughter her birthday was cancelled because she didn’t clean her room even though my own room is a complete mess. This past Saturday, NBC aired the Ironman World Championship that takes place every year in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. From the moment it begins, feelings of inadequacy and disgrace flow throw me. Each sip of coffee becomes a sip of shame, ever bite of Saturday morning bacon becomes a bite of remorse. Maybe, it’s because as I watched these athletes gruel out a 2.4-mile swim followed by a 112-mile bike ride and concluding with a 26.2-mile marathon, I hadn’t even gotten out of my pajamas yet. Maybe, it’s because even though I have run a full marathon myself, I realized I didn’t do it after a 2.4-mile swim and a 112-mile bike ride so it really doesn’t mean anything. For these athletes, running a marathon is what you do before lunch on a Sunday. Yes, this hour and half of watching the Ironman World Championship on NBC is a great way to shame yourself into reality.

If you’ve never seen the Ironman World Championship before, I highly recommend it. While I’m not kidding one bit about the above paragraph, the Ironman World Championship is an inspirational hour and a half of television that chronicles not just the race itself but the personal stories of some of its participants, individuals like you and I who are taking part in one the most difficult races any athlete can endure. The program wisely shifts between the athletes that are pursuing their place on the podium and the athletes that will finish well past the sun going down. One of the more emotional stories from this year’s race was about a woman, Lisa Hallett, who lost her husband in the Iraq war. Through brief clips and interviews with Lisa, we see glimpses of her dedication to him and other fallen soldiers by training for and participating in the Ironman. Her journey was as much spiritual as it was physical and the same could probably be said for any of the athletes of the Ironman. Lisa Hallett wasn’t racing for the podium, she was racing for something greater, reaching for the remarkable, and as her kids watched her cross the finish line she did just that, achieving something extraordinary that very few will ever experience. Hers is just one of many stories of individuals who got up one morning and decided to not only do something different, but to be something different. Just think of what it takes to swim that many miles, ride that long of a distance and then top it off by running a marathon. For many, this event is the culmination of years of training, the end of a long journey that is a roller coaster of emotions, hardships, sweat and tears. If you cannot be moved in the slightest by watching these very human individuals do something very super human, then I have no idea what makes you tick.  To keep things even more inspirational and hopeful, we see that some of the Ironman participants are well past collecting Social Security checks, a little reminder that it’s never too late to fulfill any goal and that the most rewarding experiences in life are not just meant for the young of age.

As I sat watching the Ironman Championship from my couch, sipping shameful coffee and eating gluttonous bacon, guilt wrapped around me like a cold blanket, I found myself once again motivated by the end of the program. It was, after all, from watching this exact program that I finally decided to run a marathon a few years ago, a goal I maintained and kept the following year. To see the Ironman World Championship is to see human beings at their finest even when they are barely able to walk, some who can’t walk at all. To see them cross the finish line is like witnessing a rebirth. Tired, sore, physically and emotionally drained, they cross the finish line with their arms raised in the air. Some will yell out a scream of victory, others will cry tears of joy, but every one of them will be reborn with a new title to their name; Ironman. It’s something that can never be taken away, something they will be able carry with them for the rest of their lives. How many things can we say that about anything life? And yet, at the end of the day, most of them were just like you and I at one point, sipping coffee and eating bacon in their pajamas on a Saturday morning. And then one day, they decided to be something different.