I'm an endurance sport athlete. Some would say addict. Right about now, my wife is reading this, rolling her eyes, and saying, "No kidding." I can't say that's inaccurate. It's just something I have to do. When some people have that near-constant and inescapable desire to do something, they call it their passion. I call it the pull.
Why the pull? Have you ever been indoors on a gorgeous day and wish you could just go outside? When it's almost like the day itself is calling you to come out and soak it up? It's like that except it's not just the day calling me. There's something else that beckons me to be hammering down the road on my bike, legs burning and sweat dripping off my nose. It wants me to be running through the trees while filling my lungs with fresh air. Run. Ride. Whatever. Just move. It's as as close as I've come to a Siren song. When my attention should be on something else, it calls me. It pulls me toward it. I can't look away.
It's not just running or riding outside on a nice day. It's the pull to be indoors when the weather is bad, racking up base miles on the bike trainer or treadmill. It's doing core work and strength training at the gym or laps in the pool. Sometimes it's the pull of going outside in the pouring rain to do hill repeats just because it feels good to be hard core and thumb my nose at Mother Nature. Other times, I feel the pull when I'm driving in the car and encounter a monster hill and wonder what it would be like to ride or run up that bad mofo. When I travel, I feel it when I look up the terrain and weather at the new location. Once there, I have difficulty focusing until I can go run and explore what's around me and get the added benefit of pushing my body a bit.
The pull is especially strong from races and events. There's a challenge to it, almost like a puzzle. The event calls and says, "Come see if you can figure out how to do this." Sometimes the attraction is the difficulty. Sometimes it's the festive atmosphere. Sometimes it's because the event has a tough qualifying standard. I've been fortunate to complete some of those events, such as the Boston Marathon, but the big one has eluded me and that makes its pull stronger every year. What's the big one? It's Kona, baby. The Ironman World Championship. The pull is so strong for that event, it's practically a black hole for me.
I get pulled towards all aspects of endurance sports. Sometimes that takes the form of reading about what others do and buying more magazines on the subject than I possibly have time to read. It's setting the DVR to record the coverage of any marathon on television. It's tracking friends live online during their events and anxiously awaiting their next split to be posted. It's feeling empty in late July when daily coverage of the Tour de France ends. It's spending all day glued to my computer watching live online coverage of the professionals trying to conquer Kona. A couple of months later, it's getting all teary-eyed watching the network broadcast of the age grouper stories and witnessing the raw emotion as they complete a chapter of an amazing endurance journey. I ache to join them.
I just can't get enough of doing endurance events, training for them, or watching and learning from others so I can join them. Some would say all of this is a push more than a pull, a desire that comes from within, but I feel it comes from the outside. It's almost an invitation with a reminder. It tells me, your body was made to do this. Use it or lose it. There are a lot of people in the world who can't do what you do. Get out here. To paraphrase a famous saying by Steve Prefontaine, don't sacrifice the gift. I feel what comes from the inside is my willingness to accept the invitation.
Now that you understand that about me, you can understand the name of the blog. The following is an excerpt from the NBC broadcast of the 1995 Hawaii Ironman. The words below were spoken by narrator Al Trautwig to describe the images seen beginning at 1:04:50 into the following video,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=698DB06251c
"It is five minutes after midnight.
The bell has tolled. The deadline past.
Yet the Ironman credo still holds - finish. Just finish.
It lives in 72-year-old Bill Bell, who is cramped and dizzy, yet drawn to it.
Drawn to it.
It pulls each of them to this tiny island year after year.
To witness the Ironman.
To be an Ironman.
To finally … touch the line."
