Enduring the Deep End

Alright friends. I have started a new quest.

I am training for a triathlon.

And not just any triathlon. An Ironman. I have told a few people this and here are some of the questions and comments I get.

• I didn't know you did triathlons.

• A half ironman?

• You are crazy!

• Do you even know how to swim?

Let me first respond to these.

• I have never done a triathlon.

• No, I am training for a full Ironman. (which is immediately followed by, "Why start with a full?" Um, have you met me?)

• Probably, I am crazy. But the real answer is that I know how to endure.

• About swimming ... My mom was actually the one who asked that question. Yes, mom, I do. And you are the one who taught me how to kick, move across the pool and not drown. I mean, it isn't pretty, but I can swim across the pool at least.

There is so much to unpack here and I am a little worried that this post is going to get hella long. But here we go.

In case you don't know the Ironman distance it is a total of 140.6 miles in one day:

• 2.4 miles of swimming

• 112 miles of biking

• and a full marathon (26.2 miles) to finish.

Yep. It is a little (or a lot) crazy.

After I completed the ultra marathon in 2023, I started thinking about what I might want to do next. What was going to be my next challenge? This is a pretty constant theme in my life. And I started thinking about doing a triathlon. Here's the thing though, I really am not a strong swimmer. I never did learn how to swim with my face in the water and whenever I have tried, I get panicked and then swim doing some very bad form of freestyle with my head lifted out of the water like a dog. It's slightly more advanced than the doggy paddle, but probably way less efficient actually.

I thought that taking on a baby triathlon would be something I would do eventually when I had time to take swim lessons.

Then a friend texted while I was sitting at a bar drinking a prosecco.

"Hey, want to do an ironman with me?"

I looked at her text for a while. Then I wrote back.

"Actually, I do."

One of my greatest strengths is my ability to tolerate and endure. To push past my limits, to keep going especially when things get tough, to tolerate pain. I would argue that it is one of the qualities that has allowed me to succeed. Whether it is running a nonprofit, running for office, navigating the legislature, or mastering making macarons (one of the hardest cookies to make!). It is also what makes me successful at running marathons, taking risks to try new things, even tackling Ironman training.

Back in 2014 I had the great privilege to complete a Leadership Jumpstart with Grinnell Leadership. This four-day intensive program is intended to help you peel back your layers, to find your false limiting beliefs (the things that you learned as a child) that might be holding you back as a leader or in your relationships. I walked out of that training not with all the answers but with a self awareness and an openness that helped me connect the dots more easily to what was driving certain behaviors. It has taken me nearly twelve years, but I have finally started getting to the root of my endurance.

If you would have asked me a few years ago about my endurance, I may have told you that I developed endurance as a runner and I would have likely told you about what a great strength my endurance is. And it is! I even said it was my greatest strength a couple of paragraphs ago.

Something interesting happens when you decide to be brave enough to grow and look inward. You realize that some of your greatest strengths may stem from a place that is not so happy. In fact, my ability to endure actually stems from places where I learned that enduring was safer than feeling or even speaking, pushing through was easier than pausing. And to be clear, that does not mean that my endurance is a bad thing.

However, once you start understanding what is driving your behaviors you can start deciding if you want to change those behaviors. What I have decided is true for me is that I no longer need to endure because it is what I am "supposed to do." I can endure because I actually want to or I can decide to walk away from something that I am no longer willing to endure.

What I want to endure now is continued growth for myself, continued leaning into wonderful, effortless joy, and to challenge myself to live as my fully alive self in every sense of the word.

As part of this effort to learn how to become a stronger swimmer, I joined a group that is specifically focused on supporting women to become triathletes, all run by women volunteers who have become triathletes themselves. I went to my first swim assessment recently. The mentor who did my assessment watched my first 25 yards and when I finished she exclaimed, "Wow, that was really fast! Even with bad form."

Yep, my form is really bad.

Then she said, "Imagine what you are going to be able to do at the end of the next twelve weeks."

I swam in total for about thirty minutes in a pool lane that got progressively deeper at the end of the 25 yards, going from 3.5 feet deep to 12 feet deep. Every time I got to the deep end and could see where the bottom of the pool was getting too deep for my feet to touch, I would panic, lose my focus, stop thinking about consistent breathing, raising my head again out of the water just to get to the other side as quickly as possible.

If I look like a swimmer, I must be a swimmer, right?

She looked at me and said, “Do you know how to float?”

“Yes,” I responded.

She said, “Then just float, regain your focus, and then restart.”

It seems so simple, doesn’t it? And yet, it took her pointing out that I had all the tools I needed to make it to the other side of this pool, in the deep end, without panicking.

At the end of the session, my mentor gave me my assessment. Turns out I am an "intermediate" swimmer, which is better than I thought. I have a lot to work on. Consistent breathing, strokes, kicking. At one point she asked me, "So, how do you feel about your kicking?" Yeah, not good. But the last assessment item was endurance. She didn't hesitate.

"You have endurance."

Yes...yes I do.

For a long time, being the strong one, the capable one, the one who can take the hit and keep moving has served me. It served me well.

But enduring hasn’t always been a strength I consciously chose. It has been a reflex. An adaptation. A way to survive and make the best of whatever was in front of me.

Now, I get to choose.

I can choose endurance where it makes me fully alive. Where it brings me joy. Where it stretches me without shrinking me.

The Ironman, should I make it to that point, is not about proving I can suffer for 140.6 miles.

I already know I can endure. (Or suffer, however you want to frame it).

It is about learning to put my face in the water. To trust my breath. To float when I need to.

And then, when I am ready, to start again.

On my terms.