Today my heart ached for someone I don't know.
I have a few friends that blog about their lives and so on, more often I read updates about their triathlon training and other adventures. I like reading these blogs, they inspire me, motivate me and keep me in the loop. I have this one friend down in Bloomington and I was reading her blog today, she is training for Ironman Wisconsin and I know she is going to be amazing. Her blogs are very upbeat and exciting and she allows her friends to experience the excitement via her blog. Today I read a new update and in addition to the usual there was one paragraph about a very close friend of hers being diagnosed with breast cancer - my heart ached, because I realized that this is a woman who recently lost her son to lymphoma (you can read the story here www.teamzachary.com). She now has her own story to tell and hopefully you will follow her here www.INgratitude.posterous.com. Why would you want to follow a blog by someone you don't know and have never met - because I truly believe that people become stronger knowing they have support even if they don't know you and may never meet you.
So today my original plan was to get up this morning and do what I like to refer to as 'the epic workout' - a 1.2 mile swim, 20 mile bike TT, 4 mile run, 20 mile bike TT and a 6 mile run. It takes a few hours but my plan was to get up early and just get it done. Usually if I wait until midday, I don't want to do it. Today though I got up, ate breakfast and changed my plan, I went to watch my friends husband compete in a Mountain Bike Race. We got there a little after it started, hung out with her adorable twins, checked out the parade. It was a really fun morning. We didn't get home until 12.30pm, I was hungry, tired and last thing Jesse and I wanted to do was the epic workout, Jesse fell asleep and I started to think of all these reasons why maybe I would wait until tomorrow and so on.
So instead of going to workout, I started playing around on the internet and read my friends blog.................. and my heart ached. I sat for a while thinking about it and then got ready for my workout. My whole attitude towards the 'epic workout' changed. It was 3pm and I knew it was going to take a while but I didn't care. I approached it with a different type of aggressiveness and I did not for one second of that workout today stop thinking about this person that I don't know.
Today when I struggled with the wind and wanted to come up out of my aero bars for a break, I told myself that some situations don't allow people to take breaks no matter how much their body is begging for it. On my runs instead of weakening with the distance I got stronger and faster, I battled my pain and kept going.
I don't know what its like to have a life threatening disease, and I am not going to pretend that my training pain comes close to that type of pain. But I do know, that today this person I don't know helped me get through one of my best workouts yet, she never left my thoughts and I hope you take time to follow the blog and show your support from afar because we all gain strength knowing people care.
