Ain’t nothing like being a rookie and there ain’t nothing like taking a BEAT DOWN…
Many people somehow think I somehow seamlessly transitioned from the baseball diamond into the world of endurance sports and triathlon… Gosh damn that couldn’t be any further from the truth. We wrap up our F*IT List celebration week with a chapter titled “Become Comfortable With The Uncomfortable.” I had no other choice…
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Excerpt from the F*It List
Chapter 99
Become Comfortable With The Uncomfortable
“My life was going to be different. I felt my life changing. I made a deal with myself. A deal was struck. And I don’t care if it hurts, I don’t care if it’s messy, I don’t care how it looks, but I would finish. I would finish.”
-Julie Moss
As much as I loved my new job and was having a blast golfing, surfing, and playing slow-pitch softball, there was still definitely some sort of void in my life. I took the infamous beach cruiser for a spin one day in Half Moon Bay and ended up running into some grade school friends of mine over at States Beach that I had not seen in years: Kevin "Chops" Quellmalz and the Wray sisters, Erica and Lauren. They were telling me about a triathlon that they were going to be doing in a few weeks. I had always been intrigued by triathlons ever since I was a 6-year-old kid sitting on the couch with my dad, watching the Ironman World Championships and Julie Moss collapse at the finish line in Kona in 1982.
I always wondered what kind of event could possibly push somebody to the point of complete and total exhaustion, and what sort of person would put themselves through such extreme agonizing pain. Every year from that point on, I would watch the Ironman World Championships with my dad and we would marvel at the athletes that would put themselves through the challenge. All three of my friends were experienced triathletes and began trying to convince me to join them for the sprint distance triathlon.
The problem was, like most of the people who get into the sport, I didn't really know how to swim. I surfed a ton growing up, but I was always attached to the board, which essentially serves as a flotation device. Swimming without a pool wall to stop and hold onto seemed daunting. Nonetheless, I took the challenge and had about 2 weeks to get ready. The race was the Pacific Grove Triathlon that took place in gorgeous Pacific Grove, California, right next to Pebble Beach and Carmel. The distances consisted of a 750-yard swim, a 12-mile bike, and a 2-mile run. Immediately, I headed to the swimming pool to figure out what I was working with. I started off swimming the first 25 yards freestyle. When I got to the other side of the pool, I was completely gassed. There was absolutely no way I could swim 50 yards, let alone 750. I needed a new plan. I then swam the next 25 yards breaststroke; albeit I was extremely slow, I actually felt okay when I got to the other end. That first day I swam two more lengths of the pool to finish up my first ever 100-yard swim workout! That was it; I was going to have to swim breaststroke so I could become confident that I wasn't going to drown. I did 150 yards the next time, then 200, 250 and so on, celebrating my miniature "50 yards more" victory every step of the way. I went to the pool just about every day leading up to the race and slowly built up to the 750-yard distance I was going to have to cover in the competition.
Race day arrived a lot quicker than I would have liked, but I felt like for 2 weeks of preparation I had done all I could do. The morning of the race I was running late so I had Tarah drop me off as close to where the race started as possible. I hopped out of the car with my 5mm surfing wetsuit, my beach cruiser, and some board shorts to ride and run in after I got out of the water. When I got to the expo area,
