Last weekend I decided to shock my body back into shape, and signed up for a Sprint Triathlon, which involves running, biking, and swimming. Not the smartest move I’ve ever made, but then again, I’ve never been accused of being the smartest guy on the block. A few summers ago I trained like a madman to prepare for a number of these types of events and actually had a heck of a lot of fun doing so. But not this time. Nope, I woke up on this particular Friday completely disgusted with my work out routine over this summer and marched into the office, got on the internet and signed up for the event (which was to take place two days later). Having done a few of these, I knew the absolute butt-kicking I was in for. And boy, I got what I was looking for....

But, that’s not what this blog post is about. Not really. A few of my buddies from our Lake had signed up for this very race months before. They had trained and were ready to meet the challenge head on. One of my buddies, Steve, is a high school basketball coach here in Indiana and is in really good shape. He’s a great runner and a pretty decent biker, but having grown up on a farm in rural Indiana, he’s not the most able swimmer. As a matter of fact, I’m not sure if he’d even been in water over his head more than twice in his life. Because of this, he has developed a serious fear of open water swimming. To be honest, I’d completely forgotten about this fact until an hour before the race. We were looking at the swimming course and he said, “Do you have any suggestions on how to get from here to there without drowning?” I tried to laugh it off and replied, “Take your time and stay on top of the water.”

It was an unusual swimming course as the route consisted of a swim from the beach, out and around a giant pier, and back to the beach. We started the race and I didn’t see Steve until that afternoon at about 4pm (the race started at 7:30am). Earlier that afternoon Steve’s wife relayed the story of Steve’s swim to me.

It seems that about 100 yards into the swim Steve had a panic attack in the water as swimmers were swimming over the top of him and the water went from 5 feet to 25 feet. Luckily the pier was only about 15 yards off of the course and he frantically made his way there. His wife was watching from the shore and ran out to the pier to lend a helping hand and voice her support. When she reached Steve he was completely panicked and was attempting to get out of the water. He told his wife, “I can’t do this...I can’t do this…there is no way I can do this”.

His wife calmed him down and began talking to him in a very hushed and calm tone. She said, “Steve, you can do this. You can make this. I know you can.” Steve was still in a panic and was fairly insistent on quitting. His wife said you can quit, but first let's seei if you can swim next to the pier for 20 feet and if you can’t make it, you can get out and call it quits. So, off Steve went for the next 20 feet -and the next 20 feet -and the next 20 –and then another 20 feet until he completed the swim.

Fear is a funny and powerful emotion. Those of you who have a fear of something know how powerful it can be. Overcoming a fear is not easy. Telling your brain you are going to do the opposite of what it wants you to do is one of the hardest things in life to do. How many times have you given in to your fears? Come on, we all do it. Facing your fear and telling it to “hit the road” is not something many of us do in a lifetime. You quickly find out what you’re made of when you encounter your biggest fear -and instead of running away- you face it head on. That’s when you are the most “alive.” Every sense, every nerve, every pulse and every piece of information coming from your brain is saying, “Quit, run away, stop” -and you keep on going. Steve had one of those moments. He could have climbed out of the water and told us all he just couldn’t do it and we would have understood. But he didn’t. He dug into the far reaches of his brain and took charge of his body.

I tracked Steve down that afternoon and he was really embarrassed about the race. I told him that of every person who competed in that race, he showed the most courage, the most gumption and the most intestinal fortitude. Steve conquered a demon and looked fear right in the eye and told it to “hit the road.” Now that’s living! Well done, Steve.