Perseverance To Waco - WHY Keeps Me Going When Going is Tough
Guest Post by Stephen Robinson
Early morning ride on the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes
A certainty for the Ironman competitor is you must have a “WHY.” Nobody runs, bikes, and swims for 140.6 miles in less than seventeen hours without something to prove to themselves or others. An Ironman’s “WHY” must be big, and every participant’s “WHY” is uniquely different.
This past month, my Ironman “WHY” expanded.
Let me backtrack a bit to a sunny August afternoon. I was working at my favorite coffee shop in downtown Coeur d’Alene, enjoying an iced coconut Americano with cream, when the call my entire family had been waiting for arrived. The diagnosis was news I didn’t want to hear. The tumor discovered during my identical twin brother’s routine diagnostic exam was cancer!
I don’t remember much of that afternoon, which is a shame since we were celebrating our youngest daughter’s sixteenth birthday. It seemed like I could focus on nothing besides the fact my twin had stage 1 colon cancer. The good news was the cancer had been caught early, but the bad news was my twin has CANCER, a scary word filled with uncertainty and unpredictability.
The hours I spend training for Ironman are most often done alone. As her schedule allows, my wife runs and swims with me, but as my volume increases, I usually find myself alone on the trail or in the aero bars on my bike for hours on end.
I often say the hardest thing about an Ironman isn’t the physical toll on your body but is the battle fought between your ears, and my mind has tried to convince me to quit over, and over, and over again.
Likewise, the road ahead for my brother will be filled with anticipation, uncertainty, and lots of discomfort. My brother will face his own fought-between-the-ears battle. Even though many who love him will be supporting him every step of the way, much of his struggle will be one he must fight alone.
As Ironman training has for me, I know cancer treatment will take a toll on my brother physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. This realization inspires me even more to keep pushing. My brother is one of my biggest supporters, and I want to make him proud.
Life is full of hard times, challenges, and even failures. Unwanted diagnosis and other circumstances seem unfair.
This is one of my favorite pit stops along the travel
Blessings on your journey of perseverance!