I’m not a triathlete. It’s not just because I still weight 83 kilos (down from 95 two and a half months ago). No, it’s because the more I watch GTN and see all those silly triathletes I realize, well, just how silly it all is. I suspect it seems silly because my priorities have radically changed.
When I started triathlon it was a challenge and because it gave me more balance to my body and variety in what I did to stay in shape. I still find those things appealing but not like before. If I’m completely honest with myself I got sucked into being slightly faster and faster until I started spending all my days on the bike looking at nothing but the road ahead hunched over in an aero position to train my body to be able to stay in that position. Gone was the appeal of being outside, of taking in the sky and the treetops and frankly any surroundings at all. It was all about being fast, and fast I was. But at what cost?
The more my obsession with speed took over, the more my balance and pleasure died. It started to lead to more acute symptoms of over-training (compounded by the horrible cognitive dissonance I was constantly going through related to being married to a Mormon Karen and not knowing how bad it was distressing me at the time). I would have fits of unexplainable rage for no reason, which just sent me out onto the bike even more, or into the pool where everything just faded away. It was almost like my obsession to get really fast, to meet my speed goals and PRs was somehow me racing away from a life I didn’t want any more. Other than triathlon, I would obsessively plan games and take care of my boys, because I knew that is what I wanted.
I don’t want to imply that all triathletes are messed-up human beings about to implode like I was, only that it can definitely be a symptom of that. Triathletes who obsess give in to the allure of control. It’s comforting in a world where you feel like you don’t control anything else. It’s the one form of control that is yours and yours alone. To this day, when I lose control of my health and fitness the rest of my life starts to unravel because so much of my psyche has been built on those foundations over the years.
It’s no wonder that now that I’m getting leaner, fitter, and faster that I feel better all around. Very little stresses me out these days at all. I feel no soul-crushing demand to make a difference in the world. I’m content to be alive and enjoy life, to be a part of the world around me while I still can. It helps that I’ve also remembered my full-on addiction to endorphins (the drugs that kick in after an uncomfortable 90 minutes of tempo endurance). Being fit is overwhelmingly, scientifically proven to increase happiness and all-around wellness. And for a guy like me, it gives me back that illusion of control, until a bee stings me between the eyebrows just so the Universe can make a point as if to say, “There is no control, bitch!”