364: The Journey Starts

10:02am. Nervousness. Nausea. Excitement. Regret. Acceptance. And then more nausea. I was awake before I should have been on a Sunday morning, eyes still blurry from booze. Two hours to go until registration, hitting the "refresh" button on Active.com like a mouse getting a dose of morphine. Matt and Ken were on their laptops, 3 feet away, repeating the same procedure, as if we could actually will the internet to do our bidding, and somehow let us in early. The race had sold out in 10 minutes last year...two-thousand similar minded fools, all feeling the same pit in their stomachs that they might actually be successful with their registration. This isn't exactly a process where you jump for joy, like you won concert tickets on a radio. With the successful registration, comes the realization that you've just put your life on the shelf for the next 12 months in order to see how far you can warp your mind; in order to see just how much suffering you can endure in one day, before pushing a little further the next. To be an Ironman.

It had taken Matt six months to convince me we were ready to sign up. But honestly, I'd spent the better part of the last 5 years convincing myself I was ready. I'd raced every distance I could find, waking up at 3am to drive 200 miles and be at the starting line by 7am. Wearing clothing that people who weren't like us would laugh at; eating things that you'd expect to find in an astronaut's lunchbox. Confidence was a must, after all, because in this sport after one race you graduate straight from rookie to veteran, or you never race again. There is no in-between. It becomes a lifestyle, a single-minded focus, and not without a great strain to the rest of your commitments.

And yet here we were, willingly throwing down half a paycheck to prove to ourselves, in some masochistic ritual, that we were worth something. The rush to fill in my personal information temporarily blocked out all other emotion, but as soon as I hit that "submit" button, everything came flooding through the gates. Doubt and fear, fighting constantly with pride and confidence...and slowly winning. When it was over, the three of us looked at each other, exhaled deeply, and shrugged our shoulders. The hard part was over. The next 12 months will be easy.