Humbled

Wow I've just been humbled with a capital H!!!

This guy from work is starting to run and has come to me many times for advice. It's probably only been a month or so that he's been running and he's determined he's doing a half marathon. I may have suggested it to him I don't know, anyways he's doing the Harvest half in Sept. Nothing unusual about that, he's a long time smoker and has quit and is now getting himself into shape. What a inspiration!! That's not the Humbling part yet though. So while asking about running he's been asking a lot about the ironman race that I did, he thinks I"m crazy and doesn't think the marathon would be possible after riding 180k.

Today he comes up to me first of all showing me the link to a triathlon. He has it in his crazy head that he wants to do a "tri-a-try" triathlon. Not a big deal 300m swim, 10k bike, 5k run. He must have done some kind of biking and swimming, after all he has the running down. Oh let me go back a step, I suggested for the half marathon that he should gradually work his way up to about 16k. I told him if he can do 16k then he'll be able to finish it on the day. So he comes up to me Monday telling me he ran 17k sprinting at the end!!! I"m like......(I had nothing to say) I know I had made it clear to him to run that long run like 8 weeks from now or so. LOL He did it already, oh well I totally applauded his effort. Today he wants to do a small triathlon and after talking a bit find out he hasn't swam at all in years and doesn't even own a bike. He figures he'll borrow it for race day!!! I reminded him about a bunch of things he also needs for race day. Sooo today he's off to the pool to try and swim, if he can finish 300m then he may do the race this weekend. Yes that's right it's this weekend.

Wow and he called me crazy!! Anyways I'm not writing this to make fun of him. He may read this and think at first that I'm knocking him. That's not the case at all, I'm totally pumped up by his total lack of disregard for any preparation and his will to accomplish stuff. We triathletes/marathoners (especially myself) put so much thought into preparing for somthing and don't want to risk anything at all to do somthing. I thought I risked a lot by doing an Ironman, but I consider this attempt even bigger a risk. This co-worker fully knows he may finish last, but he's thinking of entering anyways. Why? Because he can!! He doesn't know if he can swim, hasn't swam or biked in a long time just knows he wants to accomplish somthing. I nearly went and entered Sylvan Lake half ironman that's in a week and a half just because of this conversation. The only thing that's stopping me is that it's over 200 dollars to enter now.

Rant over, carry on