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behardonyourself · 5 years

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I AM AN IRONMAN...

I don’t even know how long I have been waiting to write this post. I think I launched my website in March or so, and I remember thinking how cool it will be if I get to write this post a few days after Ironman Arizona.

The journey is well documented on my blog and my Facebook page. I think everyone gets it - I was in the worst shape of my life. A lot of people that haven’t seen me since I left San Antonio in 2013 may not get that, but I hadn’t touched a weight since October of that year. To be honest, I hadn’t done much of anything since then.

First off, I’m not completely crazy. I’m ultimately just some dude. Completely human. I’ve told my story about running in December and not being able to go 1/4 of a mile. That’s completely real. Now, I kept this one quiet, but it’s important to understand that I thought about making a change in October of 2018. I took off running and cramped IMMEDIATELY. It wasn’t 500 feet. It hurt so bad. I then started to convincing myself that “I’m not a runner”, that maybe I was too heavy, running wasn’t healthy, the injuries over the years have taken their toll, etc, excuse after excuse. This journey that happened almost never got started. I was ashamed and embarrassed, but still felt comfort in the idea that I’d figure another way out “to get back in shape”.

I mention that fateful five hundred feet because I know a few of my friends have decided that they wanted to run and felt that exact same feeling of excruciating agony and walked away from any idea that they would eventually find comfort in the most basic exercise that we do as humans.

Many of you are familiar with the struggles in my personal life - 10 days into me actually being committed, my wife fell off of a ladder and absolutely destroyed her tibia, fibula, and just about every other part of her leg. At that time, our daughter Ava was only 5 months old. A lot of people use kids as an excuse not to workout, and trust me, it was tempting. Lisa was immobile. Ava was a handful (all 5 months olds are). Peyton had to be driven to school 30 minutes away (and picked up). So finding time wasn’t an option - the only way to do what I needed to do was to make time. Again, all of these things are on my blog but I think they are important for context.

So my story isn’t that of a runner or a cyclist that had dabbled in a few triathlons and decided to take the next step. Actually, it’s the opposite. I had NEVER ridden a road bike until April. I hadn’t run since 2004. I hadn’t swam a lap in a pool since 1995.

I simply knew I had to do something that scared me and motivated me enough to make me change.

You know what? I did that - in December I signed up for a 5k Spartan race. Really. That was in June and I signed up for it thinking it was going to take me every damn bit of that 6 months to get ready. I’ve called it the race that changed my life. I started training like an actual Spartan. Funny thing is that the body responded quickly, and a few weeks later, I realized that I’d probably be ok to do Spartan by June. So I went absolutely insane, and in January, decided that I wanted something bigger. I was standing in the Bahamas with several co-workers, and they hadn’t seen me in a couple of months due to Lisa’s injury. Juan asked me “what are you training for” and I told him either an ultra marathon, or an Ironman, or “something”. I think he though I was crazy.

Yep, Ironman it is.

Now, if 6 months was plenty of time to get me ready for a 5k race, there’s no one in the world that would’ve believed that I could possibly do an Ironman by the end of 2019. Until about 9pm on November 24, I wasn’t sure that I could do it. I didn’t know the first thing about triathlons, much less Ironman.

Obviously, I did that tiny sprint tri in Denton - and with a 200 yard swim, I hesitate to even refer to it as a triathlon, but it was a “race” and it was a great experience and I met some awesome people - Jeff, Brad, Michael, and a few other people that I’ve actually become crazy close with.

In true Boyd fashion, I never hired a coach. Now, I had 400 people telling me how important it was to hire a coach and I had to hire a coach, and there’s no way to do it without a coach, and you are 10x more likely to succeed with a coach, and a coach, a coach, a coach, a coach, a coach. Every fucking day someone told me how important it was. And you know what? It probably was. So I chatted with people from every sport and talked to triathletes. Lisa was who I talked to about swimming. A guy I grew up with in the mountains of Harlan County, Jon Carroll - was my go-to for running. I discussed bike stuff with many different people. I was fortunate enough to have a few former Tri pros be willing to answer questions for me, but typically they told me that I was doing way too much, that I am hard headed, that I’d end up injured, that they’d suggest something different, etc. One told me to stop asking him for advice because I wasn’t following it. Hell, I even had a sherpa - my buddy Bart always offered to come pick me up when I broke down on my bike. Luckily, I figured out how to fix most things, but he always checked on me, always listened to my boring training stories, always encouraged me and he and his wife even prepared my food the night before I left because I SUCK at cooking.

So who attacks something like Ironman totally blind and without a clear cut plan? Yeah, I’m totally that guy.

But this was never about training my body - Ironman was my way to make my mind as hard as steel and I knew that if I put my body through it every single day and just refused to quit, that finishing Ironman would just be a formality. While other triathletes are worried about all of these stats and protocols, I was just worried about getting up and getting the fuck after it every single day. Completely pushing myself to the limit as many times as possible hoping to do my best to replicate what it would be like on that training course.

Was it the perfect way to train? No. Of course not. I wouldn’t suggest it, and most people would probably do better by paying someone with experience.

For me though? I wanted to shoulder every single bit. I wanted to risk the blame if I failed for the treasure when I crossed the line. I am a self-taught guy. I taught myself to bench press 600lbs. I didn’t pay someone else a dime to get my dead lift to 800lbs when that was my focus. I just went in every single day and spent hours upon hours of forcing myself to become strong. This was no difference. I ran until I couldn’t, and then ran some more. I just didn’t stop swimming. No distance was too far on my bike, and I always pushed harder and harder.

The funny shit is that I completely understand and am educated in the science behind the training. I completely get it. But I also knew that my body would follow my mind into the depths of hell if it was strong enough to go there.

In December, Ironman seemed ridiculous. That guy was 270lbs (I was 201 the day I left for Arizona). That guy was not doing an Ironman, but he had to become someone that could bare the crucible of 140.6 miles.

Whenever you’re putting yourself through the pressure cooker of a long ass training cycle, you’ll have distinct moments that will ultimately make you or break you. I remember mine vividly. Running was rarely “fun” or “easy” for me. It was “more fun than other times” and “easier”, but never EASY. I can think of times I would come to the intersection of where I could come to my house or I could go out for another lap and add another 1.5 to 2 miles if I turned left. I always turned away from my house when I had to make that decision. I can’t count how many times I decided “one more lap” in the pool and it turned into 1000 more yards. I’d cramp and keep swimming. I knew that something shitty could happen in Town Lake in Tempe so I wanted to be prepared. Something shitty did happen, and I conquered it. The bike? I fell in love with it immediately. It was never a task or a chore. It is my love and it’s something I’ll stick with for the rest of my life.

Now it’s time to be completely transparent here. I was totally overwhelmed with the idea of the swim. On the day before the race, we did our practice swim and I freaked the fuck out. I panicked. Now, I swam at a decent pace, but I knew that if I didn’t calm my mind, that shit would break me and I’d have to live with knowing I didn’t get through the first part of the race. Getting kicked in the face did not help. I was terrified all day Saturday and all morning Sunday. But I had to attack it - fear grows when you give it time and I knew that if I didn’t conquer that swim it would haunt me for the rest of my life.

On race day, I felt pretty good. I was nervous about the swim - not the distance. I had swam the distance a few times. Never in open water, and never with 3000 other people, but I knew I had the endurance.

Racing is a lot like life. You can be doing everything right and shit will happen. You can use it as an excuse and convince yourself that is why you didn’t succeed or you can use it for energy. I was given a gift of an excuse just a few minutes into the race when another racer and I were tangled up, and he completely pulled my goggles off. I remember thinking “you have got to be kidding me”. Of anything that could happen, I would’ve ranked this the absolute worst thing. I swam to a support canoe and told the guy “I’m not quitting, just calming my mind”. Again, I was freaked the fuck out but I knew that if I was going to swim this 2.4 mile race in 63 degree water, it was going to be without goggles - so I put my face in the water, and started banging the fuck out of that stuff.

My eyes were killing me - probably from the toxic waste that is Tempe Town Lake, and a bit from the cold water, but I kept trucking on. For much of the race, I had to utilize my backstroke out of necessity - not from an oxidative standpoint, but to give my eyes a break. Once my eyes cleared and I was able to see my Garmin, I realized that I was easily going to make time. Not the 1 hour 25 minutes I had expected, but under the 2 hour 20 minutes that are allowed from the time you entered the water - once my goggles came off, that was the target. Nothing else matters - survive the water, get to the bike.

The funny thing is that at one point in the lake, I just laughed. I thought “who the fuck loses their goggles that early and keeps going?” Me, motherfucker. I sang, smiled, and just kept moving forward.

The best story of the day came after the final turn. I had someone frantically yelling or grunting. Now, I had ear plugs in, so I wasn’t sure where it was coming from, so my first thought was that I had somehow missed a buoy and the support crew was going to send me back. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. Someone had actually caught my goggles and he recognized that they must be mine since I didn’t have any, and he gave them to me. Yes, they were my actual ROKAS. Kind of disoriented, I put them on my head. Funny thing is I actually pulled them over my eyes when I got out of the lake (the swim was over).

After that, I just savored the day. The bike course was great and I was very fast. I smiled, chatted with other riders, pounded the fuck out of the hills and cruised down them. At no point on that bike did I feel tired, dehydrated, or in any kind of pain or danger. Maintenance was always on my mind, but I didn’t focus on what I feared - I focused on what I wanted. And what I wanted was to become and Ironman on this day.

The run was much the same. I kept waiting to hurt or feel pain, but I didn’t. I was in great spirits. I met a guy Mike on the run course after he and I kept passing each other, and at one point, we just stayed together and talked the whole way. Funny that he is from San Antonio and we have a mutual friend on Facebook. My goal was finishing - I felt great, but at about the 13 mile mark, I caught a little twitch in my calf. I did not want that to become a cramp that could shut me down, so I went conservative, ignored time, and we just kept a simple, easy pace to get across the finish line. It was a great time, and I was excited to see that his fiancee also crossed the finish line to complete her first Ironman as well.

In the military, we used to say that you don’t rise to the level of your expectations, you fall to the level of your training. My training was the crucible that hardened me for that race. Race day was legitimately a formality that was standing between me and reaching a bucket list goal of becoming an Ironman.

Disclaimer, I hate stupid positive sayings that people that have never accomplished shit come up with. Laws of attraction bullshit, eat an elephant one bite at a time, etc. Motherfucker, thinking about being an Ironnman would’ve kept me fat and depressed. It took me breaking myself down and looking in the mirror and accepting that I had become a fat piece of shit to get this done. Man, fuck all of that happy thought nonsense. Attack, attack, attack. Figure out the bullshit details later. You tear 10 bites off that motherfucker if you are fortunate enough to get to that beast. Doing that shit on social media isn’t the same thing as kicking ass in real life. That “rise and grind” post at 4am doesn’t mean shit if you pull the covers back over your head. You have to go out and suffer. Your body will react to that invigorating workout on a machine in a nice gym, but your mind will only respond to going into the darkest cave that you can find. Calories burned doesn’t always mean that you’ve hardened the mind enough to make sure that you’re actually ready for what may come at you.

Race day was simply amazing. I took it in. I smiled. I thanked people. I encouraged people. I didn’t let one second pass me by. I was actually sad when I hit that red carpet, but to hear Mike Reilly say “Boyd Myers, you are an Ironman” was completely surreal. I can’t put it into words.

The crazy thing is that I don’t feel like I’ve arrived or that I’ve made it to anything. Hell, part of me thinks “Why have you squandered to much time? What else am I capable of?”

My official finish time was 15 hours and 3 minutes. Finishing under 17 hours is all that mattered to me - to become and Ironman.

What’s next? Haha, well, that’s where it gets fun. I’m looking at Ultraman. In short, it’s a 3 day race: -Day 1: 6.2 mile swim and 90 mile bike ride -Day 2: 170 mile bike ride -Day 3: 52.4 mile run

I am going to take a few days to weigh options and look at timing. I am considering taking a real season of training and prep, but I do know me, and I’ll just get back the fuck after it. No, don’t advise me on what I “should” do, because that’s not really how I’ve lived my life. I won’t listen.

Look, there is not a fucking thing in the world standing between you and your goals except the excuses that you keep selling yourself on as to why you can’t reach them. That’s it - we are capable of so much more than we know. People label me as uber-driven, obsessed, crazy, and a lot of other things, but I don’t have anything in me that isn’t in anyone else in the world. Whatever you’ve been thinking about, attack it. It doesn’t have to be Ironman. It doesn’t have to be fitness related. All that I know that is if I didn’t take those first steps, I would’ve never crossed that finish line. Fuck, in December of 2018, a 140.6 mile race was all but impossible. But now, I just know I can do so much more.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask!

#ironman #ironmanarizona #iamanironman #triathlete #swimbikerun #ultraendurance #motivation #goals #transformation #mybattles #xl

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