the suck 1

Somedays this sucks.

5 laps from the end of of a 70 lap swim (two miles) & I get the WORST cramping in my legs. Two and a half laps from the end I get such a painful cramp that I cannot swim and I cannot bend my leg back into normal position. There is my left leg stuck stiff in an unrelenting ballerina pose. My ankle won't bend even when I put my full weight on the leg. Finally I un-snap it. I finish. Damn you I finish! My leg still hurts from that cramp two days later.

Salt. Pickle juice. electrolytes. Magnesium. Magnesium Calcium Potassium. Stretch. Hydrate. The internet is full of solutions. I actually find the pickle juice one a bit interesting. The salt theory very much interests me. What's not working? little bottles of stuff that is supposed to treat muscle cramps.

What's not working? The questions that creep in. This is such a big goal. This is such an expensive undertaking. Are you sure? ARE YOU SURE? Even the voices in my head, usually game for any manner of stupidity, are fighting me.

Having a goal that looks a bit, ok a lot, scary is no reason to not reach for it. Lots of scary goals in history books. Easy to forget how frightening getting in a tiny wood ship and sailing into a  blue sea must have seemed back when no GPS guaranteed a destination at the other side. Easy to forget how easy it would have been to shut one's mouth, "live humbly" and not be the holy one, the buddha, the christ. Once it becomes black and white photos in a history book it is easy to forget how terrifying it must have been to face police, mobs, firehoses, burnt crosses, drive-by shootings, and white robed goons in order to simply declare one's humanity.

Pictures make it all feel inevitable. "Of course humans went there, did that, said that." None of it was preordained. None of that great stuff went off into the ocean, up into space or deep into the heart without fighting the "flesh". There is no place for sweat on these pages. There is no room for doubt. There is often no mention of those wee little things that, had they been different, would have sent history spinning in another direction.

A mediocre painter from Austria gets into art school. The twentieth century becomes an era of peace.

A man in a hotel in Akron takes a drink at the hotel bar instead of making a phone call. Over the next 80 years, millions of people live in misery or perish because two men did not meet that night in 1935 to birth something brilliant.

Or not. Maybe it all would have found another way because it had to find a way. May be. So why not now? Why not me? It's just an Iron Man! Not rocket surgery.

I hear my mother's voice in my head. "Well honey, give it a try, then you will know." It's one of her few nuggets of support - possibly because I didn't tell her how long an iron man is! But she knows I love this and that's enough. That really is enough. Just to love it, not be pushing to do it. Even love the cramps.

There will be more suck. Just call this #1 and move on.