For a very long time, I have been calling tomorrow “Day One”. To me “Day One” has become the phrase I spit out when I set out for a goal, but do not feel like working on it at the moment. I’ve always been too busy or too tired to deal with it at the moment. Take this blog for example. It says I’ve been a member since September 2007 and here we are, almost a year later on August 26, 2008. But “Day One” can also have some positive connotations associated with it in my mind. Take your pick: “Carpe Diem,” “Never stop trying,” or “Keep pushing the limits.”
So why did it take so long?
I started a new post many times before, but could never find the words to really express the goal of this blog. At first I wanted it to be a triathlon training log, which was more of a way to help myself track my progress; however, I forgot why I got into triathlon in the first place, and, as a result, it has since evolved into something much bigger than that.
The Back Story
The day my mom passed away was the defining moment in my life. It’s interesting how defining moments like this become a reference point in life. There is a person I was before her death and the person I am now after her death. Before my mother passed away, I was extremely career driven, money hungry, but at the same time, unfulfilled. I always felt like there was some “passion” that was missing. However, a few moments after my mom breathed her last breath, I remembering saying to myself and even my sister that I need a way to pay tribute to her. I remember saying, “I’m gonna do this triathlon thing.” As everyone left the hospital the night she passed, I stayed behind, and broke down at my mother’s bedside. I sat their hugging her for one last time and whispered to her, “This is all for you.” I want to live the life that she wasn’t able to experience because her body failed her. I want to inspire others the way she did because she needs someone here to take the reins. I want to be selfless like she always was because she could never give enough. Day One begins…
What sparked my interest in triathlon in the first place was when Kris introduced me to the idea of joining Team in Training (TNT) a few months before my mother passed away. TNT is a part of the Leukemia & Lymphoma society that trains athletes in endurance sports in exchange for their fundraising efforts for blood cancers. After few months of fundraising and training with them, I completed my first triathlon in June 2007 and was hooked.
Triathlon is so important to me because it lets me do a few things. I finally feel like I have something that I’m really passionate about, and at the same time, I’ve been able to inspire others to do the same. This year I saw my sister push herself to incredible limits to complete her first triathlon. I remember Greg coming up to me after the Wyckoff Tri and saying that he’d like to pay tribute to his Grandmother the same way I paid tribute to my mother. He also ended up completing his first tri this year. It has also become a way to fundraise and give back to cancer societies through associations like TNT and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
There is also a selfish component of participating in triathlon being that it is a completely individual sport. Of course there is nothing better than having fans cheer me on like my sister, Mary Lou, and Cheryl, but beyond that, triathlon has become a religion. The reason I train is not necessarily to win the race, but to experience the journey it took to get to that place. The specific experiences I’m alluding to are those times when I’m on a long ride alone and I feel my mother around me, or the times when I have nothing left and my mother’s spirit empowers me to continue to put one foot in front of the other. It is my way of mourning, and without it, I don’t know how I’d be able to reassert control over my life after losing it completely when my mother passed away. While I don’t wear my heart on my shoulder as much as others do, it’s because all these emotions come out during moments of solitude, when I’m riding alone, and I feel my mother all around me. Those are the moments when I truly feel alive and the emotion runs wild
I know it has been a long post, and I thank you for reading it up to this point , but this is my way of reaching out to the people I haven’t talked to in a while. It’s a way for me to finally communicate to the world what my mother meant to me. It’s a way for me to get you to understand why I might be training instead of being somewhere else with you. I want this to be a log of my dreams and yours. I want to create stories of success and failure. I am formally inviting you to tag along on this journey because nothing great is ever done alone. And if you want to be a hater or a doubter, thank you too, because I love proving you people wrong just as much.
So back to the idea of “Day One.” For me, Day One is today. Day One is tomorrow. Day One was yesterday. But it should never be an excuse for lost goals and dreams that I never followed. If there’s anything I learned from my mom’s death, it's that we can never have enough Day Ones.
So with that said…Keep it fresh. Keep it new. Keep it real. And keep pushing along. See you on Day Two.
