Saturday, September 9- 4 p.m. (15 hours to go)
(So, you never did talk about what was bothering you?)
I didn’t need to. Just talking about what the finish line was going to look like for us transformed me from anxious to excited.
(So, you ignored your fears?)
I compartmentalized them. I needed to focus on the “last minute” items before the race and if my subconscious…
(Me?)
…was going to babysit my anxiety, I was not going to party crash the coffee date the two of them were having.
Saturday, September 9- 5 p.m. (14 hours to go)
With three hours left until the end of Shabbos, I returned to my book.
(Which book of Apollo moon landings did you bring with you this time?)
I had brought “One Giant Leap” by Charles Fishman on the plane…which is where I left the book.
(You spend all Shabbos without a book to read?)
Not exactly. I had brought “Wheels in the Head: Educational Philosophies of Authority, Freedom, and Culture from Socrates to Paulo Freire.”
(Why would you do that?)
I had to write a graduate school paper while we were in Nice and this is the book I used for my master’s degree “Comps.”
(Thorough? Sounds like a sleep aide)
Nah, it’s historiographic…
(A what?)
A map through the history of the changes in approaches to…
(Please stop. You are turning this into a book report!)
Saturday, September 9- 8 p.m. (11 hours to go)
The funny thing about turning on your phone after 25 hours is you are never sure what is going to pop up on your feed when you open your social media account. Before we left, I had posted our annual “Back to School” photo.
(Many people post their back-to-school photo, so what?)
Ah, but I’m an educator.
(So?)
Sew buttons.
(Focus Dave, you are at the Ironman World Championships)
My friend Jesse Schwartzman adulterated my post. Jesse’s photo-shop skills made me smile.
It reminded me that there were many back home who were cheering for me. I am guilty of letting my OCD take over & I fail to notice the people around me.
(Your wife says that you are getting better at “stop, breathe and listen.”)
I think I am, but like when you post on social media, you may notice two or three people who comment on what you did, you fail to notice the 200-300 who see but do not comment…but they read your words.
(How can you be so sure?)
Post a video, watch how many people “like” it, then look how many people “viewed your video.”
We think we live on a plane of existence where we race between point “A” and point “B”.
We are a pebble, dropped in a pool of water and our actions reverberate out in every direction, touching everyone we meet. Succeed or fail tomorrow, I was carrying everyone I knew with me. I wrote about this opportunity on Facebook. I had posted the link to follow me on the course and I had many at work following me as well.
(Including your superintendent!)
The idea that I was not alone. That everyone I knew was watching me in real time was going to come back to me in the early hours of the race when…
(When what?)
I will tell you tomorrow. It was time to go to sleep. I had to be up before the sun and it was after 11 p.m. Nice France time.
Sunday, September 10-4:30 a.m. (2.5 hours to go)
“They knew they were making history, and it was the greatest adventure of their lives.“ That statement is from the opening of the Ken Burns documentary, “The Civil War,” and it was the first thing that popped into my head after I opened my eyes. No Shabbos observant Jew had ever competed at the Ironman World Championships and I now…it was “game day…”
David Roher is a USAT certified triathlon and marathon coach. He is a multi-Ironman finisher and veteran special education teacher. He is on Instagram @David Roher140.6. He can be reached at [email protected].
