Why the Triathlon?

The triathlon, the triathlon, the triathlon.

I am crazy.

While figuring out how to best manage the Fibro symptoms, I somehow realized that I always felt the best when I was exercising. Somewhere along the way, before the diagnosis actually, I ran my first race ever. The Shamrock Shuffle. I had just started running again after a pretty painful hip injury. I was suffering from bursitis in my hip--completely unrelated to the fibro--and after a year plus of not being able to run anymore and being spiteful and hating all runners I'd see outside because they could run and I couldn't, I amped up my bikram yoga classes and started to heal myself from the inside out. 

Bikram yoga is amazing and restorative, by the way, and can definitely help with injuries. 

I finished the Shamrock Shuffle and it was only 5 miles but it meant so much to me. I was healing my body and my heart and proving to myself that I was stronger than I thought. 

A year and half later I ran my first half marathon.

A year after that I ran my second half marathon. 

I have never felt better than when I have been training for the 1/2s. Exercise is key in relieving your symptoms and it is important to not overdo it or else you risk fatiguing your body into a flare. A flare is a very stressful and uncomfortable period of time when your body is experiencing many of the fibro symptoms all at once even though you might have been feeling fine. When I have a flare, I am exhausted, I have more nerve pain, my sleeping gets messed up, and my body feels heavy and my mind cloudy.  Over-exertion is such a worrisome factor in this decision to compete in the tri.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. 

I decided this year I was not going to do a half marathon again. As healthy as I felt while training for the 1/2s, the amount of wear and tear it caused on my body was too much. In other conditions unrelated to Fibromyalgia, I have chondromalacia patallae. It is very common in younger female athletes, but it is a softening or damage of cartilage under the kneecaps. This causes a LOT of pain. Strengthening the muscles surrounding the knees as well as your hips can really help, but at the end of the day, 13 miles on shitty knees was too much. The injuries I sustained after the last half marathon made me think twice about running it again this year. I hurt my knee very badly and it took about 3 months for it to heal up. I needed something with endurance but less impact.

So I started to think about the triathlon.....

I had been thinking about it for years actually. I had been inspired by a former classmate, Natalie Sztykiel, now Natalie Taylor, who had lost her husband to a horrible accident just a few months before she gave birth to her first son. Natalie was only 24. And she wrote a book about her trials and challenges and recovery that year call Signs of Life.  It's a fabulous book. Buy a copy. In that year, one of the things she did was compete in a triathlon with her sister.  Natalie was such a beautiful and friendly sunny girl in high school. She was and is a lovely human. And I cried through her book and was inspired by her strength, and to be very honest, Natalie was the person to first give me this seed of wonder that perhaps I could one day do a triathlon.

Of course, I never really considered it. Not seriously. 

Until this year. 

To make a long story short, in December I had somewhat decided to take on the triathlon, but by January, flares had me thinking otherwise, and by February and March, the end of a relationship as well as the health complications of a family member both left my soul crippled. So there I was, broken with very bad fibro flares from the stress of life while trying to navigate the sadness and heartache from a breakup as well as the illness of a family member. And my whole world started to feel as if it were closing in on me.

It was emotionally and physically too much for my body and heart to handle.

And out of the rubble, this seed that had been planted long ago started to bloom.

It was in April that I really started to consider it, this crazy notion to bring my soul back and take control of my body and my life and heal myself from the inside out again. Only this would be bigger than the Shamrock Shuffle, bigger than the half marathon, this would be the biggest physical and emotional challenge of my life. Physically, because I honestly don't know if my body can handle it with the overwhelming fatigue and danger of overexertion. Emotionally, because this will not only mean that I am not letting fibromyalgia run my life, but because it will give me a goal to focus on while I heal my heart and gain the strength I need to help my family. 

I started to test the waters the end of April and begining of May a bit and took my very first spin class. I went swimming at my gym for half an hour. (I used to swim a lot as a kid but it has been years). I started to roll out a few runs. One week, I ran for an hour on Sunday, swam on Monday, and did a spin class/2mile run Tuesday. By Wednesday I was having one of the worst flares I'd had in months. For about 10 days I was exhausted--just completely fatigued. I woke up like I'd never gone to bed, my body was heavy, and my heart was sad that I would never be able to do this. I had done too much too soon, I had stupidly hurt myself and thrown myself into this state.

But then I found this amazing woman's blog. Living Well with Fibromyalgia. Like me, she had been diagnosed and then began training for a tri years later. She has now done a half Iron Man. Her story is inspirational and she has chronicled the many joys and difficulties in training as well as the flares from overtraining. But the fact is that she did it and she has done it multiple times. And I started to have the confidence that I could do this too.

So I devised a plan. I would space out some strategically placed workouts to at least get my body used to the idea of heavy workouts. I have been doing so for the past two weeks, just doing what I can, and not too much. 

And I signed up for the Chicago Triathlon and announced it to my friends on May 12th, Fibromalgia Awareness Day.

This goal means so much to me. Not just for my body, but for my heart and soul. 

It takes precedence over theatre right now. I am an actor but more important than performing or auditioning right now, is taking back my self. 

August 25th is the day!

I am stubborn and I will do this. Of course, I scoffed at my friends' suggestions to do the Sprint distance, which is much shorter. No, I said, like the stubborn girl I am. If I'm training for the tri, I'm training for it all the way. It is roughly a .9mile swim, 25 mile bike ride, and a 6 mile run.

Here we go!