Courage

I’m back from a weekend at Mont-Tremblant where an Ironman competition took place. A friend of mine was among the competitors. For those who don’t know what an Ironman is, here is a summary. The competition begins with 3.8 Km of swimming in a lake followed by 180 km of biking, and the last part is a marathon. It is insane. It is the closest that you can get from being a fierce competition.

We spent the day following our friend following her in real-time from our smartphone. At each significant milestones, we went close to see her transition from one stage to the other so we could encourage her and cheers her up. As the competition progressed, we could see her suffering. That is intense on the body as you can imagine.

We saw all kind of people and most of them were very fit as you can imagine. People from all around the world were competing. We even discussed the reasons why people decide to do this. Motives are numerous, most are good, many are negative. It isn’t shocking. Sure some people didn’t finish the challenge as this is expected. We saw deception, frustration, but most of the time, it was about positivity and feeling alive and well. It is so inspiring.

She finished at close to 16 hours a bit over than her target. Yep, 16 hours of hard work and physical pain. I was tired too. During the day, while she was doing her bike section, I went for a short run of 13 km. It was a pain for me because I barely cross the 10 km mark. But I did it for all of them.

Here she is, looking at the finish line. Look at her starting at the end of her hard day. We congratulate her, hugged her. Shy was crying. We were crying. Then we had to come back home. After an hour and a half on the road, I was back home, exhausted. But I’m not complaining.