60 Months to Ironman, Rebooted

This is the part where I usually quit. I’m doing this instead.

There is a 87-year-old nun named Sister Madonna Buder who completed her first triathlon when she as 52 and has finished 45 Ironmans.

This quote stopped me in my tracks.

I still have a competitive streak, even though I’m usually bringing up the rear these days. Back when I was 60 years old, I promised myself I wouldn’t race if I was going to come in last, but things change. I still love racing, and I don’t intend to stop anytime soon.

She didn’t quit when things got hard or embarrassing. How awesome is that?

In July 2015, nearly three years ago, I had weight loss surgery. I was also 43-years-old, nearly exactly five years younger than my mother was when she died.

I was an athlete once. A serious one. There wasn’t anything I loved more than pushing my body to see what it could do. And then one day, I weighed 368 pounds and I hurt so much, my husband had to pull my pants up for me.

Can you see that gap? It’s as wide as the Grand Canyon. And I desperately wanted to find a way to build a bridge across it. Or maybe lasso the other side and pull it closer.

So, I decided. I made a five-year plan. I had this big, hairy, scary, impossible goal. Five years — 60 Months to Ironman. The first two years would be for losing enough weight to train safely. The last three would be for training.

I lost 120 pounds in the first two years. I didn’t get down to anyone’s idea of a ‘goal weight’, but that wasn’t my aim anyway. I lost enough weight to make training a possibility.

I was supposed to start training in July 2017.

But then. But then. But then.

I sold a book in the middle of my MFA program. Edits and school work at the same time.

I went grocery shopping one day and took a step, and wound up in the ER with pain in my hip that made it almost impossible for me to walk. Then a CAT scan later, I was diagnosed with arthritis in both hips.

And I got scared.

Scared enough that even the idea of training just kind of skitters along the surface of my brain, usually at some odd hour when there is no risk of it actually leading me to even taking a walk.

Scared of the whole fucking thing. All of it. The bigness of it. The potential pain of it. The risk of failure. The ridiculousness.

This is the part where I usually quit one of my crazy, right-brained schemes. This is the part where I kind of hate myself for not being able to do anything without making it all public, because I’m going to quit and everyone’s going to know it.

Kind of like how Babe Ruth had the most homeruns and the most strike-outs, I’ve done some pretty amazing things, but I’ve also quit a lot of things. Some of my ideas pan out beautifully. (Hello, Ninja Writers. I’m looking at you) Some are pushed off a cliff.

This is the part where, traditionally, I want to lock the big hairy goal in the cellar and try not to think about it anymore. I’ve been composing a blog post in my head for months, where in I blame it all on my arthritic hips.

But then my friend Zach did something. It was such a small thing, too. In fact, I bet he doesn’t even know he did it. You had to be looking at him to see it.

When I told him I woke up with an idea for a big hairy dream for him, his face lit up.

That’s all. I said, “you know, you should do 60 Months to the World. Spend the next five years getting to where you can travel for six months, like you’ve always wanted to.”

And his face just brightened like I’d suggested he could — well, like I’d suggested he could bridge the gap between where he is and where he wants to be, and he believed me.

Seeing him there, at the start of something that feels bigger than him, almost too big — but that wonderful, too — made me realize that I don’t want to quit.

I want to start.

I might need more than sixty months. Maybe I need sixty more months, I don’t know. I’m 46 now, so if I do need sixty more months, I’ll still be younger than Sister Madonna Buder was when she ran her first triathlon. By a whole year.

Anyway, I’m the boss of 60 Months to Ironman. I can decide how this goes.

Maybe you’ll stick with me, and see how it goes, too. Maybe you’ll be all — damn it, you promised me an Ironman in five years and this is some bullshit.

But, either way, you’ll see me not quit.

Shaunta Grimes is a writer and teacher. She lives in Reno with her husband, three superstar kids, and a yellow rescue dog named Maybelline Scout. She’s on Twitter @shauntagrimes and is the author of Viral Nation and Rebel Nationand the upcoming novel The Astonishing Maybe. She is the original Ninja Writer. You can be a Ninja Writer, too.