I’m In!

It was four a.m. on a moonless, muggy night … just the way I wanted it. With 240 pounds of bulging blubber and mushy muscles sagging on a five-foot, eleven-inch frame, I wanted no one to see me trying to jog. At the high school track’s starting line, I punched my stopwatch and groaned into a trot, trying to banish thoughts of rapidly overpowering fatigue by reflecting on the three simultaneous events that led to my being here at such an early hour. One … two … three cruel strikes — and I was out! Strike one: In the home we built, my blue-eyed, beautiful, brunette bombshell bride left a goodbye note, and little else. Strike two: A freakish lawn mower accident severed my right big toe and rendered the next two useless. Strike three: I had metamorphosed from the outdoor, active type to a sedentary sofa slob.

One day I was a lean, athletic male who had attracted the attention of a gorgeous female, much to the envy of my tennis team pals; the next day, I was a fat, divorced, lazy, lame loser. Light-headed, staggering and wheezing down the track, battling nausea and fatigue, I completed one lap. Then, while walking another lap, I lost my composure and wept in gushes, feeling sorry for myself, bemoaning my handicap … but realizing down deep that it was only part of the problem, a part that could be overcome. Little did I know then that this painful, early-hour experience was, for me, the beginning of one of the most difficult journeys we human beings make: the journey within. Somehow I rallied enough self-discipline to maintain my punishing predawn practices, and even set what seemed at the time an impossible goal: to someday come to the track and run five miles without stopping. Running caused my mangled foot to ache, and favoring it made my stride awkward, but I kept putting bad foot and good foot in front of each other, remembering that winning is no more than this: to rise each time you fall. I also remembered a few lines from a poem that best defines attitude:

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Success begins with a fellow’s will; 
It’s all in the state of mind…. Life’s battles don’t always go
 To the stronger or faster man; 
But soon or late the man who wins 
Is the man who thinks he can.

The five-mile goal came and went. Then it was ten; then a half-marathon. Finally, I was in great shape and felt confident enough to enter my first really big race, the Mardi Gras Marathon — a 26-mile jaunt across the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway from Covington, Louisiana, to New Orleans. The time on the big clock at the finish line was awful … and unimportant. I finished the race: I won. My triple dose of adversity was bitter medicine to swallow, but it healed me. Through adversity I had come to know myself; I completed the journey within. Three strikes, I’m out? No, three strikes — I’m in!