Breaking Ground : trifuel.com

Breaking Ground

Source: Tracy Korn

(via YouTube.com, Thanks for the heads up, Rob.)

The hardest part about going too far is that at some point, you need to come back.

I knew the minute I decided. Maybe I should have been stronger. But it felt so right.

Maybe I'm not iron anything.

I can't seem to get warm. It's been 45 minutes now. I took a hot shower and the water cut on my numb skin. I didn't expect that.

It's 73 degrees. I just checked the thermostat. Underneath my oversized sweatshirt, running pants with holes I say I'll sew but never do, I can't stop shivering.

I breathe in, and my whole body shakes, but here I sit, and all I can see is that sky. All I can think of is how I stared. How I breathed in then and how the breath felt cold and damp in my lungs, and how it sat at the bottom refusing to exhale out. How the cold drops felt falling through the slots in my helmet. How I knew exactly what it was on that horizon and what it would do if I turned and followed, but how I went anyway.

All I had to do was turn around and go back the way I came like every other time I get to that little Amish Country intersection. But the sky over my shoulder was intoxicating. Black and breathing and epic over the infant cornfields and dollhouses that disappeared over the rolling hills. And I could see for lifetimes.

I let myself go, and it felt warm and exciting.

I passed buggies and old-fashioned plows and men working on houses and barns and building miscellaneous things. I passed women gathering children and children gathering flowers in baskets and teenaged boys tending horses and hitching up reins and adjusting blinders. And before I knew it I was 20 miles and 20 years gone.

The sky suddenly spilled over treetops and over me. Clouds reached down, daylight muffled, and I found myself square in the middle of what I went chasing.

42 miles in, I stopped for a minute and sat down. Racked my bike on a buggy hitch outside a tractor and plow store. It was closed. I was glad. I sat and watched the sky from the direction I'd come. Bright and holy-looking like those pictures on the Sunday school walls. Sunbursts in all the right places...

Buggies passed, children waved and stared first at my bike, then at me, then again at my bike. They passed so slowly I could hear them giggling with excitement. Little white bonnets bopped in buggy windows, and fatherly wide-brimmed hats tipped in my general direction.

I sat and watched them ride by. Watched that sunburst patch disappear. Knew and knew and knew that it wouldn't be long now, I could hear it coming, but I still didn't move. And in the minute before I got back on my bike, for some reason I heard in the back of my head, ...what you want and what you need are usually completely different things, which almost never come to you at the same time. Like a public service announcement, I thought about it for a second, hoped to file it, but let it slip out like a dust ball too near the screen door.

It was time to turn around. I didn't want to be freezing. I can't stand being cold. I'd only brought enough fuel for a 50-mile ride, but because of my little excursion, I was 42 miles from home and there were only eight miles left in my bottle.

None of it made any sense. I don't make mistakes like this. I don't get this far off course on purpose. I don't chase storm clouds. But I did today. And sitting here still shivering, I suppose I needed to.

The storm came cold and harsh. Not mist. Heavy, sharp drops, and I was already soaked for the most part from the light rain of the first 42 miles. The new drops were penance I guess. The beating in the lesson so you never forget it kind. The kind that breaks you after a while, and I had a good long while yet to go.

Headwinds sliced through my windbreaker. My tights were sopping, everything was sopping. Drops dangled from the brim of my helmet, clung for their lives as I shook them off like a dog out of the water, until after a while I stopped bothering. I just let them collect. Hang. Drip. My teeth started to chatter. My gloves and socks squished. I thought about calling someone to come and get me, as I was still 20 miles from home. Didn't. Should have. I was out of fuel in every sense of the word.

And I think now I realize that it had to be that way, or I never would have stopped all this.

I don't know if I can even explain this part...

See, I am so many things, so many times a day, to so many people. Today, at that intersection, I just wanted to be me, and I guess that's what pulled me. Rational or not. Ready or not. I think that's what happens if you let it go this long...the not letting yourself just be someone who needs just as much as anyone else in your life. I don't know if this is just the nature of women, to get lost in everyone else, but I felt guilty and ashamed and embarrassed out there for actually entertaining the idea that I could possibly need anything from anyone. It wasn't until I got so completely soul-soaked by that storm that I had no choice but to admit it.

Do you know how long I've been running from this day?

Mile 71. Ice cold rain. Headwinds. Crosswinds. No fuel, no stores anywhere to restock. Nothing except that sky I went chasing, the road, and me.

I was drenched, dried, and drenched again. Dried again. But I stayed fixed and fine and not giving in, not admitting, not acknowledging. The third time it came down, when the winds picked up, when the cars racing past me splashed me, insultingly, when I looked up at the sky, swirling and waiting, I just...broke, I think.

It's something to come face to face with your breaking point. Especially when you've prided yourself on not having one for so long.

I didn't want to see it, but I suppose I needed to.

I needed to stop. I did because I couldn't see through the tears in my eyes. I was angry that I was crying, and that made me cry more. It was strange to feel and not feel so much at the same time. My fingers and toes were numb, my thighs were numb, my face was numb and the hot tears on my cheeks burned.

I was exhausted, hungry, probably dehydrated, pathetic stray dog drenched, and freezing, but I wasn't crying because of any of that. I saw what it was to have all of my cards played, to admit that I really wanted someone else to take the wheel just this once, and maybe more than just this once... it was because I finally had to face the fact that whether I want to need something or not, I do, and that I can't control that.

I guess crossing epic finish lines has given me tangible proof that I can handle my demanding life. I tell myself, if I can get through 70.3 miles, 26.2 miles, 140.6 miles all in X amount of time come armies of Hell in tanks, I can do everything and anything else. You do that enough, you start to feel invincible, and it's OK if there is no time at the end of the day for anything you might need as an individual because you convince yourself that you don't need anything anyway.

But today it became painfully obvious that this was all utterly fractured reality. When you're taken to your breaking point, there's no choice but to admit that you're not invincible. And that's harder than the breaking itself because it ripples out into other areas of your life and starts flooding. What else can't I hold together??

The hardest part about going too far is that at some point, you need to come back. You have to see where you came from through the eyes of a person who has been to an edge you didn't acknowldege, and because of this you now have to live with that edge not 40 miles off into the distance, but at the end of every step you take from now on. Honestly, I don't know what I'm going to do with that. I've spent a lifetime building this tower.

I made it home after a little over five hours and 80-odd miles. I've never been so exhausted in every sense of the word. Not after my marathons. Not after my half-Ironman. Not even after 13 hours of labor and childbirth. I've never broken. Never surrendered anything the way I did this afternoon. I never needed to. Until this afternoon. I suppose this is a good thing, the pressure is off. I can actually need something now? Did I just type that out loud?

I think I'm in a little bit of shock. I can't explain it. It's not physical, though I'm physically tired, it's not that kind of exhaustion. This isn't the result of one afternoon or of being tossed around by one cold thunderstorm. It's about deciding to head down roads I've always wanted to see, but never turned my wheel to go. I guess not until today.

Well, I suppose after all of this I'm relieved...is that the right word? Hard falls bring with them a definite stop, after all, and I guess as a result of having to stop and face the breaking point I'd denied and buried, the responsibility of being invincible has somehow lifted. Kinda like that storm the last three miles.

Damn... what a ride...