A Medal to Start.
August 22, 1999
"Why
are you so scared?" I asked
myself. "You've been preparing
for this moment for months. Calm
down!" My inner psyche was
doing it's best to bring a runaway train of thought back under control...but my
head was having none of it.
I
was standing there with my heart beating like it would jump out of my chest and
run for cover if I would let it. I
had done everything I could to be ready for the moment, but I still found myself
feeling like a small child looking down at the end of a dock:
The water may be all around me, but once I can muster the nerve to take
the leap, in a few seconds I know all of my worries will be left behind.
I
closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to steady myself one last
time...when suddenly the excited chatter of Japanese split the solitude like a
thunderbolt from the blue. Not
knowing that they had just destroyed the moment I'd been planning for 2 months,
the small group of tourists came up to Lynda and I and graciously said
"Hello!" as I smiled back and cursed my bad timing, shoving the ring
that had almost escaped back into my pocket. I smiled at Lynda, while internally
I just about hurled myself off of the formerly quiet deck I had so carefully
scouted out just one minute earlier.
Compared
to trying to pull off an engagement, Ironman would be a hell of a lot
easier...but that would have to wait another week.
I had come to the top of this mountain with a purpose, and while this
mountain had nothing to do with my VO2 max, it would have everything to do with
my heart. Problem was I was running
out of time. It was now 7:14pm.
Sunset was 8:14. From having decided in February that Lynda and I would spend
3 days in Vancouver before heading out to the Maple Leaf Ball, to making dinner
reservations at the summit of Grouse Mountain 2 months before we had left, right
down to being supplied sunset times by Bruce Grant the week before...my plan had
to come together now. There would be no second chances, no drives of the course
to know what I was facing, and definitely no volunteer support.
One take for the whole deal. In
the midst of all the pressure, I couldn't help but giggle at the irony: The very
act that would grant me the gift of never having to be alone for another moment
for the rest of my life was making me feel more alone than I'd ever been before.
We
walked a bit more soaking up the view, as I desperately scoped out another place
to quietly take a knee. The summit
of Grouse Mountain looks out over Vancouver harbor, and to get there requires a
ride by gondola. There are some
paths to stroll around...and as luck would have it, the same deck we had been
interrupted on earlier came into view (although Lynda was blissfully unaware of
having been interrupted), and this time it was clear.
I mentioned that I wanted to take another picture from that spot, and
essentially committed myself: It
would be now or never.
Lynda
looked off towards Mt. Baker as the sun was turning the summit to gold, and I
put down the camera. I reached into
my pocket, and pulled out a small wooden box at the end of a blue silk
ribbon...given to me by her mother. She
looked at me and nonchalantly said "What is that?"
Earlier in the month, she had joked with me "You know...you do all
these races, you do all this training, and I follow you all over the country
while you do it. Yet you get cool
medals for finishing. When do I get
my medal for putting up with this?"
I
smiled back trying to make the connection for her: "It's your medal if you
want it."
I
watched her face go through confusion, then shock, then the realization that her
moment was here.
"You're
not doing this...this isn't happening, is it?"
She asked as I opened the box and leaned forward.
I placed the ring and ribbon around her neck, and watched as Lynda Marie
cried the way we all do in that one second as the medal passes over your head.
That one second you suddenly are faced with the fact that one of your
dreams is going to come true. Right
now.
I
couldn't even think of anything else; Ironman Canada may as well have been a
hundred years away. My main goal
for this trip had been pulled off with only a few hitches for drama, and I could
go home right now a happy man. I
handed Lynda the phone and said "Please call your parents...they'll be
expecting it, and I don't want to keep them waiting." as I stared off at
the setting sun, completely exhausted. How
could I be so tired from carrying something that was so light?
I chuckled to myself as I looked down at Lynda, sharing the news with
home as if she was the first to know...and knowing she was the last.
One
dream down. One to go.
Welcome
to my second Ironman Canada. 7 days
to go.