A week or so ago, I had a dream that I remembered when I woke up. A few details of it have stuck with me, and it’s been turning over in my head a bit…
The dream below; side comments in brackets:
I was racing my third Ironman. [I have never raced anything close to an Ironman in distance, but I have done a few sprint triathlons. An Ironman is a total of 140.6 miles; a sprint is about 16.]
The first two were successful. This one was out of order: first we swam, then we ran, then we biked. [Typically the order is swim, bike, run.]
I had completed the swim. I was near the end of the run, it was raining, and I was exhausted. The route went right past the hotel The Climbing Daddy and I were staying at, so I decided to stop in, get changed, and take a nap before continuing on to the bike. [This would definitely not be allowed in a race.]
I ended up sleeping for hours instead of minutes and woke up 15 minutes before the end of regulation. [Only times under 17 hours count.]
I was kicking myself for sleeping that long and was also annoyed that I had to finish the run to retrieve my bike.
I woke up thinking it was odd for lots of reasons, but it’s been poking at me off and on.
So what I’m taking from it for now is this:
I can do hard things. (I had completed two of these races prior.)
But when I do them out of order, they’re much harder, I tire more quickly, I make bad choices which lead to me not being able to do The Thing.
For practical application, I’m not entirely sure what The Thing is, or what I’m doing out of order, or if I even have control over the order. (I didn’t in the dream.) There are a few things in life I’m struggling with pretty hard, but I can’t (yet?) apply this to them, exactly.
So what I’m hanging onto now is: I can do hard things. Will let the rest fall as it will.