You’ve Got To Be Crazy!

author : Michael
comments : 1

On countless occasions, we have heard it from people. You swim how far? You have got to be crazy!

 

On countless occasions, we have heard it from people.  You swim how far?  You have got to be crazy! 

 

So what is crazy?  According to multiple dictionaries, we find the definition to be:

 

Crazy

 

·  noun:   someone deranged

 

Well, to some, I guess that we may be a deranged group of people.  I guess after a while, you grow accustomed to the remarks of those who just don’t understand.  But when I look at them, they seem a lot more deranged than I do.  Some of them mow their lawns two and three times a week.  Others paint their bodies in their pro team colors and stand in extremely cold weather to cheer them on. So after looking at some of these behaviors, chalk one up for the tri community - we may not be so crazy after all.

 

·  adjective:   affected with madness or insanity

 

Affected with a desire to reach a new level of personal and mental fitness could sometimes be mistaken by others to be insanity or madness.  Being so motivated to train that you leave in the wee morning hours to get in your training time before others hit the snooze on their alarm clock for the first time – I guess that could be seen as insanity.

 

 

Are you crazy?  Well, if having the desire and motivation to do something that I have never done before is crazy, then I might fit that definition.  I think what it boils down to is that people often don’t see the big picture.  They only see the picture of someone crawling across the finish line in an IronMan event.  This, combined with the distance of an IronMan competition, just lets them draw the conclusion that these triathletes are all just crazy.  What people fail to realize is that what they mistake as crazy behavior is actually a series of small steps that have been taken over periods of days, weeks, months, or even years.  Each small step building upon the last to move us closer to our goals.

 

Crazy can also be defined as wild, foolish, or outrageous.   I can tell you this much about our sport and what I think about it:  I am absolutely wild about it and some people may perceive that I am foolishly going about training for such an outrageous goal.

 

Crazy?  Such a harsh word for someone to use about one of the nicest groups of people I have ever had the privilege of being around.  If training for and finishing a triathlon makes me crazy, just go ahead and mail the membership card to my home address, where not only will I be a member, I will also be the president of this club of crazy individuals!

 

 Copyright  When Big Boys Tri  2003

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date: September 2, 2004

Michael

God, Family, Training and Writing