Polly Mertens: 0:23

Hey superstars, welcome back Polly Mertens here and on the Everyday Awesome Project. Usually it’s Polly and Sam, but this episode I’m going to do a little bit differently. So this episode is specifically designed to share with you my experience, my journey from non-Iron Woman to Iron Woman, I guess I would say so. What I want to do in this episode is share with you the preview, the backstory of where it all started and then go through actual race day, and I just thought that this would be a great episode for me to share 100% from my journey instead of interview style like Samantha and I often do. So we’ll see how it goes. It’s something new, it’s a first for us here at the Everyday Awesome Project. So thanks for tuning in and I hope you get something out of this. Really, my goal here is to be transparent, authentic, share what was going on inside the body, inside the mind and the outside journey, so that whoever’s listening to this you can get something from this, maybe see yourself in my journey, see the ups and downs, the trials and tribulations, and maybe get yourself up to some bigger goals, if you will. So one of the number one questions that I got along the way was why do an Ironman Like why are you doing this, right? So a little backstory.

Polly Mertens: 1:46

I have done other races before I have competed. I did one triathlon, but it didn’t include a swim, it was a kayak swim. I have done adventure races, which are long races, never more than about nine hours, I would say eight hours I have done adventure races are multi sports, so there’s running, there’s rappelling, there’s hiking, there’s mountain biking, that type of thing, and then a lot of orienteering. I’ve done long distance. I did one ultra. That was a six day 120 mile race staged where I slept, thankfully, every night and then got up and ran again the next day. So I wasn’t a new, like I wasn’t new to racing. I’ve done five years in Spartan races as well, obstacle racing. So I do enjoy a good challenge, a good race.

Polly Mertens: 2:38

And in December I think it was December of 2023, my co-host, samantha, was telling me how she was planning in 2024 to do a personal record for her. She had been an Ironwoman for years, triathlete, all these wonderful things for many, many years, and she was planning to do re-up. So after 10 years 12 years I think it was of not having done an Ironwoman, she was going to do one. And so I said, oh, I would do one, and that’s kind of how it started. And she’s like, all right, well then, let’s do it. And so we just decided on this journey.

Polly Mertens: 3:12

I had, in 2023, volunteered at the Morro Bay Ironman Triathlon, which is right near my home, and so I knew the course. I knew I had been there right near my home, and so I knew the course. I knew I had been there. I had supported the, the racers, the prior year. I said that would be extraordinary because it’s near where I live, it’s less than half an hour from where I live, there’s not a lot of travel. This was December.

Polly Mertens: 3:37

The races in May felt doable. So my why was? Why not? You know it was I’ve done. I didn’t.

Polly Mertens: 3:47

At the time I thought, oh yeah, it’ll be hard, it’ll be training. You know I’ve done. I’ve suited up for hard races before and trained up for hard races before, and so I knew there’d be a lot of training. But I was somewhat familiar with that. But I was somewhat familiar with that. So the why was yeah, do something that scares you a little bit. And this scared me a little bit in the beginning. And, lord, did I know if I knew all the things I said. I probably should have been more scared in the beginning, but anyway. So that was my why is get up to something hard, challenge myself, grow myself, have a new experience, step into some unknowns, things that I didn’t know. And what I love about training and racing is all the things that you learn along the way. You know you discover things that you don’t even know, that are there to be discovered. Right, it’s like going on a scavenger hunt and every day, every week, something new comes up and it’s like, oh, here’s a new opportunity, something to learn, something to grow, try this. New week. Something new comes up and it’s like, oh, here’s a new opportunity, something to learn, something to grow, try this. New people, all sorts of things. So that’s where my head was at in December. So that gave me. So the race is.

Polly Mertens: 4:54

The race was mid May, may 19, 2024. So that gave me about five and a half months to fully train. I started slowly training in January. I had no, I have a mountain bike, but you can’t do 56 mile. Oh, and just so you know, ironman is a 1.2 mile swim to a 56 mile bike and then a 13.1 mile run. Total grand total is 70.3 miles in one day and you have to complete that in eight and a half hours. That’s the cutoff, if you will.

Polly Mertens: 5:26

So what was I saying about the training and the preparation? It seemed doable without. With a mountain bike it was not going to be doable. So the first step was okay. Well, somewhere along the way I need to get a bike. And I had never planned for this to be a multi like oh, I’m going to get into triathlon, I’m going to get into doing 10 Ironmans in 10 years or anything like that. So it was well, I don’t want to buy a new bike Running. You know I can run Swimming. I had not. I had done something called a swim run race about three years prior. So I did a little bit of training in the pool for that, but not a lot. That was fairly. You could survive a swim run race at the length. I did a sprint, I think it was, or maybe a medium length one, not a ton of swimming, especially all at the same time. So the swim was going to be new, didn’t have the equipment, hadn’t been training for it.

Polly Mertens: 6:27

The biking I’ve never been probably more than 20 miles on a bike in my life, let alone road biking and hills and all these things Running, like I said, I had probably done a little more than a marathon in a day. So I was like half marathon can do that. That was the least, least of my worries, I might say. So I went in with. You know, let me set up a training plan. Okay, january as well, I’ll train with the bike that I have. I’ll be on the lookout. Can I find an affordable, low cost bike? Because, again, I don’t want to invest a lot of money in these bikes. Just so you know people who do Ironman, they have five, 10, maybe more thousand dollar bikes. The bikes themselves alone can cost 10,000 or more dollars.

Polly Mertens: 7:09

So I was not going to be participating in that kind of a race, but I did need a better bike in order to complete and compete, if you will, if I was going to make the cutoff. So that was one of my challenges, one of my opportunities is okay, how do I? How do I find a bike? What should I do? So I started exploring that Training-wise. I just started riding my own bike In January.

Polly Mertens: 7:31

I wasn’t I actually I was living in Palm Springs at the time Didn’t start doing any swimming. In January I moved back to my hometown of San Luis Obispo in February and that’s when swimming started, was in February. So let’s see. So I would say there’s like for me there was kind of like three chunks to this of the training. So there was like January, february, march and April and then, like just before, in May. So training January and February was, you know, kind of starting to get the hang of things and I would say, you know, the lessons come quickly.

Polly Mertens: 8:07

And so, getting back in the pool, I had to get a swimming bathing suit, had to get goggles, get in the pool, find out the swim times, those sorts of things, and what I found was my breathing was holding me back, like just feeling comfortable in the pool and breathing so that I could do the laps. You know, a mile is 1.2 mile swim, so that’s it was 66 laps or something like that, or 70 laps or something that I need to do. I couldn’t swim two laps without breaking, stopping, pausing, feeling out of breath, feeling out of breath. So the swim was, in the beginning, a lot of learning how to calm down, how to breathe, breathing to the right, breathing to the left, watching tons of videos. And then I just got all up in my head. I had a dear friend, beth, who came out one day to you know, work with me, help me, you know, go through some drills, different things.

Polly Mertens: 9:00

But I would say just the whole swim, probably for the first two to three months, was just awkward. It was just not smooth, not something that I was getting the hang at. And then something clicked. I don’t know what it was, but I think it was a little bit of peace and ease and I would say, as with doing a lot of things when you start to get more used to them, say, as with doing a lot of things, when you start to get more used to them, you start to just work out the kinks, just working out the kinks of this swim thing. Right, just some days it was just banging it out, wasn’t very pretty. Some days it was try it this way, try that, you know, maybe work on breathing left and right, maybe work on swimming faster, maybe all these things. And I would just say the swimming part was just getting through it. It was like doing the reps, putting in the repetitions, getting in the pool at 6am, putting in the miles, if you will, and eventually it started to get more comfortable, if you will.

Polly Mertens: 10:01

But I did know with the swim that it’s not a pool swim, it’s an ocean swim that I was going to be doing. So that involves a wetsuit. Thankfully I had a wetsuit, so I started doing on the weekends what’s ocean? Or mild ocean swims in a bay, if you will, and there’s nothing like a 52, 54, 56 degree ocean swim. So that was very jarring and working out the wetsuit and I would start with maybe 10, 15 minutes swimming, with lots of help in the water and critters in the water and kayakers, and so that was just kind of the fumbling through it right, just fumbling through. Try a little bit. Go out the next weekend, try a little bit more. The one thing I did notice in the beginning was how cold I was getting. At one point I got out after I think it was probably in the water for maybe about a 30 minute swim and my hands were so cold they call it a cold claw or something like that my hands just were clenched that I couldn’t even get my wetsuit off. So I poured hot water on my hands. I got in the car and just warm myself up after the swim, trying to thaw my hands out so I could get my damn wetsuit off and get out of my clothes. So lots of learnings in those swim, those early swim days. So lots of learnings in those swim, those early swim days.

Polly Mertens: 11:26

I would say training on my mountain bike. You know the course itself 56 miles. It was one out and back along what’s called Highway 1 or the Pacific Coast Highway Beautiful country, rolling hills. Not much of a biker my whole life. I love gentle bike riding, I enjoy riding my bike, but not this many miles, this kind of hills, this kind of terrain. So it became a lot of growth right there and I just had was on the lookout for a bike and talking to people and trying to find a bike.

Polly Mertens: 12:02

And then what was wonderful is one, two wonderful things happened during that journey of trying to source a bike. One is I was looking on Craigslist and Facebook marketplace and there was a gentleman who said I build bikes for people at affordable prices. And so turns out he’s my neighbor, he lives two doors down from me, so that started a wonderful conversation and relationship. To help me, he’s like I’ll help you find a bike or I’ll build a bike for you. So we started doing that and at the same time I was putting out feelers.

Polly Mertens: 12:31

I was looking at bikes for sale, you know, in an affordable range, and at one point a friend of a friend offered to loan me. We asked and she agreed to loan me her road bike. So I didn’t end up buying a bike through this gentleman His name is Joel, my neighbor, but I did get a bike donated to me, contributed, so I could use the bike during my training ride. It in the race Amazing gift, amazing blessing, wonderful. It wasn’t a $10,000 bike, but it in the race Amazing gift, amazing blessing, wonderful. It wasn’t a $10,000 bike but it was way more, way better than my mountain bike, weighed probably half of what my mountain bike weighed. So it was definitely going to do the trick, but I was then getting used to it, right?

Polly Mertens: 13:17

So training days with the bike were, you know, road bike versus the mountain bike that I was used to, and the seat and the adjusting and how do the gears work, and so a couple of things happen in. Thankfully, with Joel, my mechanic, being a neighbor, I was able to go to him with this new bike that I had and ask him questions and work through some things, and what we actually ended up doing is he replaced the seat that I had because I had a lot of discomfort on the rides. We actually found one of the things that I found is in training for the hills that the gear the actual gears I forget what it’s called that the bike chain goes through, were just. They didn’t go down low enough. My legs were not strong enough to climb the hills I was going to need to climb with the gears that came on the bike and he was, you know, he’s resourceful enough, he had extra gear. So he took the bike. We took it apart a little bit, changed the gears out, changed the seat, sent me off on my way and I was climbing hills better than I was definitely climbing before. So that was a huge win, huge win.

Polly Mertens: 14:27

So that was taking place in like February, march, and then I had a lot of travel going on. I had like two week long trips in the middle of trying to train for Ironman, which is already quite a bit of training so, and one of them was overseas. So I was in Malaysia and Singapore for eight or 10 days, didn’t do any training then, and as I came back I said you know, april needs to. So that left me with the entire month of April. I just really needed to focus, block out anything and, honestly, training for an Ironman. What it became is I can’t remember the count of, but I was basically working out six days a week of some form or fashion.

Polly Mertens: 15:09

You know that would look like one to two hour workouts during the week, whether it was a swim, bike or run, and then longer and longer durations of either one of the three or all three together or two together. So as you build in your training, you maybe start with maybe a long bike ride right, so you might do a 10 mile bike ride and then a 20 mile bike ride. You know you grow over the weeks, if you will. Now you start doing what we call bricks, which is you do a swim combined with a bike right, so you’ll do maybe two hours of training, half of it, or 30 minutes of swim and an hour and a half of biking, and you can change the combination, you practice different things so that eventually, come April, you’re definitely doing the whole all three on your training days, right? So Saturday morning, get out to the training area, get in the water, maybe do 30-45 minutes of swimming, do the transition, get on the bike ride for a few hours and then come back and throw on the shoes and do a run, and so those would look like everything from 20 minutes or sorry, two hours, to four hours, growing up to six hours, seven hours, that type of thing. So the trainings just grow and grow and grow and come April my goal was no traveling, focusing on this and really growing into those trainings, and the focus also is your. For me anyway, to have those early morning swims and trainings and sessions is saying no to a lot of things. Talk about focus. So not only are you focusing in the times when you’re training, but you’re having to eliminate anything else that could take you away from fitting these trainings in, especially when you have a.

Polly Mertens: 16:56

How people train, for this is a 70.3 Ironman, which is technically a half Ironman. People that train for the long one, the full Ironman, which is technically half Ironman. People that train for the long one, the full Ironman, which is 12, I don’t know. I think it can go up to 14, 16 hours. That amount of training just boggles my mind. How people can have full-time jobs or full-time businesses and train.

Polly Mertens: 17:15

You have not much life, you don’t do much other things, and so my social life declined. I was going to bed early, a lot of nutrition and the whole nutrition thing and learning about. You know how to fuel. So I had done a lot of races, so I had learned what worked with my body to some degree for fueling. But a lot of people talk about how much more glucose you need because triathlons are very speed oriented. So a lot of the races that I do are more just endurance and distance and just kind of not puttering along but you’re not like in speed mode. But triathletes and triathlons, especially Ironman, is an endurance and speed combo and that’s what made this race whole next level for me.

Polly Mertens: 18:04

Let me just say that right now, like this, this whole race was next level in so many dimensions. So the race itself, the training, the preparation, the logistics, the logistics of the pieces of equipment, like so you know when you go out for a run or if you don’t. But when you go for a run you can imagine you need your maybe a water bottle, tennis shoe, socks, sunglasses, hat, maybe your phone, you know whatever, maybe some music or something like that, and off you go. Five pieces of equipment, my brick days, my full, whether it was. You know, I’m doing two events or two sports or all three. It was a duffel bag, like an entire duffel bag, filled to the brim with towels and wetsuits and you name it, the equipment and the logistics and planning all of this, the checking your list twice can’t say enough about it.

Polly Mertens: 19:00

So get march into april was game on. It was like I need to focus on this, I need to find the. This was very much like the, the finer tuning, if you will finding the things that were weak spots, the, and I’ll go into that. But then I’ll just say so april was powering, hunkering down, powering up, growing. So I, so I knew I had, you know, six weeks if it was the first of April, about six, seven weeks to the race, and you don’t do much in the very last week. So basically, five or six weeks to the race to complete or or grow anything that was a weak spot, whether it was a swim, the run or the bike. So honing in on that in April and just diving in. And what do I need to do? Do I need to tweak nutrition? Do I need to get this, you know, like, is the bike working Okay, can I go the distance? That sort of thing.

Polly Mertens: 19:54

And then for me, what I noticed at that point was I needed and I just felt myself, so I was doing, you know, these three sports, but I had put off or I had put on the sideline any gym training, strength training, and I just knew that that wasn’t serving me. I had a lot of the races I’ve done in the past, especially the Spartan. The obstacle racing is very multi-body, like you’re doing a lot with your body, so you need to be strong and run and endure and be agile and all these things. And I could just tell at that point that I needed to get back in the gym. So April was adding in strength workouts on top of swimming, biking, running, and so just squeezing that in where I could, some things got pushed out because I just didn’t have other hours in the week. So that was just yeah, that was April. And then May was it’s, it’s.

Polly Mertens: 20:44

You know, you got two to three weeks to the race start and it’s just honing in. What’s left to do? What, what, what, what? Fine, fine, tuning what. What are you going to wear on race day? Do you have the right socks? Do you have the? What classes are you going to wear? Is it this backpack or you’re going to wear a belt, you know.

Polly Mertens: 21:04

And then buying things for the bike, you know, because I got to have my food with me. There’s no well, I mean you could, there’s little stops that you can do, but they’re 15 miles apart, you know. If you need food or water, you got it. You should have it with you, especially with the amount of nutrition that you need to be putting out this kind of effort and energy. So, basically, I bought a jacket that is a biking jacket, that had pockets in the back. If you can imagine, down the back, your backside of the jacket, it had these pockets. You may be biking jerseys if you will. So, fine, tuning, finding all those little things. You know I had the goggles for that, I had the wetsuit or I think I did, and all this stuff, and then it’s, you know, putting it all together and trialing it.

Polly Mertens: 21:48

So some things I wanted to share with you that’s kind of the stages of how the race or the brace prep was going is. I want to share with you some of the growth moments. In the train you kind of dive in and tell you some of the things, just sort of pull out and give you a high level view, but some growth, growth moments. So about, I’d say, a month before the race, I was getting into longer swimming in the ocean because I needed to know that I could do that distance right. So in the pool I’d been doing longer and longer distances and training and thankfully the breath was coming into place and I stopped trying to breathe on two sides, left and right, and I just said, look, look, stick with the right. You don’t have time to be learning something new like breathing on the left and if you’re comfortable breathing that right, just do it right. It’s like, just get it done.

Polly Mertens: 22:34

So I go out for a training swim with, thankfully and I will talk about this more but the community that came together to support me in this race and any professional athletes for sure you know they have coaches and trainers and massage people and all this stuff, nutrition, whatnot. So I started developing my own little band of volunteers and helpers and support and like, just like Debbie giving me that bike to use just these little awesome angels. So one of my friends, friend of a friend, tracy, I call her my ocean angel. So we go out, for she volunteered to go out with me on a kayak and watch me, kind of protect me in this ocean because it was a. It’s a harbor where boats come in and out, and so I wanted to swim in this harbor where the race was and out. And so I wanted to swim in this harbor where the race was going to be, but doing it by myself pretty risky, um. So she agreed to sort of be there with me as I swam. She would kayak next to me and just make sure I was. On course I didn’t get, you know, get I don’t know run into anything. You, you cite yourself, but she’s just there to help. And then if anything goes wrong or if I need anything, she’s just there to help. And then if anything goes wrong or if I need anything, she’s right there and obviously keep me out of trouble boats or other things you know, coming towards this.

Polly Mertens: 23:50

So that was the first time she and I got together and I had my wetsuit. You know, suited up, had been doing a lot of practicing with the breath and stuff, so I felt good. So we went out for I think I was in the water a total of about 30 minutes and the claw started happening into my hands and it was leaving my hands, um, almost impossible to swim with and so we, we turned back at some point and she, you know. So we finished. I got back to the starting point where I was and my goal was to do the I think it was a swim and a bike that day. So she headed off in the kayak, was great Freezing. I get out of the water and I had, you know, cold before. So I was like, oh okay, but my hands were clawy, but I had practiced, so I brought hot water, so I put my hands in the hot water.

Polly Mertens: 24:42

When I got back to my car, starting to do the transition, getting the wetsuit off, get the wetsuit off, get into my biking clothes and I start shivering because I hadn’t been moving very much. I was, like, you know, just moving around in the preparation for the biking and I start shivering. And I start shivering and I’m like, damn, I just can’t jump on the bike right now because you’re in wind and I’m wet. You know, like my hair is wet and stuff. So I’m like I need to get in the car and warm up for a little bit. So I jump in the car, turn on the heat, crank it and just start shaking almost pretty uncontrollably, you know, kind of that hypothermic feeling and I have a low thyroid. So I’m used to knowing that my body doesn’t do a good job of reheating itself Once it gets cold. It needs to be helped. It needs something to reheat me, if you will.

Polly Mertens: 25:35

So that’s where the idea of I need to get in the car and warm up. So I’m sitting in the car cranking the heat. 10 minutes goes by. I’m like, okay, well, I’ll just, you know, rubbing my hands together, shivering uncontrollably, drinking hot drink. Just wait, you know, I’ve got a jacket on, as much as I can, just waiting. Turning up the, it was like 85 it’s probably 85 degrees in the car and it took me an hour to stop shivering an hour. And so that hour I’m just sitting there going, holy crap, how am I going to do this race? I don’t have an extra hour in the race day and there’s not going to be my car. How am I going to warm up? I learned later that they had warming tents, so if you needed help with warming up, right, oh, my God, I don’t have an hour to do this. So I start, you know. So that became this discovery moment of what the hell and I ended up not biking that day, just FYI.

Polly Mertens: 26:33

After that experience, I went home with my tail between my legs like how am I going to solve for this? How am I going to overcome? What’s the next step? What do I do? Right, so I start telling this to friends that were in my community and whatnot, whatnot. And what happened is, within a week, a friend of mine who just happened to come over to my house and she I was telling her the story and she said, well, let me see your wetsuit. And I was like, oh, all right, you know, and it’s a I think it’s a wetsuit we made for surfing. So it’s like okay, and I got it here locally where I live, so it’s used to those temperatures, if you will, or I thought so. I showed her the wetsuit. She goes this isn’t very thick. She goes this, this is not a very thick wetsuit. And I was like she goes yeah, let me loan you my wetsuit, right, and she and I were about the same size and I said, okay, I’ll take a look. Whatnot? She goes, yeah, I have a surf wetsuit that’s much better than this. So I picked that up from her.

Polly Mertens: 27:33

Go out with same ocean angel, tracy, the following weekend, and it was not night and day it was so cold but I did not freeze. And it was not night and day it was so cold but I did not freeze. It was a much thicker and harder wetsuit to swim in, so the challenge was greater, but anything that could keep me from hypothermia basically I’ll take it. And I was like I’ll take it. So, speaking of that swim with Tracy, I just wanted to share with you another learning in that.

Polly Mertens: 28:05

So this harbor, this kind of ocean, comes into this harbor bay, morro Bay, where this race was. I had been noticing, you know, the tide goes in and out, so there’s places where you can or can’t, depending on if it’s low tide, then there’s not enough water, you know, in certain areas, if you will. So I’ve been checking that and kind of aware that there’s websites for looking at the tides. So I go out with Tracy on the second ocean swim and I have to tell you just one moment of her and I starting out and probably within the first five minutes, you know, and there’s a lot of just repetitive motion, if you can imagine your head in the water and you turn to the right and then your head is in the water and you turn to the right to breathe and your head’s in the water and you turn to right to breathe over and over and over. So you just kind of get into this trance, if you will. And so I’m just swimming along and, thankfully, like the wetsuit’s keeping me warm. So I’m paying a lot of attention to that, the breathing, I’m relaxing into it, and as I look over at Tracy I just have such a deep moment of gratitude. She’s kayaking next to me and I’m just like there’s my ocean angel. There she is, there’s my ocean angel. And what a gift to have people who will just volunteer for other people like this to invest their time because she’s running the race. This isn’t her race, but people that will support people that are up to things like this. And she felt honored to support me. It was so beautiful, so beautiful. So I just swam that day in such gratitude, going in.

Polly Mertens: 29:45

So we go, we swim into the Harbor and then we turn around and then we were swimming out and I told her what my goal was. We hadn’t made it anywhere near to my goal on the first swim because I got so cold. Thankfully, I was feeling good. I swam so fast to that turnaround point and she’s like wow, you did that in like 25 minutes or 20, 25 minutes. She’s like that was great, you’re really getting, you know, you’re getting the hang of it. And then we turn around and then we were going to swim back. Well, come to find out, I had a current helping me get to that first turnaround point, but I didn’t have that current helping me on the way back and it actually was against me and so I swam and swam, you know, and I’m swimming at like the pace I was swimming in the pool, just breathing gently, you know, cruising along. There’s not a lot of waves in this part of the harbor and whatnot, but it’s a little choppy, but not much.

Polly Mertens: 30:36

But the current, and I started noticing this current and I’m swimming and I just, you know, in large distance, open water swimming, you like, I just you know, and oh, in large distance, open water swimming, you like, I said you, you have this repetitive you’re looking at the water, then you’re looking out at a monument, like you look out, and there’s a building to your right. Maybe that building’s on your right for two minutes or five minutes or 10 minutes, depending on how big the building is, how fast you’re swimming or whatnot. And I just remember there was this bunch of trees up on the hill outside the, you know, on the side that I was viewing and I felt like I was looking at those same trees for like 20 minutes and they would not go away. And I was like, am I even moving? I’m like, am I even doing anything? Like how can I be looking at these trees for 20 minutes? I have. Am I not going anywhere? And that’s when it starts to hit me, like this current, at the pace that I’m swimming at, is going to keep me locked in. So I start swimming a little bit harder and a little bit harder, and we’ve been out in the water for almost an hour at that point. And so I asked Tracy to hold onto her kayak and take me in. I was like, look, I’m kind of done with the swimming and I achieved what I wanted to achieve. I wanted to know that the WETSA would work. I wouldn’t get cold Swam for an hour, almost an hour, I think.

Polly Mertens: 31:56

It was like 50, 55 minutes, that’s fine, let’s go in. She starts kayaking and she can barely get us to shore, like, like the what the, the current, although it doesn’t look very strong, was surprisingly strong. And she’s kayaking, kayaking, kayaking, and we’re not going anywhere. I mean, we’re going a little bit, but I was like whoa, holy cow, okay, get out of the water. It feels like a win.

Polly Mertens: 32:21

Um, this is about two and a half weeks to race day, I think it was. I was like I didn’t get the, didn’t get the claws, didn’t make it all the way back. That wasn’t great, um, but I was in that water for an hour. It wasn’t cold. Um, I know I have endurance, so it’s like okay, I know, you know, maybe this was unusual, if you will, but more to come on that, let’s, let’s. I’m going to put a pin in that. That was so anyway. So I did go on that day and I did, um, I think I did a bike after that, so, anyway. So the growth moment, though, was finding that cold and then having, you know, a conversation with someone getting a new wetsuit and the difference that made. So that was huge.

Polly Mertens: 33:03

And then also, um, on the biking, because I knew that this course was very rolling Hills not, I mean, this isn’t like the Alps or something treacherous, but it is rolling, and I have not been a great biker my whole life, and I just noticed how much I struggled on getting up and over these Hills and they’re they’re, you know, on a long distance hills if you will. And so one of them is like a two mile hill, like it just goes up and up and up for like two miles, doesn’t give up. And I just knew like I need to start doing some hill training. And I remember a friend gave me some coaching in the very beginning because I started like just knowing that I’m not great on hills and knowing that this course had hills, oh I need to do some hill training. So I did that. One day she said, what are you doing doing hill training? I was like, oh, okay, maybe I shouldn’t. So I didn’t do hill training for months.

Polly Mertens: 33:54

But in April I was like I need to get some quads. So that’s where I got into the gym. I started adding on super, you know, strength training my quads. I started doing hill training repeats. That would be one of my days. You know, take an hour, I do 10 reps going up this hill, go up the hill, come back, go up the hill, come back, go up the hill, come back. I mean, take a little break, catch my breath and whatnot, but just building that practice of knowing how to get up the hill, knowing how to keep your cadence, and then in the gym, building the muscles that I needed to help me get up that hill, and it got better and better. So, thankfully, I adjusted you know, I knew I had a weak spot and adjusted right. It’s correct and continue. So hill training was huge to the success of the overall race because there was lots of hills. There was probably 20 hills, maybe more 20 hills overall there and back. So that was huge.

Polly Mertens: 34:47

And then, um, as I said, in the swim, in the pool, just everything clicking into place. Finally, like you know, I would say that, um, in any kind of training and apply this to your life, apply this to business, please is you know, you create a plan, you do your preparation and you work your plan right. You just work that consistent thing. This is what we’re doing and you correct and continue, you take in information as you go. How’s it going? Did that work? Do you need more of this? Do you need to adjust? Oh, you think you need two swims. You might need three swims a week. Maybe you know if that’s the thing that’s failing for you or maybe you need to do add strength training, like I did to the hills because I wasn’t strong on getting up these hills. I could do flat, no problem, but getting up these hills I needed much bigger quads quickly. I wish I could have done this three months prior, but so be it. Now that became a lesson, learning later Some other aha moments or growth things for me.

Polly Mertens: 35:45

You know, just like I said, finding my weak spots and adjusting. You know that swim, those months and months of practicing swim, whether it was in the pool, out in the ocean. You know itself practicing with a friend in the kayak, trying to do the actual course, noticing that current, just like finding the weak spots and adjusting, like tweaking, taking in information, tweaking it, adjusting it. And then a big win was like one day I had never ridden more than 20 miles, so, like a breakthrough, I rode 50 miles in one day. I mean it was like amazing, like okay, I think I’m going to, I think I’m going to be able to do this race. It was 56 miles. I’m like I’m close enough.

Polly Mertens: 36:25

I know the challenge that I knew was can I do it in time? Can I do it in time Because it’s a timed thing eight and a half hours right, and my bike rides were taking me a lot longer than some people I was probably. Anyway, it doesn’t matter the miles per minute, but it was not what it needed to be and I just kept trying to learn how to ride faster. You know, get up these hills faster. All this stuff, just making you know, little incremental changes.

Polly Mertens: 36:51

If you will, some other things I want to share with you. Just enlisting community and support you know from the beginning, posting it socially, sharing with friends, family. This is what I’m getting up to Like holy cow, you know. I know what I know so far in the beginning, but there’s going to be growth moments along the way and finding mentors. So I look at it, you know, now that I reflect back on it, it’s like I’m going from, you know, los Angeles to New York and I have a roadmap right. But people that have been from Los Angeles to New York have walked that path before, ridden that path before. Those are your people to start talking to. They can tell you like, oh man, watch out for this. And there’s this thing that you could fall into. Don’t fall into that trap or avoid this. Or here, this will help you Find those people. Enlist your community.

Polly Mertens: 37:48

The bike that was donated for me. Thank you God, debbie, I appreciate you so much for that. The racing wetsuit oh my God, like if I hadn’t had that wetsuit, never would have made it, never would have made it, saved my life and saved my race, never would have made it, saved my life and saved my race. It became successful for that. My bike mechanic, joel oh my God, you know.

Polly Mertens: 38:11

And then huge, like cherry on top foundation, whatever you want to call it Samantha Pruitt, my co-host, having a former and you know, multi-ironman woman in my back pocket to talk, to talk, you know, on the weekly, on the daily, tweaking this, adjusting this, what about this here? Go talk to this person. Oh, you’re going to need this Things to look out for I was doing a lot on my own, you know I had done races before, so I wasn’t coming to her like, hey, tell me the 101 of racing. But I was at. You know, I’m in the fifth level class. Hey, I need some fine tuning on this. What are some of the nutrition things that you do, specifically, those types of things Invaluable, invaluable.

Polly Mertens: 38:52

Yes, you can do an Ironman or Half Ironman without the support of a coach like that, but so much harder, so many more lessons. You would need to train a lot longer, I think, I mean, depending on who you are, but having a coach, like a Samantha in my back pocket and to be able to call and talk through things and get that advice and get the guidance that I needed, it made it. It made it everything. And I wanna just double tap on this because made it everything and I want to, just, you know, double tap on this because a couple of things that I’ll say now in the race itself was having Samantha at the course in various places throughout the day. What that? That rock, that person, it it, um, it just a.

Polly Mertens: 39:45

You feel seen, you feel validated, or I felt seen, I felt validated and just deeply loved and supported 100 the whole time. And that was such a gift, such a gift and I’ll say more on that about when I go into the race day, but I want to share some other things. So, um, talking to guides, get a coach, like good God, like go faster together, you know. Get someone supporting you, helping you. You don’t have to do it alone, and so my community and I haven’t even talked about all of the people that were there, but there was just so many whispers and moments and people who showed up and offered help, and do you want to get together and talk about this, or can I tell you about my race experience? Just, and countless people on YouTube. Thank God for all the people that make all these amazing YouTube videos. Good God, like, I learned so much from watching other people’s transitions and watching other people swim, and countless hours and online coaches, if you will. So thank you to all the people who share their story, share their gifts, share their experience, share their wisdom. Amazing, amazing, amazing I want to say the value of being able to practice a race or an experience that you’re going to do in the actual place. Holy F, oh my God. So I live near Morro Bay.

Polly Mertens: 41:13

I was able to go and train regularly and I put myself in that environment purposefully. I knew every hill. I knew where all the challenging spots were. I knew where it was going to go fast. I knew where it was going to get hard. I knew every hill. I knew where all the challenging spots were. I knew where it was going to go fast. I knew where it was going to get hard. I knew where it was going to get windy. I knew where it was going to be cold. I knew where. You know all the things right.

Polly Mertens: 41:32

The swim, like I said, hugely valuable to learn, the things that I learned leading up to it. Just if you can ever do it in the actual environment, go and do it, do it once, do it as many times as you possibly can do it, do it in the beginning, do it in the middle, huge value. And then I would say, um, I was able to, thankfully, this is amazing, just how the universe lines these things up. So my longest day of training was going to be a seven hour day, about I think it was three weeks. Three weeks, I think it was three weeks before the race, april 17th, 27th, april 27th, and it turns out there was a triathlon going on near, not too far away and I almost signed up for the full one. I said I should do the whole thing, practice over there, um, you know, basically 70 miles. And my Samantha was like no, no, no, no, no, you do not need to be doing 70 miles three weeks before your race. You will be destroyed. You will need the recovery time from that. And then she’s like no, do the middle length, which is called an Olympic distance. Such a gift. That advice saved my ass and probably saved me from dropping out, to be honest, because I would have been destroyed, absolutely destroyed.

Polly Mertens: 42:50

That course that this particular race is at is the former Wildflower course, which, if you know that, is known for being incredibly brutal. It was brutal and I did the tiny one, I did like the 30 miler one, and I was hard, so hard. So if you can practice ever doing it so I did two triathlons this year Woohoo, yay, that feels good. So if you can do that in practice, in preparation, I highly recommend that. That was an opportunity to put it all together. Three weeks before the race, I had an opportunity to pretend like I was well, not pretend, but like I’m doing a race. I’m not doing 70 miles, but that’s okay, I can still practice transition one, practice transition two, see how the bike does all these things. And this course had a lot bigger hills than the ones I was planning to be on. So I was like, okay, how are the legs doing? This is three weeks into building the legs. We’ll see how this goes.

Polly Mertens: 43:43

Some things I grew in confidence and some things took away my confidence. Right, the confidence builder was these heels were no joke and these are clip-ins. This is the first time I’ve ever, when I got this bike from Debbie I’d ever utilize. I didn’t even own clip-in shoes. I had to buy clip-in shoes, learn how to use them, fall, skin my legs. I have scars from that moment. That was not beautiful. So I’m doing this race and doing this race in clip-ins in pretty severe hilly conditions and I never got out of my clip-ins. I did. I think it was like 25 miles or 24 miles or something like that, 27, whatever, and I never unclipped and I was like check me out, huge confidence builder, like if I can do those hills, I can do the. No, you know it’s 56 miles different, but some of these hills I was like I just do that and like what I had to learn to get up those hills, knock it out of my clips. And some of them were just little baby baby. You know pedaling.

Polly Mertens: 44:51

The confidence weakener was the swim. So it wasn’t a big heat, meaning there was maybe 30 to 50 women in my heat. So my plan was oh, get off to the side, let the fast women get out, and then I’ll kind of be over here. Well, what I did was I put myself with the slow pokes and the you know what are we doing out here, you know kind of thing. And people were swimming over the top of me. They were swimming sideways. I was like what’s going on, so and then I just got a little worked up. You know what’s going on. What is this? Swimming with all these other people? You know, swimming in a pool you never swim with other people. Swimming in the ocean by myself, I never swam with another person crossing over me and kicking me and whatever right.

Polly Mertens: 45:35

So that swim took a long time, didn’t do so great coming out of the water in that swim. So the confidence was down on that. The bike was great. The run was like didn’t feel great. Nutrition, little bonking here and there.

Polly Mertens: 45:50

So lessons learned, regroup transitions though huge confidence builder. Huge. I had everything. It was late, so I finally had the opportunity to not only lay it out because I’ve been laying it out of my car and practicing and stuff, but lay it out like I needed it in the race and see how it was going to like look, when I came back to take all these things apart and change my clothes and how fast, you know, get the bike off and whatnot. Huge confidence builder. I was like, okay, I got this transition thing, I get it now Right, and that was a shorter swim and it wasn’t in the ocean, was in a lake, so it didn’t freeze, so all good, that was before. I knew how. My wetsuit was super thin, so that one worked. It was cold, but it was like 10, not quite 10 degrees cooler in the ocean. So, um, let’s see what else do I want to share with you? All right, race prep. I just want to share a little bit of my theories on race prep.

Polly Mertens: 46:42

So taper week, which is what we call it, is the week just before. So if your race is on a Saturday or Sunday, taper week is anything from the prior weekend up until so Monday through Friday. Let’s say my race was on a Sunday. So my taper week is light, light, light. I like to go hard, light, I like to go hard. Like I peak about three weeks before race. The next one to two weeks is, you know, maybe midway, maybe. So if I’m seven was my peak, then maybe I’m doing a four or a five hour, you know. Peak week, if you will. Paper week I’m walking, I’m stretching, I’m ironing out.

Polly Mertens: 47:24

So I had been having some back. My back was all tight. My cat, my buttocks were just starting to notice like all these tight spots I needed to work out. So I was in mass smoothing things out, right, I was on heating pads, you know, from muscle growth and tension and all these things, you know, there’s all this working out. Right, you get tight. So you know, every night, on a heating pad and the muscle, what’s it called? A taser gun or whatever it’s called, I forget and just pounding on those muscles to work out and flatten them out and soften them up, gentle on the nutrition, and basically you’re just trying to not, excuse me, fuck anything up.

Polly Mertens: 48:07

That last week. Don’t get stressed, don’t go. You know, think you need to go. Maybe I need to go get another swim. No, you don’t need to go get another swim. No, you don’t need to go. You know, like super light things, if you need anything, just take it all down a notch.

Polly Mertens: 48:24

Because what you’re looking for and I’ve seen this before is when I taper my body, what happens is this body is used to being at an active level every weekend and it’s used to in midweek, and when you don’t give it that, it builds up and it’s like it gets excited, it gets ready. It’s like pumped up for that day and then you have, I would say, not explosive energy, but you have this storehouse of muscle and energy and anticipation ready to put it, put it into play. Put it into play like get out on that course and like give it all you got, if you will. So my taper week. And then looking at other people, so, as the race got closer, people start coming into town. We go out the day or two before to get my race bib and all that gear, all the gear, good grief. And I tell you there were people biking. You know that are obviously triathletes on very fancy bikes biking away, biking away and running around and I’m like y’all are nuts, man, doing that kind of hard. I mean, granted, you know, I’ll tell you if you’re an Ironman and you’re coming to do a half Ironman, yeah, you’re already training at different levels. That’s a whole nother story.

Polly Mertens: 49:37

But basically paper week. I want to just leave you with like, take it seriously and chill. Like I was doing a lot of resting. I was sleeping, a lot hydrating, huge hydrating. So don’t look at what other people are doing, just ignore them. They’re doing their thing and their race, visualizing though. So the last few days. So I do a meditation every morning pretty much every day, or since I decided to do the race, I was doing a visualization and my visualization included me crossing the finish line and celebrating because I like to have the outcome in mind, right. What I find is, you know how I’ll get through the race and you know all that stuff. It actually is more important to me that I have the outcome that I want and somehow it just all fills in. If you will, last couple days I start filling in greater pieces. I actually run through the entire race in a visualization. You know, emotionally, feel it, see it going well, you know that whole thing. So visualizing is huge. And then it’s critical.

Polly Mertens: 50:39

We forgot like two or three things on race morning. They weren’t critical items. Like I had planned to get up, make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich I could have it on the bike. Totally forgot. Had some eggs in the fridge that I was going to grab. Forgot everything in the fridge. Just totally forgot that whole prep. Right, like oh crap, but they weren’t so critical that I couldn’t go on. Right, they would have been nice to have. Not need to have and anything that’s critical. Write that shit down and like remember it, like put it big. You know so I would say, because they weren’t on the critical list. It was okay that, that we forgot them, but if they are critical, you need to write that down. And then do you. And so for me, you know so, the race was 6am, backed it up, backed it up, okay, I got to get up at 3am. So why I said 3am to myself? Because I could have gotten up later just if I wanted to stretch and get dressed and you know whatever.

Polly Mertens: 51:35

But I had realized in my training mornings the difference it made for me when I got grounded in my meditation and I knew that I wanted to bring that gratitude energy into my race. So, 315, I’m meditating on race day, you know, for 15 minutes. I’m just putting myself in the space and in the place and in the energy and the vibration. That means what, what it is for me. That’s me doing me. Does everybody need to do a meditation, you know, for 15 minutes before? No, but do you. And so that’s what my race morning looked like is I get grounded, I get centered, I just feel all of myself, all of myself, if you will, and then I take that into my day and that was exactly what I needed, if you will, all right. So let’s talk a little bit here.

Polly Mertens: 52:26

I want to start wrapping this up, but I want to tell you about actual race day, because there were some gems in this that I want to pass along or just have you hear about and maybe, if you’re thinking of doing an Ironman, just know that sometimes this is how it goes and it goes differently for different people. But I have been asked a lot by friends and family like how was your Ironman? How was your Ironman? So this is the experience of Polly’s Ironman from the inside out, if you will. So one of the things I want to say is just reiterate that an Ironman, they bucket, the time limit that they give you is eight and a half hours, right, and I had been training and practicing and was concerned that I was going to be able to complete in eight and a half hours just because of how the thing, different things that I had been practicing and building the bike, the swim and the run. The run I wasn’t so concerned about. I know my run pace is about a 12 minute mile, so it was going to take me about two and a half hours, you know. So I just I just knew that.

Polly Mertens: 53:21

But the other pieces, I hadn’t put it all together yet. So, um, a big component I would just, you know, be honest, just share with you transparently. I’m a, I’m a life and a mindset coach. I was not having a good mindset day that day. It was not, my mind was not on my side, we were, we weren’t taking it it out and it was so much mental chatter, as you can imagine, for a lot of different reasons and I’ll share with you here.

Polly Mertens: 53:48

But you know that eight and a half hours was just like looming in my head. Can I get this thing done in eight and a half hours? I’m like, oh man, girl, you are going to have to work, you got to get going right Like everything. Right, like everything was no, no, pausing, no, slowing down gas, foot on the pedal, go. So one of the beautiful things is I thought I was going to have to literally walk to where the race transition is, where you start and you put your things away and then you start, was about three quarters of a mile, almost a mile from where I thought we were going to park.

Polly Mertens: 54:21

So I was preparing myself like, oh, not only am I doing 70 miles in the race, I’m going to do 71, because I got to get to the race and walking in a wetsuit and I think I was going to do flip-flops that morning I was like, oh for God’s sake. Thankfully we found a street, was not blocked off, so Samantha was able to get me to the start line within like two thirds of a mile or, like you know, less than half a mile, which was awesome. That little bit just like started my day, like, yeah, things are working, things are going well Good. So the other thing I just want to share with you not only is there an eight and a half hour cutoff, the swim part, so I’ve been practicing swimming, having off days on days, mostly off days. Let’s just, you know, be honest, the good thing, the good news, was I felt confident in my wetsuit, I had wetsuit booties, I had a cap, I drank a lot of warm water and I was like doing all the things that I could. I wore gloves until the, you know, right before getting in, I was trying to keep my inner core temperature as warm as possible going into it. So if it took an hour and 10 minutes, I was going to be as warm as possible for as long as possible. So I would say Samantha and I were walking. This was. This will show up later and I just want to share this now.

Polly Mertens: 55:37

So we go to the transition, drop off some things that I need to drop off. It’s about a quarter of a mile to the starting line. Samantha, bless her heart, is there with me the whole time, just like let’s go. You got this and we walk by this sign, this woman you know, it was pretty dark, five something in the morning can’t see too many things or people, not a lot of spectators and not many spectators mostly family maybe, or, you know, close people to the racers and this one lady had a sign that said don’t give up. So I look at each other, like well, that’s super encouraging, don’t give up. It’s like okay, well, all right and no other signs, right?

Polly Mertens: 56:15

So get to the starting line and we’re standing there and the sun’s starting to come up as we’re waiting, because you know you want to get there early enough, but not too early. So you’re standing around in the cold and you’re just getting more and more nerves. But you get, you know, you get yourself ready to get yourself in place and then they, they, the gun goes off, people start, and then it’s this every every four seconds, I think it is. They let three or four people go into the water. So you’re kind of waiting. You’re just like, okay, the race has technically started. You don’t start your race until you cross the timing chip line, but still there’s a little bit of waiting to get going.

Polly Mertens: 56:49

And I’m standing around okay, race has started. And I’m just standing there and I look out over the water and I see racers starting to swim and there’s racers just all around me. We’re all just like a bunch of wet seals, you know, in our wetsuits and our funny looking caps and our goggles and the nervous excitement that, oh my God, it’s. The race is on right, like go, but we’re standing in like a cattle corral waiting to get launched. And I just had a moment of peace and I look out over the water and I see the racers starting and I could see this light in the distance.

Polly Mertens: 57:26

That is actually the turnaround point and it just looked like peace to me and it’s been, you know, six months to get to that point and and I just had a moment of grace and presence and I’m like, here it is. This is that moment you’ve been thinking about, you’ve been working so hard towards, and I felt so grateful, thinking about all the people that has helped me get to that point, all of the things that I had done to get me to that point, all of the miraculous things coming together to get me to that point the people, the community, my own self showing up for myself and all the trainings, feeling grateful for all the racers and their journey and all the people behind them that helped them get to that point. And I turn left and you know just like tears are coming to me now. They were coming to me then and I look and Samantha’s standing right there.

Polly Mertens: 58:39

And to have someone in your court when you’re about to go do something, that’s pretty damn hard. It was amazing. It was amazing. I just felt so much gratitude. It was just having these downloads and waves from my body of gratitude, just standing there like, wow, this is it. I mean it’s not the finish, but this is one of those moments that I’ll never forget. And there’s a guy next to me, or next to Samantha, and his wife or something was in front of me and he saw me and he, like fist, bumped me. He’s like you just could see how grateful I was to be there in that moment. It was so special. It was so special.

Polly Mertens: 59:29

I just kind of sat in the gratitude and soaked that up, because in my morning meditations one of the things that I found is I had this process. Thank you, tony Robbins, for looking back on your life and seeing those gratitude moments. Robbins, for looking back on your life and seeing those gratitude moments. And until I started doing this practice, I didn’t realize in those moments to be grateful. I found I often looked back at the moments and then was grateful. So what I combined in that moment was being grateful in the now, for the now, instead of living in the now and being later grateful for then. I was grateful in my now, for my now, and I’ve been doing that practice more and more in the last year and it has opened up so much more presence and gratitude for the now, in the now. We have so much gratitude if we are aware of it and just recognize these moments and how precious they are. Don’t just blow through them. Be grateful for them when they’re happening, not just later. So that was amazing, amazing, amazing.

Polly Mertens: 1:00:51

And then game on, get the frick in the water. I will share with you the strategy that I had, because I knew that, having done that kayak practicing I’d gone out into this water previously, had practiced it that my strategy was swim consistently, but as calmly as possible, to the turnaround point. You have to go around some buoys and then you come back the other half. That’s when I was going to face the current, that moral bay current, the water coming in from the ocean. And so that was my plan is don’t so in in triathlons, it’s don’t give everything you’ve got in the swim or the bike or you’ll lose gas for the run, you won’t finish because you won’t have the legs for it. So I was like, ok, just cruise in, like know that you can swim the swim in the beginning and then you’re going to have to swim harder on the way back. So they get to that turnaround point.

Polly Mertens: 1:01:42

And it was, it was still chaos. I mean you know so many people in the water and swimming and water splashing and somebody’s cutting you off and you’re bumping into something. I mean it’s just, it’s not an effortless, just in the pool, cruising along, swimming, it’s the whole time you’re, you’re like looking around, you’re like swim, swim, look around, swim, swim, look around. It’s not just this meditative, just swimming, uh, race, swimming in an ocean is a whole nother thing.

Polly Mertens: 1:02:10

Get to the turnaround point, start to turn around the bend, and I start to feel that current and it felt stronger than I think I’d ever known it to be. And I, you know swimming. And I’m kind of looking up and I’m like, wow, let’s go. And so like I start to feel like I’m swimming sideways. I’m like what the heck? So I turn myself, I have to turn, like I’m trying to go perpendicular to it and I’m swimming sideways. I’m like, oh, I have to like swim against it just to stay up with it. So I start doing that and I’m just like, where I pop up, I’m like what’s going on here? And it looked like the Titanic, like after the boat had sunk, it was like everybody was like arms were in the air. People were like what the hell? You know, a lot of these people had never been to Morro Bay. A lot of them had never done an ocean swim. They’d only done a pool swim. Probably none of them knew that this current was there. I knew it was coming. It was more than I remembered too. I’d had one training against this current and this felt like something else. I was like whoa.

Polly Mertens: 1:03:13

So I literally there was a pole like a, like a, a pier pole kind of thing. It was the only thing in the water at this point. There’s a lot of kayakers out there and people on sups to help us, you know, like if you got into trouble. So there’s guides and you know, it’s not just just the swimmers, there’s lots of people along the way protecting us, taking care of us, medics, things like that. So this pole is there and there’s this gal that just like gets slammed into the pole. It seemed like I think she was going there, kind of like I was thinking like get, get in and hold on to this pole for a minute, get get yourself adjusted. So I like swim up to this pole, grabbed onto this piece of kelp as like rope, and I’m just like, well, you know, and there’s just, you know, hundreds of people just kind of swimming about and just, and all of a sudden, people are swimming so hard you should just see the splashing. Like I said, it was just.

Polly Mertens: 1:04:00

I was like regroup, regroup, whoa, what the hell I’m like hold and then that sign. So the first thing I was like I don’t know if I can do this. I was like I don’t know if I have what it takes to to get over this current, this thing, you know. So actually, I think that was a. I think I went to that pole a minute after I had been swimming and trying and looking to the side and I was like I’m not moving, like I’m swimming, but I’m not moving. I was like whoa, I need to regroup. So then I went to the pole and I was like I’m not moving, like I’m swimming, but I’m not moving. I was like whoa, I need to regroup. So then I went to the pole and I was like, okay, I need to like think about this. How am I going to do this? You don’t have a lot of time. Like I didn’t have time to just sit there for 20 minutes ago. Maybe I’ll, maybe it’ll die down and I’ll I’ll, I’ll come back at it or I’ll I’ll. No, you gotta, you’ve got to come up with what next, what next? And part of me was like I don’t know if I can do this. And I looked over and there’s, there’s a sandbar. Like you could swim to the sandbar and just get out and just be like I can’t do it. Okay, I’ll swim to the sandbar and just get out of the race right, or get to one of these kayaks and they can get me out of the water or something. And I was like that’s sign, don’t give up. Last in my mind, don’t give up. And I went, oh damn, and in that moment I was like, well, if I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna have to give it everything I’ve got, because if I don’t, it’s not gonna be a bike or a run. So you, you, you know this is so the new strategy emerges. New strategy emerges is warrior, the fuck up, warrior, up girl. And I’ve done some warrior training. So I knew I had an inner warrior and I was like, okay, we’re just gonna have to warrior this up and it’s gonna be a hard-ass game on swim. And I, you know, I’m sure some of these people are like, yeah, this is just how they swim. You know they’re, they’re good swimmers or they practice a lot or whatever. But this was felt like survival of the fittest. So I just swam my heart out, swam, swam so hard and I come up and I made it a little bit as a lady with the kayak and so I was like, can I just hold on to your kayak for or sup. Can I hold on to your sup for a minute? And she starts kind of like backpedaling. And then the current. I’m like, what are you doing? She’s like, well, there’s a strong current. I’m like I’ve got, so I start going backwards. I’m like, and she’s like, well, there’s a buoy over there, like a round little white kind of buoy that you could hook up a boat to or something like that. She’s like I think there’s a rope on there so I just swim, swim, swim to that buoy and you know, five minutes later, whatever, like catching my breath I get to that buoy and I’m like, you know, and people are just thrashing and swimming and I could just see people like I look over to the side and people are just swimming as hard as they can and they’re just, they’re just staying in place, like you could just see the current like washing over them. They’re just kind of doing pool swimming and the current is just like washing over them and I’m like, oh, my God. I’m like am, am I gonna have to swim this hard for half a point, six tenths of a mile? Like, oh, my god. I’m like, well, don’t give up. Just whatever you’re gonna do, what can you do? Right, like just get through the swim, just so. I was like, well, swim as hard as I can, swim as hard as I can. People sweat. You know people are all over you, next to you, around you. You know people are all over you, next to you, around you. You know, swim, swim, swim, whatever. Come up for air. And you know I’m swimming so hard every time I have to take some air. So I like turn on my back and I swim a couple of strokes, just getting more air, but trying to keep moving, so I’m not going backwards. Flip over on my stomach, swim, swim, swim, swim, swim. To another buoy, right, catch my breath, catch my breath Again. I see people next to me and I can see, cause I can see like landmarks across them, but they’re just like swimming in place and I’m like, oh my God, how are we going to do this? How are we going to do this? Don’t give up, don’t give up. That sign just kept flashing in my head. I was like, okay, I’m just going to swim as hard as I can to the next thing. So I just swam, swam, swam to the next buoy and I like, now that I think about it. I was like I just swam kind of from buoy to buoy to catch my breath, about 30 seconds, okay, and then, and then I swam across them to a guy with a kayak and you know, just take a breath, take a minute, and I got through this patch. It was probably like 20 to 25 minutes of swimming, of hard current that you had to get through, because that’s like where it came in. Get through, get across it. It wasn’t easy after that but it was easier, right, it was doable, like it was totally doable, and you don’t have to put in, you know, 150 effort. You can put in 100 effort so that. And then just go get out. And so you know, get out of the water, I’m like, oh my god, I made it. I mean it felt like survival of the fittest, like, oh my god. I mean there were times when I was like, am I gonna live? Like it felt panicky, like panicky kind of swimming right, like, oh my god, I get out. And I’m just like, oh, and then you gotta kind got to kind of get your legs. You’ve been in the water cold. You know hard effort, you know kind of exhaustion, but just like holy cow, you just work so hard. You haven’t used your legs very much for an hour and 10 minutes. It kind of like, oh yeah, wake up. Now. We’re upright Right, just kind of hobble out of the water, hobble on. And I come out and Samantha’s there and she had been seeing people having such struggles and she’s like I’m so proud of you and I just kept running and I ran on and it was amazing that her saying that in that moment gave me miles and miles of fuel to go on, because I can remember being on the bike and people are passing me and passing me and passing me and she’s like I’m so proud of you and I’m like I’m proud of myself. You know what I can do this, I can do this and I get on the bike. You know long story, whatever. And I didn’t know if I was going to make it Like I. It took me an hour and 12 minutes and I started walking there like am I done? You know confusion and doubt. Those are things that my brain likes to do. Should I keep going? I mean, I don’t want to go for another six hours if I don’t have to right Confusion and doubt. Should I? Am I? Am I in it. Can I keep going? Because an hour and 10 minutes is a cutoff. But they weren’t. They didn’t cut me off. The guy says keep racing. So I get going, get on the me. Very humiliating as a strong athlete to have just not the strength to stay in the lead but you just start falling further and further behind. 56 miles I think it was about four and a half, almost five hours of biking for me I suddenly found myself almost in last place. Humbling, moment. Humbling when I’m used to being first in my age group in Spartan races every time, you know, just used to being in first place. The humbleness, the humbleness. And I was just give. I mean, I never took my foot off the gas pedal, I had my foot on the gas. But I’m like, how do I bike faster? How can I bike faster, trying so hard anyway? So I get back in for transition, to the last transition, to get onto the run, and I’m realizing, like, how far behind I am. Like, oh my God, am I going to make that eight and a half mile, eight and a half hour cutoff? Am I going to make it? And I’m at the text, man, I’m not reading a lot of texts because I’m just so focused on mental chatter and just feeding and water. I mean, you’ve just got so, so many things to do. It’s hard to believe. It’s like 56 miles, five hours, but like you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re gearing up, you’re gearing down, you’re. Am I doing a protein at this time or am I doing carbohydrates right now? When was the last time I had water? You know like how, how far am I in what? What? How many? What’s the hill? Am I in the right gear ratio? Just constant little micro adjustments. I don’t know what to say. Maybe it’s like flying a plane, but you’re also, you’re that plane. You know like you’re the one that you have to keep fueled and going in the right direction, if you will. So, so much. So I did see one text from Samantha as I’m coming into transition two, and it said something, something whatever, and I had two hours and 20 minutes to finish to get into that eight and a half hour, and I was like I don’t know if I can do this, like I’ve just put out every effort that I had the swim, the bike, just everything was art. And I was like I know I can do 13 miles, I know I can’t, but can I do it in that amount of time. And she texted me and I saw something like 11 minutes and I knew she meant 11 minute miles and I was like I haven’t run an 11 minute mile in 20 years. I was like I don’t think I’m going to make it. And then, as I’m coming out of the transition and getting into the run, just starting to run two and a half hours ahead of me, and I’m seeing people finishing and they’re celebrating, you know, and they’re cheering, but it’s like I’m practically in last place. People are done. I got two and a half more hours of endurance, running, you know, 13 miles. I’m just like not feeling it, not feeling it at all, just wanting, just like so much of my soul is just sunk Like, oh God, you know, I just yeah. So there was dark, dark times there that run, right. And so I’m running and just kind of solo running because no, everybody’s ahead of me, everybody’s gone, right. And then you get into these laps. So there’s one lap and then two laps and I get in and all of a sudden there’s a lot of people and I’m like, oh, here’s where all the people are, this is the bulk of the race, but they’ve already done their first lap and they’re on their second, they’re on their last lap and I’m just starting the 13 miles and I just felt like a fraud. I’m like I’m running with these people, but so be it. And then wanting you know, don’t give up, that was like. The whole thing was like, thank God, I saw that sign and it helped, and I got to about mile five and Samantha was there, thankfully. It was like the turnaround point and you go back out for another long, seven mile lap or something like that. And I get that at turn point and she had brought people out from a local restaurant or something and they started cheering my name and it was like it was just what I needed, it was just what I needed to hear. And I turned and they’re like go, polly. And I just headed back out and I was like why bother, I’m not going to make it. Why go through seven more miles, another hour and a half, whatever, it was an hour and a half or something. Why? Why do that? Like? Why don’t I just stop? Like, call it good? And I was like no, try it, just try it. Just see what you can do. Just see what you can do. They’re not done yet they haven’t pulled you yet Right, or they haven’t, you know, cut you off yet. Okay, so I go back out for that second lap. People are thinning out. Start to notice not a lot of people out here all of a sudden, like yep, I’m kind of towards the back of the pack, towards the back of the pack. I just keep running, just keep running. About mile eight. I’m realizing I just don’t think I’m going to make it, I don’t think I’m going to make that damn cutoff. And they don’t give you a medal if you don’t finish, if you DNF, or if you, you know, you don’t finish in time. You do the whole thing, but oh, no medal. Like, ah, thanks, great, you know. And I was like I’ve been visualizing that medal. I wanted that medal so bad. I know it’s like something crazy to be attached to, but I was attached to it. And so I just kept running. And at mile 11, it was sinking in. I was like not going to make it, can’t technically make it right, and I just wanted to walk the whole thing or whatever. I was like if you can run, just run. If you can’t, okay, but run what you can. And I just, and I came to the end. And I came to the end and I was just, and I saw it, and it was like almost nine or eight hours and 45 minutes. I was like, oh well, I wonder how this is going to end. And they handed me a medal and I felt so, you know, and at mile 11, I gave up attachment to the medal, to the timing. I’m like I’m still finishing this fricking race 70 miles. I’m still finishing this freaking race 70 miles. I’m finishing this bastard, you know, and I did and I celebrated myself in that moment and I was like you actually gave me a medal for the swim alone. This is crazy and it was such a gift, such a relief. And to have Samantha at the end and my friend Beth and just all the inner cheering and all the people that I knew that had helped me get to that finish line was so powerful and I felt great, like I wasn’t destroyed, Like, yeah, it was hard and all this stuff, but I wasn’t destroyed and it was amazing. It was an amazing experience. I will say just in all honesty that I’m not, you know, finishing towards the end like it was like third from last. It’s hard to take. That has not. That has left a little bit of an indent in my experience. I am super proud. My friends, family, the amount of people you know just cheering me on and saying I’m so proud of you. It was a massive accomplishment 52, almost 53 years old this year, a couple months to my 53rd birthday yeah, it was incredible. Incredible journey, so amazing the lessons learned. I have more to share, but I just wanted to share all that and just say, you know, finishing your race like who cares? Like this little indent of like oh, I didn’t finish in the top 10, my age group, blah, blah, blah, let that go. And I’m working, working. That is my work. My inner work is learning. Why does my inner hero not let me have, like, not the moment of sunshine that I thought it was going to be, but I still got the medal. Like I got the medal and they? It turns out 26 of the people didn’t finish the swim. Over 300 people out of like700 people did not finish because of the swim, hypothermia or just tapped out or couldn’t do it in time. And I did it and it’s like hello, you did 56 miles, you did 70 miles, like hello, I’m amazing. I’m amazing and I’m letting that in and I’m working with that inner conversation to narrate the story that I want to narrate. But just know, and then I look this up, there’s all kinds of Olympians and top athletes. Like, if you don’t get the gold, you know, when you’re striving for excellence and you don’t hit it, yeah, there’s that like letdown and that’s okay. So I’m like in the space of being with, okay, not having finished in the top 10. Okay, so did 70.3 miles. I have a medal, I did it, I completed it, I did it, let myself have all the win. And so that’s my work right now is to let it all in, you know, let that let down, you know, push that aside, and that’s focus. Right, that’s focus. That’s part of my practice. But I felt great, felt amazing that night. We had other athletes come over that had done triathlons, and Tracy was there and local Iron Woman legend Karen Eidelat was there and we just talked about it and it was beautiful to be in the embrace of a sisterhood of women athletes and celebrating it and feeling good, like I never felt, like I had a massage the next day. I took great care of myself, great self-care, allowed myself to gently transition. It felt amazing. So you know, give yourself the race, the celebration, the space to unfold all of this and I’m just super proud of myself. I hope this sharing this honesty, this vulnerability, this race experience helps someone out there, and thank you for going along this journey with me. Um, it’s been fun to share the story, the struggles, the triumphs, the wins. There’s so much more that I could probably even share, but in the interest of how long this has already been is a thank you for listening. If you’ve made it this far, I appreciate you. I hope it helps you. I hope it has served you. I would love some feedback. If you do take a listen, please reach out to me, happy to help future Iron Women or athletes or anyone that’s up to big things, and I encourage you to keep getting up to big things right. Keep getting up to things in your life that challenge you, that grow you, that elevate you. That’s what life’s about right, and enjoy it as you’re doing it. Feel gratitude in the moment for it as you’re doing it, not later. Enjoy and be grateful for it in that moment. I appreciate you and I remind you how your life feels is more important than how it looks, and every day is your opportunity to find your awesome. Cheers, guys.