Samantha Pruitt: 0:26

Hello, hello, hello, beautiful humans, sam Pruitt here, how y’all doing? Solo episode today from me and the topic is keeping it real. This one comes to you from this morning’s bike ride, just about 10 days out from the start of my Iron Woman 140.6 mile triathlon race, and you can bet I am trying hard as hell to keep it real right now. But what do I mean when I say keeping it real? To me, keeping it real means having your thoughts, emotions and actions be in sync with your reality. Notice that I said all three your thoughts, your emotions and your actions and also notice that I said your reality. What is real and true for you, what’s going on inside of you and what’s going on outside of you both affect your reality. What’s critical to understand is that you have power here and keeping it real, living inside your own reality actually takes focus and intention, because all of the outside forces are trying to tell you otherwise. The fact is, I’m only truly at peace with my own thoughts, emotions and actions when I feel grounded, confident and empowered in the world. And I’m much, much happier when I am grounded, confident and empowered, when I am at peace with my thoughts, emotions and actions. Much happier If, instead, we let our thoughts and emotions and actions be directed by things that are simply not true and not real, by people or situations around us that have nothing to do with us, or even worse, even worse, a full-blown BS external world out there, with media, with social media, with Always trying to create constant chaos for us. We feel miserable when we are wrapped up in that, because that is not where reality is, definitely not our reality. Of course that’s our goal to feed us well, to feed the machine of more views and more clicks and more emotional suffering for all of us humans out here. That’s where they’re trying to influence. So that’s not the real world. The biggest gift you can give yourself is the personal freedom to live wide awake in your own reality, in the now, in the moment, in your truth, and, whenever possible, join the energetic flow of this moment’s power. That’s right, that’s where your power sits, inside that moment, that now, that truth. Living in the past or living in the future is not keeping it real. Drowning in the input of others is not keeping it real. Keeping it real is you being awake right now, today, at this time, in this space, so you can fully experience and fully participate in creating what it is you actually want you get to decide.

Samantha Pruitt: 4:23

Here is an example of me right now working my ass off, trying to keep it real, as I auto text these words to you, what you’re hearing. Right now I sit above two wheels, spending 17 miles an hour down a paved road through the middle of the desert. As I may have mentioned, I’m 10 days out from racing a full Ironman distance triathlon. That is, 2.4 miles of open water swimming, 112 miles of road bike racing and 26.2 miles of running 17 hours or less, in a good day, hopefully of nonstop physical exertion. Mental and emotional challenges are staring me in the face. That’s real and it is enough to cause anybody anxiety, including me, of course. Having been training for this for the last 10 months, I have already put in a boatload of time, effort, energy, resources and, more importantly, emotional commitment to my goal of setting a personal PR at this race. My intention at the onset of setting this goal was to now, at my post-menopause age of 55, return back to full iron distance triathlon after 13 years and challenge my own personal record on this exact same course. That is correct to go faster, 13 years later and bring myself back into triathlon.

Samantha Pruitt: 6:08

If you know me by now, you’re more than well aware I have zero subscriptions to society’s ideas about aging women or, frankly, to the limitations of women and girls at all for that matter. I have worked my ass off to go from a couch potato at age 30 to becoming an ultra woman, and so I rise each day with an incredible sense of gratitude for my body and brain. After a lifetime of personal challenges, I rise each day with a deep sense of purpose and connection to my values, around what I am willing to do to fully test, evolve and express myself in this one precious life. A truth for me and a favorite quote by Swami Vikkananada goes like this the world is a great gymnasium where we all come to make ourselves strong. I’m actually thinking about getting that tattooed on my arm. I believe so strongly in that quote. It so encapsulates my life journey and so many other people who I know are listening. The world is a great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.

Samantha Pruitt: 7:32

However, I also have a real life, or whatever that means. I’m not a professional athlete, and my world does not revolve around my training or my audacious athletic pursuits as much as I built this lifestyle oriented towards health and fitness and my daily choices of movement, eating, sleeping, and surely it’s how I operate as a coach. I’m still self-employed. I’m married with an ever-expanding family I adore and I have many work and community projects, clients and obligations that take a massive chunk of my time, travel and energy. Hell, I even have this podcast. Like all of you listening to this, we are everyday awesome humans with full lives. But I digress back to keeping it real. And why is it so important for us to keep it real?

Samantha Pruitt: 8:29

I’m about at about eight weeks out. I was overflowing with confidence how I was going to accomplish, or had accomplished, so much training and had massive progress in all three sports disciplines. Frankly, I was shocking myself. All I had to do now was dial in the details and not screw anything up. So here I am now, just 10 days out from one of my biggest physical and mental races Frankly one of the biggest races a human can even sign up for and, truth be told, as many confessions happen in motion in the saddle, it’s not going well and it’s not looking good.

Samantha Pruitt: 9:14

In short, I’ve had my training interrupted repeatedly, over and over, with all of life’s demands. I know you can all relate to this, gearing up into my ideal highest peak training cycles instead of swimming, biking and running. I was traveling and working. Also, at this time, there are a handful of my beautiful humans who I love deeply suffering and my strongest desire is to be with them and support them on their healing journeys as much as possible. That’s a high priority for me. And lastly, I just returned from this recent business trip producing the Men’s World Championship Ironman in Kona. I love this freaking job and I love this team. We work our buns off and we’re there to ensure everybody’s safe and that the event is executed at the highest level of sport. So nutrition and sleep takes a back seat. Training takes a back seat. Stress ramps way up and I accept all of that. But unfortunately, once I arrived back in California, I spent 72 hours throwing up my guts from the flu and another few days recovering from body aches and, frankly, having zero energy for the entire week. Life happens. So here I am today now, finally back in the saddle, having this self-coaching conversation with myself, and I thought why the hell not share it with you? Maybe you can gain some insight from my turmoil.

Samantha Pruitt: 10:47

Being me, I’m stubborn as hell and driven and dedicated to this craft I call my life. I don’t give up easily on dreams and goals and I’ve coached hundreds of others on their worth and why goal chasing is the path to personal evolution. But I also know that things can happen, and especially in these longer distance races. The more hours you’re out there, the more room there is for misery and mishap. Lord knows, I’ve had my share of executing everything perfectly, from front to back in training and then, hilariously, come race day, the universe shovels me scoop after scoop after scoop of poop, bad weather, gut nutritional issues, injury, heat stroke, hypothermia, even challenges with crew and race support. I mean, it’s called an ultra, isn’t it right? I mean it’s called an ultra, isn’t it Right? But no matter the circumstances or the results, after hundreds of races I can honestly say I always have a smile on my face after every single one of those finish lines and DNFs F’s. Keeping it real has allowed me to do this, to stay in the game for over 20 years, and I’m nowhere near stopping. Hell, I’m looking to PR at my age. The fact is I’ve become a better endurance, ultra endurance athlete. For all of these crappy race days, trials and tribulationsulations, I’ve built myself a grand canyon wide and deep wealth of resilience, grit, adaptability, tolerance for the unknown, and countless skills that have helped me to embrace the pain, cave and succeed in this sport for 20 plus years. Succeed in this sport for 20 plus years.

Samantha Pruitt: 12:40

So this morning, as I spin my legs, I’m also mentally spinning out about what’s happening between this peak fitness moment I had at about eight weeks out and today’s totally unmotivated and completely empty gas, and I have hundreds of negative thoughts about my upcoming race. With that is coming a flood of negative emotions like anger and sadness and doubt and weakness and fear. My heart rate is pinging and panging all over the place and it’s way too high for this easy paced ride. So much has occurred in this last month. That’s been out of my control, but somehow I feel totally responsible for not controlling this outcome better. And instead of showing myself self-compassion this morning, I’d landed on self-beating Stop, stop the bike, sam. I tell myself that as I slam on the brakes and pull off to the sandy corner, I know I need to get a grip on reality and I’ve stopped telling myself all these crazy ass stories. Why am I building this life moment into a full blown personal crisis? Personal crisis.

Samantha Pruitt: 14:21

I just relaxed onto my bars and focused on my breathing. I wasn’t even in reality, but instead I was creating thoughts and emotions about all these things that could happen and should have happened. I was shooting on myself. After a few minutes I looked around. The sun was shining on a crisp fall morning and I gave thanks after such a long hot summer, especially with all this training and the heat, now it’s cool and beautiful out here. I took in the incredible desert landscape where I live in all of its glory. This is real and this is now. I decided then I would stop halfway through this ride at my favorite local coffee shop and reward myself for getting back on the bike after three weeks. That’s what I need now for real.

Samantha Pruitt: 15:29

As I sat in my kit and soaked up the sun while sipping on my latte, I had another conversation with myself about this upcoming race. I gave myself the facts about what I had done well in training, about how I knew this course and I’m comfortable out there in the Arizona desert, and about the hard reality that my PR target of a sub 14 hour and 15 minutes could be totally out of reach this year. But I have 17 hours on the race clock and I will cross that finish line. I rode home with a smile on my face and I’ve continued to train to the best of my ability these last few taper days, with a deep sense of true, knowing that I will be good on race day and in all the days that follow until my next opportunity for personal growth. Keeping it real I reconnected to the gratitude I have for being close and being able to help family and friends in need. Keeping it real, with the pride of being part of the Ironman World Championship team and producing these life-changing experiences for my fellow humans.

Samantha Pruitt: 16:49

Keeping it real I taped a message on my handlebars about the race. And why am I actually doing this Ironman triathlon race? It’s in honor of my brother battling cancer. I also put several other superpower words on my bars from people I love who are battling for their lives right now against disease, addiction and mental health. That’s keeping it real. I can continue to move forward towards this start line in just a few days now, with such a connection to what is true for me, what is reality and what is powerful. That’s what I choose. I choose to keep it real. The bottom line message for you, my beautiful human, our listener, is your thoughts need to be examined. Your emotions need to be examined. Your emotions need to be examined. You deserve pause and opportunity to step back. Talk to a friend, be your own friend, ask what is real and what is true. Ground yourself in what is real and what is true. Ground yourself in what is real. Keep it real, my beautiful humans. Keep it real. I love you guys.