Latest / The Everyday Awesome Project / 47: 10 Days Before Ironman: Facing Doubt and Redefining Success
Transcript
- 0:26Samantha Pruitt: Hello, hello, hello, beautiful humans, sam Pruitt here, how y'all doing?
- 0:32Samantha Pruitt: Solo episode today from me and the topic is keeping it real.
- 0:40Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 0:56Samantha Pruitt: But what do I mean when I say keeping it real?
- 1:00Samantha Pruitt: To me, keeping it real means having your thoughts, emotions and actions be in sync with your reality.
- 1:09Samantha Pruitt: Notice that I said all three your thoughts, your emotions and your actions and also notice that I said your reality.
- 1:21Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 1:32Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 1:53Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 2:08Samantha Pruitt: And I'm much, much happier when I am grounded, confident and empowered, when I am at peace with my thoughts, emotions and actions.
- 2:18Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 2:53Samantha Pruitt: We feel miserable when we are wrapped up in that, because that is not where reality is, definitely not our reality.
- 3:03Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 3:14Samantha Pruitt: That's where they're trying to influence.
- 3:16Samantha Pruitt: So that's not the real world.
- 3:18Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 3:42Samantha Pruitt: That's right, that's where your power sits, inside that moment, that now, that truth.
- 3:50Samantha Pruitt: Living in the past or living in the future is not keeping it real.
- 3:55Samantha Pruitt: Drowning in the input of others is not keeping it real.
- 4:01Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 4:23Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 4:33Samantha Pruitt: Right now I sit above two wheels, spending 17 miles an hour down a paved road through the middle of the desert.
- 4:40Samantha Pruitt: As I may have mentioned, I'm 10 days out from racing a full Ironman distance triathlon.
- 4:47Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 5:07Samantha Pruitt: Mental and emotional challenges are staring me in the face.
- 5:12Samantha Pruitt: That's real and it is enough to cause anybody anxiety, including me, of course.
- 5:21Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 5:35Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 5:57Samantha Pruitt: That is correct to go faster, 13 years later and bring myself back into triathlon.
- 6:08Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 6:20Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 6:34Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 6:52Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 7:09Samantha Pruitt: I'm actually thinking about getting that tattooed on my arm.
- 7:14Samantha Pruitt: I believe so strongly in that quote.
- 7:16Samantha Pruitt: It so encapsulates my life journey and so many other people who I know are listening.
- 7:24Samantha Pruitt: The world is a great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.
- 7:32Samantha Pruitt: However, I also have a real life, or whatever that means.
- 7:34Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 7:51Samantha Pruitt: I'm still self-employed.
- 7:54Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 8:06Samantha Pruitt: Hell, I even have this podcast.
- 8:13Samantha Pruitt: Like all of you listening to this, we are everyday awesome humans with full lives.
- 8:21Samantha Pruitt: But I digress back to keeping it real.
- 8:27Samantha Pruitt: And why is it so important for us to keep it real?
- 8:29Samantha Pruitt: I'm about at about eight weeks out.
- 8:31Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 8:40Samantha Pruitt: Frankly, I was shocking myself.
- 8:42Samantha Pruitt: All I had to do now was dial in the details and not screw anything up.
- 8:47Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 9:14Samantha Pruitt: In short, I've had my training interrupted repeatedly, over and over, with all of life's demands.
- 9:18Samantha Pruitt: I know you can all relate to this, gearing up into my ideal highest peak training cycles instead of swimming, biking and running.
- 9:28Samantha Pruitt: I was traveling and working.
- 9:29Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 9:43Samantha Pruitt: That's a high priority for me.
- 9:45Samantha Pruitt: And lastly, I just returned from this recent business trip producing the Men's World Championship Ironman in Kona.
- 9:52Samantha Pruitt: I love this freaking job and I love this team.
- 9:56Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 10:04Samantha Pruitt: So nutrition and sleep takes a back seat.
- 10:07Samantha Pruitt: Training takes a back seat.
- 10:09Samantha Pruitt: Stress ramps way up and I accept all of that.
- 10:13Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 10:29Samantha Pruitt: Life happens.
- 10:31Samantha Pruitt: 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?
- 10:40Samantha Pruitt: Maybe you can gain some insight from my turmoil.
- 10:47Samantha Pruitt: Being me, I'm stubborn as hell and driven and dedicated to this craft I call my life.
- 10:52Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 11:02Samantha Pruitt: But I also know that things can happen, and especially in these longer distance races.
- 11:07Samantha Pruitt: The more hours you're out there, the more room there is for misery and mishap.
- 11:11Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 11:32Samantha Pruitt: I mean, it's called an ultra, isn't it right?
- 11:33Samantha Pruitt: I mean it's called an ultra, isn't it Right?
- 11:38Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 11:52Samantha Pruitt: Keeping it real has allowed me to do this, to stay in the game for over 20 years, and I'm nowhere near stopping.
- 12:05Samantha Pruitt: Hell, I'm looking to PR at my age.
- 12:07Samantha Pruitt: The fact is I've become a better endurance, ultra endurance athlete.
- 12:16Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 12:34Samantha Pruitt: Succeed in this sport for 20 plus years.
- 12:40Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 12:52Samantha Pruitt: With that is coming a flood of negative emotions like anger and sadness and doubt and weakness and fear.
- 13:13Samantha Pruitt: My heart rate is pinging and panging all over the place and it's way too high for this easy paced ride.
- 13:19Samantha Pruitt: So much has occurred in this last month.
- 13:22Samantha Pruitt: That's been out of my control, but somehow I feel totally responsible for not controlling this outcome better.
- 13:28Samantha Pruitt: And instead of showing myself self-compassion this morning, I'd landed on self-beating Stop, stop the bike, sam.
- 13:40Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 14:04Samantha Pruitt: Why am I building this life moment into a full blown personal crisis?
- 14:12Samantha Pruitt: Personal crisis.
- 14:21Samantha Pruitt: I just relaxed onto my bars and focused on my breathing.
- 14:24Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 14:33Samantha Pruitt: I was shooting on myself.
- 14:35Samantha Pruitt: After a few minutes I looked around.
- 14:40Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 14:59Samantha Pruitt: I took in the incredible desert landscape where I live in all of its glory.
- 15:07Samantha Pruitt: This is real and this is now.
- 15:11Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 15:22Samantha Pruitt: That's what I need now for real.
- 15:29Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 15:36Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 15:56Samantha Pruitt: But I have 17 hours on the race clock and I will cross that finish line.
- 16:04Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 16:26Samantha Pruitt: Keeping it real I reconnected to the gratitude I have for being close and being able to help family and friends in need.
- 16:37Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 16:49Samantha Pruitt: Keeping it real I taped a message on my handlebars about the race.
- 16:55Samantha Pruitt: And why am I actually doing this Ironman triathlon race?
- 16:59Samantha Pruitt: It's in honor of my brother battling cancer.
- 17:03Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 17:16Samantha Pruitt: That's keeping it real.
- 17:19Samantha Pruitt: 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.
- 17:38Samantha Pruitt: That's what I choose.
- 17:40Samantha Pruitt: I choose to keep it real.
- 17:42Samantha Pruitt: The bottom line message for you, my beautiful human, our listener, is your thoughts need to be examined.
- 17:53Samantha Pruitt: Your emotions need to be examined.
- 17:58Samantha Pruitt: Your emotions need to be examined.
- 17:59Samantha Pruitt: You deserve pause and opportunity to step back.
- 18:03Samantha Pruitt: Talk to a friend, be your own friend, ask what is real and what is true.
- 18:12Samantha Pruitt: Ground yourself in what is real and what is true.
- 18:17Samantha Pruitt: Ground yourself in what is real.
- 18:21Samantha Pruitt: Keep it real, my beautiful humans.
- 18:23Samantha Pruitt: Keep it real.
- 18:24Samantha Pruitt: I love you guys.