The Quiet Truth
I talk with friends and fellow athletes about triathlon all the time. And at some point, especially with the true enthusiasts, the conversation almost always drifts toward reverence. They’ll bring up a local legend, a training partner, a pro they follow, or a guy who just threw down some crazy age group split.
It’s always some version of:
“Did you hear about this guy? He ran a 1:19 off a 2:17 bike. We could never do that.”
The we is actually… implied.
And that tells me something important.
Most athletes, without realizing it, carry an assumption that they don’t quite deserve to be that good. That greatness belongs to someone else with better genetics, better talent, and better luck.
But that was never how I saw things.
When I wrestled as a kid, I wore a T-shirt that said, “I’d rather throw you than know you.” It was a joke at the time, but looking back, it reflected something deeper in me:
I’ve always been far more interested in my own finish lines than in anyone else’s resume.
Other people’s ceilings never had much to do with my floor and vice versa. Their success didn’t threaten me, and it didn’t define me. I was too busy seeing how far I could go.
And yet, reality isn’t always helpful.
I’m not going to be Lionel Sanders, Kristian Blummenfelt, Gustav Iden, or the local legend. It’s the truth, uninspiring as it might be.
Jake Paul, of all people, once said:
You have to be a little bit delusional if you ever expect to be great at anything.
It sounds ridiculous until you realize that he’s right.
The refusal to fold. The hope that if we keep showing up, maybe a door will crack open that had no business opening.
I feel this in my bones. It's oddly American, almost to the point of being cliche. The unwillingness to fully accept that truth.
All you need is a chip and a chair.
Every meaningful achievement begins with a belief that isn’t yet justified by evidence.
But belief cuts two ways.
You need enough of it to challenge your limits, but not so much that you become devoted to an imaginary version of yourself. There’s a point where believing in your potential becomes different from believing you must be the best. That difference changes everything.
The Natural – Lessons from Iris
In The Natural, Roy Hobbs is a star baseball player carrying the weight of a past that derailed the greatness he believed he was destined for. Lying in a hospital bed, he finally speaks the truth he has carried for sixteen years:
I lived with the thought that I could be, could have been the best in the game...
I could’ve broke every record in the book.
Iris, the emotional compass of the story, listens quietly. When Roy continues,
People would have looked and they would have said, 'There goes Roy Hobbs… the best there ever was in this game.'
She pauses, reflects, and replies:
You know, I believe we have two lives.
The life we learn with, and the life we live with after that.
With or without the records, they’ll remember you.
What Iris is saying is that Roy’s value, identity, influence, as well as the lives he touched, was never dependent on becoming the best ever. The meaning he brought to the sport was already bigger than any statistic.
And that realization is liberating.
Because once you stop fixating on the version of yourself that never came to be, you finally make room for the person you actually are, and the impact you can still have.
There’s a freedom in that shift. A purpose.
It invites different questions:
- Does doing this make you happy?
- Does it enrich your life?
- Can you pass on what you’ve learned to others?
When I answered those honestly, something in me settled.
I no longer needed to chase fantasies. What mattered was pursuing the best version of myself, and recognizing that the ceiling isn’t the point.
I don’t know where my ceiling is, and it doesn’t matter.
The impact isn’t in finish times or trophies or podiums.
It’s in the life you live after you stop needing them.
What I’ve Learned From Letting Go
It didn’t lower the bar for me, it clarified it. I started to see that greatness isn’t a title or a ranking. It’s a way of moving through the world. Most people think they need extraordinary gifts to justify extraordinary goals, but the truth is:
There's always going to be someone out there who says you're not good enough to pursue what you want and you don't deserve what you already have. The last thing you should do is say it to yourself.
That realization changed not just my training, but the way I think about coaching. Athletes don’t always need a flawless specimen standing at the front of the room. They need someone who understands the terrain they’re walking through.
Someone who knows what it feels like when your confidence dips.
When life crowds your training plan.
When the numbers won’t budge.
When age or injury or fatigue forces you to adapt instead of surrender.
Elite athletes often come from a different universe of physiology and psychology, one worth admiring, but not always worth imitating. The age grouper’s world is different.
We have jobs.
Families.
Responsibilities.
Limited time.
Imperfect bodies.
And goals that often require belief long before results appear.
I’ve lived that world.
I still live in it.
And that’s why I now believe something I never would have admitted ten years ago:
You don’t have to be the best in the sport to make a meaningful impact on it.
You just have to show up with honesty, with purpose, and with the willingness to help someone else rise.
That’s where my coaching begins. Not from the pedestal of elite identity, but from the shared ground of human effort.
Full Circle
When people talk about the “great ones,” they almost always point to results. Splits, podiums, records, wattage, VO₂ max numbers...
But if you look closer, greatness isn’t actually measured by those things.
It’s measured in the effect someone has on the people around them.
That’s why Iris’s words in The Natural have stuck with me for all these years. She wasn’t telling Roy that his dreams didn’t matter. She was telling him that the meaning of his life wasn’t contained in the dream’s outcome. It was contained in the wake it left behind.
And suddenly, the conversations I’ve had over the years,
“Did you hear about this guy? We could never do that.”
They take on a different shape.
The point isn’t that we could never do that.
The point is what we are doing is changing us for the better.
What if greatness isn’t the number you hit, but the person you become on the way there?
I used to think the ceiling mattered.
But ceilings are illusions.
Perhaps it's best we don't look for them.
What we find instead, if we’re paying attention, is something better:
- Purpose.
- Meaning.
- Lifting others up.
Now ask yourself. What is greatness?
Closing Reflections
I’m not an elite athlete, and it doesn’t matter.
I don’t know what my athletic ceiling is, and I no longer care. The pursuit itself has shaped me more than any outcome could. Triathlon has been a furnace. Sometimes gentle, most of the time merciless, and I’ve trained in the same heat as everyone else:
- early alarms
- tired legs
- quiet doubts
- small, private victories
That’s where real athletes are made.
I’m not an elite athlete, but I’ve learned to believe anyway.
Because here’s the thing I've observed about champions:
They believe.
Not because belief guarantees success, but because without belief, nothing meaningful ever begins.
So I’ll keep training.
Keep learning.
Keep teaching.
Keep believing.
And if I can help someone else step into their own furnace
and come out tempered, stronger, wiser, and more alive,
then to me, that’s a life worth living.