“So, Dad told me you are doing a triathlon,” my son said.

I almost tripped over his eyeballs as they rolled out of his head. Am I feeling age discrimination?

My husband was in the room, looking quite despicable, shrugging his shoulders. He knew he shouldn’t say that. How could he? At an optimistic moment, it was just one of a thousand dreams of mine.

“Yes, I am,” I said, feeling the need to make a definitive statement. My words were out now, and there was no way to take them back.

Two minutes later, I was on Google, searching for “triathlons near me.” Sure enough, there were plenty. I paid a $100 registration fee and signed up for an event in Miami in September.

Miami is a three-hour drive from my hometown of Vero Beach, Florida. I thought it was safe enough not to see anyone I knew, or more precisely, no one could see me.

At that time, I was still worried about fooling myself.

The triathlon scheduled for September gave me nearly two months to train.

How the triathlon came onto my radar

A long time ago, I saw a photo of a woman in a triathlon suit, wearing a big smile and holding an even bigger medal. Those medals were huge.

I thought, “How cool.” “I would love to do that,” I hoped, confirming that I knew how to swim, bike, and run.

That was the end of it. I thought that was the end.

But then I learned how the universe safely hides our wish lists in the subconscious. It brews in the basement until it’s ripe enough to manifest. Then it pops to the surface, and all the powerful providence conspires to make it happen.

A few years before my son’s day, I started a new exercise routine and began swimming and biking.

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