Hearts with Soul

A couple of weeks ago, I did a 12 Hour team relay mountain bike race in Arizona with a friend of mine, Scott Richards. It was a special race, not only because we won our division with a great team effort, but also because of the significance of what Scott had overcome just to make it to the starting line. It truly inspired my teammates and I to hammer on the bikes beyond our normal limits.

You see, exactly one year ago, Scott was lying in an operating room, chest cracked open, in full cardiac arrest. His heart was intentionally stopped for 28 minutes while surgeons replaced a genetically defective aorta. He lived though the life-threatening operation and then decided to use his second lease on life to, not just return to good health, but to train to become an endurance athlete. As Scott came in from his first lap, he was spent from an effort that had shed a full 23 minutes off his previous best time for the loop. As I thought about how remarkable it was what he had just achieved, my thoughts turned towards a couple other late friends that had ruled their hearts with soul.

It was twelve years ago that the huge heart of my huge friend, Jimmy, stopped beating. After forty years of fighting an up and down battle against obesity, his heart simply couldn't take it any longer. At twice the weight of a average man, he was too heavy to be a technical mountaineer, to be a ski racer, or to survive hot desert sands. But he did scale the likes of Mount Rainier, he did win NASTAR national medals and he did serve along side soldiers in the Gulf War. Jimmy showed the rest of us what you can do if you have the soul to rule your heart.

Two years ago, my friend Marc, a self-described ultra-endurance addict, dropped to the pavement and never got back up. He was just a few feet from completing the Tucson Marathon in what would have been a personal record. Marc was also forty, and he also wore out his heart. But not before he endured grueling events that most mortals would find simply impossible: The Hard Rock 100 Mile mountain run, a "triple"Ironman Triathlon, multi-day runs on an oval track. The part they didn't know is that he had survived a car wreck years earlier that had left him with a limp and badly broken body and severe brain trauma. Each heart beat he had been granted since the car accident, he cherished independently.

Marc, Jimmy and Scott -- you have all shown us how to rule the Heart with Soul.

-Mike