The Hurt Artist: My Journey from Suicidal Junkie to Ironman by Shane Niemeyer & Gary Brozek

Author:Shane Niemeyer & Gary Brozek [Niemeyer, Shane]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781250021090
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2014-05-19T16:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

When I look back on those early days just out of prison and my training for the Pacific Crest, I’m amazed that I even made it to the starting line let alone the finish line. Old habits are hard to break, and though I’d broken the addiction cycle, I still was battling with being my own worst enemy. Like most people, I faced obstacles in order to achieve my goals. Like most people, many of those obstacles were ones that I put in front of myself. Part of my drug use was a means to numb myself from the pain and self-loathing that I felt. Just because I stopped using and got released from jail didn’t mean that I was instantly in love with myself. Yes, I was grateful, and yes, I loved my freedom, but I sure as hell didn’t like myself very much.

Even as the miles of swimming, running, and cycling added up, I still hated myself for the abuse I’d heaped on my family and essentially all of society. In the early days, I used that inner-directed anger as a means to propel myself through my training. It became the tool I used to process those very dark emotions. In prison, my workouts served a similar purpose. I was still a very angry young man, and if it weren’t for my workouts, I’m sure that I would have turned my anger on my fellow inmates—people who I tolerated but whose behaviors and lack of vision for themselves made me think of most of them as idiots. I knew that this was definitely the pot calling the kettle black, but I didn’t have my shit together in enough ways to really manage the proper perspective. I wasn’t the just recently sober individual preaching to others; I was seething internally rather than outwardly.

As much as I’d read Krishnamurti and others who’d helped me shape a different worldview and establish goals for myself, I was still very much a work in progress. I was always a very impatient person, so when it came to my training, I had some idea of how to go about it, but my lack of impulse control nearly did me in. For example, five weeks out of prison, I entered a local running race called the Table Rock Challenge.

A table rock is a name frequently given to a geological formation that rises up and then has a large flat section at its top. In Boise, the Table Rock is easily accessible because it’s located near downtown and is a favorite “easy” hike. The Table Rock Challenge is an out-and-back race of 9 miles. By that point in my training, in early September 2004, I hadn’t come anywhere near achieving that distance. I had no business trying to run 9 miles—especially since the first 4.5 were all uphill and the second were all downhill. To be honest, the downhill was the most painful part for me. I thought of stopping a bunch of times, but I gutted it out.

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