my energy and reclaim my old self. I wanted to revitalize the verve lost in the trampling of many dreams. I didn’t know what else to do. I had forgotten what my dreams even were.

As slowly as my life had spun itself out of control, I was beginning to develop a new cadence on a stationary spin bicycle. Andrew’s orders  —  “Wake up, life’s half over”—became my catalyst. I paid serious attention to his words. I wasn’t so much getting into the exercise groove and sweating profusely just to make my legs spin faster and harder on the bike, but to make sure that every day I am alive, I am living, striving faster and harder. The more I sweat, the faster my heart rate registered, the more I knew I was getting in touch with all I had lost.

Those words  —  “Wake up, life’s half over”—  kept taking on a deeper and deeper meaning. I was stepping outside of my comfort zone, and there was no better time than the present  —  turning fifty  —  to try to accomplish some things in my life I never imagined possible.

From my friends’ and my cousin’s shortened lives, I was learning that despite everything, their spirits live on in my life and the lives of my children. In honor of them, I was trying to put determination and guts into every day of my own living.

Competing in a triathlon  —  swimming, bicycling, and running in one event  —  became my fiftieth birthday goal.

To some it may seem trivial, but running in a triathlon, then months later in my first half-marathon, became my way of pushing myself to show that as a human being I could exceed far beyond what others  —  or I myself  —  thought was