What Does Tough Really Mean?

 

It is 6:30 on Sunday night. I grab the needle and vial of Methotrexate. The medicine is used to block an enzyme that is needed for cells to live. In many ways it shuts down the immune system, but it helps with pain relief. I inject it into my wife's arm as part of a weekly routine. We like to joke that on a weekly basis my wife does Meth. This injection is in addition to a Remicade infusion she gets every six weeks. She has what an invisible chronic sickness called Ankylosing Spondylitis.The illness is a type of arthritis that causes inflammation in the joint and ligaments of the spine. Over time it can cause a person's bones and joints to actually fuse together. She has been dealing with this since she was a teenager. The thing is that it causes constant pain. In her own words, “it feels like someone is jamming a sword up the middle of my spine”. It is a pain that she has ENDURED for over 25 years. 

Over the last year, I have spent a lot of time reading books themed about endurance athletes, physiology, and mental toughness. People like Cameron Hanes, David Goggins, and Sallie McRae. They all fit in the realm of mentally tough, able to push through pain no matter the circumstances. Incredible athletes (and a bit crazy) in a field full of some of the toughest people to walk earth. The crazy thing is that I would lump my wife in with this group of athletes any day of the week. The average person (me), has it easy. I do not wake up every day in pain other than normal aches and pains from age. I do not have to spend a lot of time planning my day and how that will impact my body tomorrow. There are so many days when I think about complaining about my back being sore and I watch her outwork, out push, and outperform me every day. But she does not put the work in for fun; she does it because she has too. She cannot lay in bed scrolling her phone in the morning. The aching is too bad. She must get up and get moving. She has to hit the gym and that usually starts at 3:30 am. We bought a Tonal machine during covid. Since purchasing that machine she has lifted five million pounds, not including what she has lifted with dumbbells. (Tonal tracks that number so it literally is five million pounds) I do not think there is a category for how tough she is. I call her my Viking shield maiden. 

She is part of a group called The Vegan Gym. She joined because one of the things that has exacerbated her pain was related to her gut (arthritis and gut issues are found to go hand in hand) and meat is one of the many foods that impacted her the most.  In fact, a little over two years ago, if we wanted to go anywhere I was pushing her in a wheelchair. She could only walk for short distances before her body felt like every joint was on fire. It was a tough time in both of our lives. Still, every day she prioritized her workouts because it was the only relief from pain she could get. She went vegan in November 2022 and it changed her life. She does not use a wheelchair anymore. This past Saturday she spent nearly ten hours on her feet at a vegan convention. It was amazing and it is what motivated me to write this. She has made choice after choice to better herself and prioritize her health and body everyday just so that she can feel kind of “normal.” 

I talked to her all the time about how she is the toughest, grittiest person I know. Her ability to endure pain has come from enduring pain her whole life. The Vegan Gym is part of a community of people that have weekly challenges among many other things. The challenges will usually be for time, things like plank holds or wallsits. I have seen some of her videos, and in many cases she will push so hard and for so long her whole body will be shaking just to beat the best time from the last time she did the movement. It is motivating and inspirational to observe and be associated with such an incredible person. She is the poster child for consistency and progression. She has endured more physical pain than the average person and I know there are many out there that have done the same. Those are the types of people I want to be around. 

I have learned that Grit is not something we are born with, it is learned. She has taught me what true grit really is. Thanks Love, for being an inspiration to me and many others. 

On a side note, I am fourteen days into phase one of 75 hard. It is going well and the last two weeks I will be increasing the intensity of my workouts. I am increasing my calorie intake to 3,000 calories a day. Looking forward to talking about how that has gone for next week.