In this new year, say yes to you

An excerpt from Little Detours and Spiritual Adventures

When it comes to going after what you love, don’t take no for an answer – especially from yourself.

If you were a bench warmer like me, there is hope.

I’ve tried out for a lot of sports in my life but was never good at any of them: softball, basketball, volleyball, track. I was what they call a “bench warmer.” I sat on the bench keeping it warm while the better athletes ran around and scored. I rarely played any real time on any field or court.

Over the years, I gave up believing I had it in me to be athletic. Then I met Katie Spotz. She is the queen of endurance challenges and adventures. At 19, she became the youngest person to row alone across the Atlantic Ocean without an engine.

And get this – she was the worst rower in college.

She wasn’t always motivated. She, too, was a bench warmer,

When she had to take a one-credit gym class to get her high school diploma, she was thought it was a waste of time. She tried to get out of doing it but couldn’t, so she took the easiest class, one she knew she could get an A in: Walking and running.

“I was forced to take a gym class,” she said. “It’s funny, the very things we try to avoid can be these divine interventions, these divine moments, the very things that would bring us on a path we would never imagine.”

After weeks of walking, she ran. One mile. And hated it. But she knew it was possible to run a mile. She decided to prove herself wrong and have her doubt replaced with curiosity. She discovered that endurance events were the best way to stretch herself. Instead of saying, “I can’t,” she started saying, “I don’t think that’s possible, but let’s see.”

Now, she runs a marathon every week for training. The woman who could barely run a mile completed a 130-mile run. That first marathon was hard. Now it’s habit.

“It’s muscle memory,” she said. “I’ve already fought the demons of, ‘Oh, you’re so ridiculous to think you could possibly do this.’ I had a lot of that, of those real mental challenges to face before I could even think about the physical challenges. It’s like working out a muscle: the repetitive challenges of life make you learn to become better at facing them.”

Most times, we’re the only one putting limits on ourselves. It can become a habit that’s hard to break.

When people tell her, “I could never run a marathon.” She challenges them and asks, “Oh, you’ve tried? Which one did you try?” Of course they say, I didn’t actually try. She says, “Well that’s a requirement. You actually have to try. No one does it without trying.”

Of course, you’re not going to succeed at something you haven’t done.

So why did the worst rower on the college rowing team set out to conquer the Atlantic Ocean? Katie did it with just her arms and her oars, with no spotting boat for company, with no engine for back up.

Something kept tugging at her to do it. She told it, “I don’t even know how to row a boat. Why are you bothering me, idea? This doesn’t make sense.”

The last American to attempt it before her was an Olympic rower, someone much more qualified. It was a ridiculous idea. Katie had student loans to pay. Plus, she didn’t want to die. But that tug on her heart wouldn’t go away.

“I tried so hard to ignore it, but I knew that I would regret it,” she said.
“It kept creeping up. The curiosity of it. There are certain experiences in life you can’t possibly know until you experience it. When something is bigger than anything you can imagine it requires you leaning on God.”

She had two options: Row the ocean. Or forever regret not rowing it.

Katie grew up in Mentor, Ohio, a city east of Cleveland, so she trained on Lake Erie. Friends and family had their doubts about her navigating the ocean alone, especially after she had an accident during a trial run on Lake Erie.

She set off anyway, in a bright 19-foot yellow boat with no motor or sail. Katie would rely on just her body, her oars, the wind and the waves with 3,000 miles ahead of her. The boat already was named Liv, which is Norwegian for “Life”.

Katie filled the boat with freeze-dried meals, high energy drinks, navigation tools, a machine to convert salt water into drinking water, a jet boil stove, charts, an iPod for music, a laptop, satellite phone, two sets of oars and 3,000 chocolate bars she stored below the water line so they wouldn’t melt. The boat weighed 1,000 pounds fully loaded.

She shoved off from Dakar, Senegal, a shipping port in West Africa. There would be no stops before landing in French Guinea in South America, but the ocean had other plans and took her to Guyana.

She used a bucket for a bathroom and kept time like a prisoner, drawing lines on the inside of her boat. She found beauty in the monotony and survived by not making the decision to quit, even when waves hit 20 feet high, barnacles slowed her boat down and leaking water ruined her stash of candy bars. She endured deadly storms, a fire, sunburn, sleep deprivation, blisters, bruises, a Portuguese man-o-war sting and those 20-foot-tall waves.

But magic surrounded her, especially at night. “There’s no one else, it’s all for you,” she said. “No pictures could justify the beauty of it. I was constantly in awe of the vastness. We live in a beautiful world with so many places to explore. It’s just you and nature and the elements.”

The visits by dolphin and sea turtles gave her glimmers of hope just when she needed it. Plankton sparkled like glitter around her boat at night.

At 22 years old, she became the youngest person to row solo across the Atlantic. It took 70 days and 3,038 miles.

Katie also raised over $275,000 for safe drinking water projects around the world. She joined the U.S. Coast Guard and lives in Portland, Maine. She still runs a marathon every week. She learned so many life lessons, she wrote a book, Just Keep Rowing: Lessons from the Atlantic Ocean from the Youngest Person to Row it Alone. The book is full of 70 lessons, one for every day she spent alone.

Before the ocean, the longest time she had spent alone was 24 hours.

“Being alone, I had a fear about that. As far away as I was, I still felt connected. No matter how far away you go, you can’t erase these deep connections to each other. Those don’t go away,” she said.

“Yes, I had fear, but I could use it to act accordingly. I was so physically exhausted; it was very zombie-like. I didn’t have the energy to be afraid. I learned that you can keep going even though you’re sleep deprived.”

She has competed in five Ironman triathlons, cycled across the United States, completed a 325-mile river swim, cycled across New Zealand and ran 100 miles nonstop in under 20 hours and was the first person to run 138-miles nonstop across Maine in 33 hours, raising funds for a clean water project in Tanzania.

Reading her website www.katiespotz.com will wear you out. She is an endurance athlete, charitable ambassador, author and world-record holder. She set a Guinness World Record for the most consecutive days to run an ultramarathon distance. Her Run4Water 341-mile journey began in Cincinnati and finished in Cleveland, Ohio, after running 11 ultra-marathons for 11 days consecutively to fund 11 water projects in Uganda.

Every challenge she does, she does for others.

“If someone else can do it, it means we have a chance, too,” she said. “I learn for all what’s possible for all of us. We can face things, we can overcome things, we can do things.”

She still rarely feels motivated to run a marathon but does it anyway.

“Do it and the motivation kicks in. Motivation comes with movement and action. I’m not a Nike commercial when I wake up in the morning,” she said. “I’m not a very motivated person. Motivation sometimes happens after you show up, kind of like your late friend to the party.”

Find your ocean.

It might be an athletic competition, a work challenge, a travel adventure or a spiritual mountain to climb.

Once you find your ocean, don’t wait for the motivation.

Just start rowing.

Listen to Katie Spotz