Thread:inner work
I went to Toronto with a plan.
A clean, disciplined, carefully built plan. One that had been layered over months. A plan backed by data, by consistency, by early mornings and long, lonely sessions in quiet rooms with nothing but a machine and my breath for company.
It felt logical. Earned. Deserved.
Toronto wasn’t meant to be symbolic.
It was supposed to be a result.
In the weeks leading into it, my body felt sharp. My metrics were solid. The blueprint I trusted — double thresholds, calm control, discipline, repetition — all of it was lining up the way I had designed it to.
There was no drama in my mind. No superstition. Just quiet confidence.
The kind of confidence that comes from doing the work when no one is watching.
But the body doesn’t care about plans.
And that’s something you only really understand when it speaks loudly enough that you have no choice but to listen.
It started with something small. Easy to dismiss. A slight tightness. A flutter I couldn’t quite place. A feeling that didn’t match the calm narrative I had written in my head.
I remember thinking, this is just nerves.
Or maybe just a bad warm-up.
Or maybe nothing at all.
I had accidentally taken the wrong supplement that morning. A simple, stupid mistake. One bottle mistaken for another. I noticed almost immediately that something felt off. My heart didn’t feel like the steady engine I trusted. It felt irritated, unsettled, unpredictable.
For a moment, the old version of me wanted to ignore it.
To override it.
To outwork it.
That version of me had won a lot of battles by being stubborn. By not listening. By pushing through. By hiding doubt under discipline.
That part of me was still alive and well.
But something had changed.
There was a new voice in the room now.
A quieter one. A softer one. A wiser one.
And it said: Pay attention.
So I did.
Which felt strangely unfamiliar.
There is a difference between pain and warning. Between discomfort and danger. Between fear and information. And in that moment, even without being able to fully explain it, I knew I was being given information.
Not failure.
Information.
Toronto didn’t break me.
It corrected me.
It reminded me that this isn’t just about how hard you can go. It’s also about how well you can listen. How honestly you can respond. How willing you are to be humbled by your own biology.
I still raced. I still showed up. But something inside me was no longer chasing the clock. It was watching my body instead.
For signs. For truth. For messages I had ignored too many times in the past.
Later came the echocardiogram. The questions. The waiting. The part of the story no one admires but every athlete eventually faces.
You can outrun a lot of things in life.
You cannot outrun your own heart.
And for a while, that thought sat with me in a quiet, heavy way.
Not with fear exactly — but with respect.
A deep, undeniable respect.
I began to realize that nothing about Toronto was wasted.
Not the travel.
Not the disappointment.
Not the vulnerability.
Not the uncertainty.
It had cleared the noise.
It had stripped the story down to its most honest layer.
It wasn’t asking, How fast can you be?
It was asking, How honest can you live?
And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t answer that question with more training.
I answered it with stillness.
With sleep.
With breath.
With reflection.
With an openness I had spent many years avoiding.
I started walking more. Sitting more quietly. Listening to my body instead of commanding it. Letting the nervous system unwind from the relentless concept of “next, next, next.”
And in that slowing down, something unexpected happened.
I didn’t feel like I was losing ground.
I felt like I was coming back to myself.
Stronger in a more sustainable way.
Smarter in a deeper way.
More aware, more present, more careful with the vessel that carries me through all of this.
There is a kind of masculinity built on force.
And another kind built on awareness.
Toronto gently, firmly, without drama, pushed me from one to the other.
And in the midst of all of that — the listening, the slowing, the recalibrating — there was something else quietly growing.
A new tenderness inside me.
A subtle sense that there was something out there worth staying healthy for. Not just strong. But open. Alive. A future experience not fueled by ego, but by connection, by presence, by awareness.
That thought wasn’t tied to a race or a medal.
It was tied to something deeper.
Something warmer.
Something worth protecting.
Toronto didn’t take anything from me.
It gave me something rare:
Perspective.
And in this new perspective, I could finally see:
The real race isn’t against other men.
It isn’t even against time.
It is the slow, ongoing, honest relationship with the heart — both the one that beats, and the one that feels.
And I am still here.
Listening.