Dmitri Voloshin - Run and remember

© Dmitri Voloshin, 2019

ISBN 978-5-4496-4702-3

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

By the age of 38, I had everything that any normal male dreams about: a beloved wife, two children, a successful, growing business (100 employees), many friends, an apartment in the center of the city, a car, a beer tummy, and, as one of my acquaintances said, I was not the last person in the city. I had already realized my financial, creative, managerial, and social ambitions, but, instead of a feeling of victory and pride, there was some emptiness inside of me.

As far back as I can remember, I was fighting. First, for survival in a strange city, and then there was Simpals, where I spent many evenings and weekends at work to make it survive and become a prosperous company. Then there were cartoons and I devoted myself entirely to my work to win contests at 40 festivals all over the world. And, in the meantime, I was fighting for the happiness of my family because my woman could hardly stand my difficult personality and every few months she packed her suitcases with the firm intention of finally becoming happy…

Now that the storms had calmed, I didn’t know what to do next.

It was already uninteresting in chasing money, the animation studio was working on its own, hard drinking with friends was no longer pleasing, and my relationship with my beloved woman had hit a dead end. In addition, I was tormented by the hypertension inherited from my father.

I was sitting and thinking that my life, boring and uninteresting to anyone, had turned into a slow dying of my aching body and lazy spirit. This had been going on for six months already. There were no thoughts of how to save myself, or how to change my life so that my eyes lit up and I was full of spirits again.

My reflections were interrupted by a bouncing Skype icon.

Sighing, I opened the message:

c.sevciuc

https://www.trilife.ru/reports/report.php?id=2247

you need to learn to swim, run and ride a bike

I indifferently clicked on the link, not knowing that this click would divide my life into two halves. It was an Ironman 1 1 one of a series of long-distance triathlon races consisting of a 2.4-mile (3.86 km) swim, a 112-mile (180.25 km) bicycle ride and a marathon 26.22-mile (42.20 km) run. It is widely considered one of the most difficult one-day sporting events in the world. race report. After reading it, I was taken aback. I read it again. Still not realizing that I was infected with no chance for recovery, I began to passionately read the reports of “ironman”. Ordinary men, there were guys like me who could swim 4 kilometers without stopping, bike 180 km and run 42 km “for dessert”.

That night I didn’t come home, and in the morning, with red eyes, I couldn’t think of anything else except that I urgently needed sneakers. That’s how it all began. Five years have passed since that day and I’m no longer that sad fat man with hypertension and fireless eyes. My life has completely changed.

I ran dozens of marathons, crossed deserts and frozen lakes, climbed mountains, swam across rivers, straits, and canals, dived to depths, held my breath, participated in Swimrun 2 2 to participate in a multi-stage competition, where you need to swim and run. Unlike triathlon, swimrun involves multiple legs of running and swimming, which alternate with each other , Triathlon races, and world championships. I became an ironman. It was difficult, but I managed to inspire a love of sports in dozens of my friends and acquaintances who, in turn, had hundreds of their close ones hooked too. My Sporter team and I organized the Chisinau International Marathon and dozens more sports events.

Hundreds of hours of training alone with myself, similar to meditation, have greatly changed me. I became calmer and more confident, I learned to hear my body and to be here and now. This immediately influenced my family relationship and now my wife and I are closer than ever, although she sometimes get annoyed by my constant sports activity.

My life, of course, hasn’t become ideal. It has turned into a fight. I get the greatest satisfaction when after another madness I come back home with my shield, or on it (it doesn’t really matter), embrace my loved ones, I lay on the couch with them and allow myself everything that comes to my mind. I eat and drink whatever I want, I forget about work, I hang out with my children, my beloved wife, and my friends. Only at these moments do I enjoy life.

But after some time, it sucks. I feel uncomfortable because of idleness and inaction, and here I am, planning the next adventure and starting to train. Again a tough regime, diet, restrictions in everything, and only one goal is ahead – to run across Baikal, climb Mont Blanc, become an Ironman, swim across Gibraltar, hold my breath for seven minutes, and so on, and so on, and so on…

I feel uncomfortable in my comfort zone. For me it’s like a short break between two fights. I don’t know why but God has created me in such a way that I feel happy only when I take great pains to pursue my goals. I don’t know how I called down the wrath of God in past lives, but in this one I have to roll my stone up the mountain to the very end…

However, the main thing that gives me the strength to move on is the belief that someone very tired of life will late at night accidentally bump into one of my reports and his life will change.

When you begin running, you never know where this “bad” habit will lead you. You cannot even imagine it.

Four years ago, after my first training where I heroically ran two kilometers, I felt like a typical white-collar worker: fat, breathless, and mad, with pain in my knees. My greatest sports achievement at that time was a descent from a water slide in Turkey. If anyone had told me back then that only four years later I would go to the Sahara Desert and run 250 kilometers on the sand with a full backpack, I wouldn’t have believed it!

But time goes by, your first training is followed by the second, the tenth one… Then you run five, ten kilometers, a half marathon 3 3 a distance of 21.0975 km , a marathon 4 4 a distance of 42.195 km ], “Half Ironman” 5 5 one of a series of short-distance triathlon races consisting of a 1.2-mile (1.9 km) swim, 56-mile (90 km) bike ride, and 13.1-mile (21.1 km) run. , “Ironman”, “Comrades” 6 6 the oldest and most popular track and field race in the world for super-marathon distance. The 90 km long distance courses through the KwaZulu-Natal Province of South Africa , “Otillo” 7 7 one of the most famous swimruns , “Rubicon” 8 8 the unique ultramarathon relay taking place in Moldova and crossing the whole country . This unfinished list is familiar to many racing lovers. And when you see an ellipsis at the end of the list, you understand that you were right four years ago. Because the list continues with the Great and Terrible…

Marathon des Sables (MDS, Marathon of Sands). It is a 250-kilometer, six-day ultramarathon through the Sahara Desert. The MDS is considered one of the world’s toughest endurance contests.

That is why it attracts the attention of hundreds of madmen every year.

Marathon des Sables was invented by the French concert promoter Patrick Bauer. In 1984, he traversed the Sahara Desert alone, covering 350 kilometers in twelve days.