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I Crossed That Finish Line Once. Here’s Why I’m Going Back.

There is a photograph I have from September 2016 that I almost never look at.

I’m crossing the finish line of Ironman Wisconsin. 13 hours and 44 minutes after I started. My face looks like it has survived something — because it had. I remember exactly what I was thinking and felt in that moment. I remember the sound of the crowd, the feeling of the pavement, the particular quality of the light that evening.

I’m a photographer. I notice light.

A lot has happened between that finish line and this blog post. I lost my mom. I lost two dogs who were family. I went through experiences that took something out of me I don’t fully have words for yet — and maybe I won’t, not here, not all at once. Some of it I’ll share over time, in pieces, when it makes sense. Some of it I won’t. Not everything that shapes you needs to be published.

What I’ll tell you is this: somewhere in the middle of all that grief, I stopped moving. Not all at once. Just gradually, the way you stop doing the things that cost you something when you’re already spending everything you have just getting through the day.

I am 40 years old. I have an intense job I love, a husband who is my biggest cheerleader and rock, and a full life I am still learning how to balance. And I’ve spent the last several years understanding that I’m not behind — I was grieving. There’s a difference, even when it doesn’t feel like one.

I’m rebuilding now. My fitness, my weight, my sense of who I am outside of the roles and responsibilities that fill most of my days. And on September 13, 2027, I am going to cross another Ironman Wisconsin finish line.

Not to prove something to anyone watching. Not to be who I was in 2016 — I don’t want that. I want to become someone who chooses hard things on purpose again. Someone who shows up for herself when it would be easier not to.

When the training gets hard — and it will — I’ll come back to something I’ve already learned: I have survived things that hurt more than sore legs and an empty tank. The hurt of losing someone. The hurt of wanting something that didn’t come. This is a hurt I’m choosing. That difference matters more to me than I can explain.

I’m going to post here leading up to race day — not to document my workouts. You can find better training logs elsewhere. I want a record I can come back to and remember exactly what this felt like. The hard mornings. The small wins. The days I didn’t want to get up and did anyway, and the ones I didn’t. The moments that were harder than I expected and the ones that were more beautiful than I had any right to anticipate. I’m a project manager and a photographer who finished an Ironman once, let a lot of years pass, and decided that wasn’t the last chapter. This is me pointing the camera at myself for once — and if someone else finds something useful in the footage, even better.

That finish line isn’t the destination. It’s the proof.

I’m still moving.

— Day 1 of many. Race day: September 12, 2027.