FUGAZI Friday: The Log

By Lindsey Rhodes

Start at the end: a long lonely walk back to the parking lot carrying a Fortitude Bag that has gained weight and no muscle left to carry it while holding a board that makes everything awkward. After an intense evening of people people people who cheer and talk and tell stories and encourage and groan and grunt and cry and cuss it was nice to be in a place of solitude. I had survived and gotten my shirt and coin, but was unsure if I was going to be able to make it back to my car. And too tired to feel anything. So tired that as Mark and Matt gave the end of night blah blah blahs I couldn’t even hold my head up and had to rest it on my knees.

Differences with FUGAZI: since it is team work, everyone is with you all evening. Learning names, asking for help, cheering, encouraging, and riding everyone else’s positive vibes. Everyone brought their best self, the self that gives, carries, and understands. Because of all the noise, the personal emotions and feelings hide until days afterwards. Then your brain catches up as soreness heals and sleep is caught up on. Then the catalysts for change that were planted at FUGAZI begin to sprout. The realizations about yourself and others begin to emerge. When running solo the emotions surface and are worked through in my head as I go and are left on the trail. At FUGAZI, the emotions got packed onto my Fortitude Bag until I could process them later. I was too tired to celebrate getting my shirt and coin. Bone weary tired.

At the telephone log carry where everyone had to keep a hand on the log and carry Fortitude Bags, I could hardly carry my own bag. The log was too high to get a shoulder on it. To tell the truth, my arm was burning up from just keeping it up high enough to touch the log. “Lift where I Stand” was my inspirational quote and I couldn’t even do that for myself or team. I was the goose in the back struggling to keep up with the upward draft of support my team made for me. The men and woman carrying my teams log (team 1, slow log) were amazing. The raw strength and tears that it took them to do what was needed was superhuman to witness. And I could barely keep up. I think when we sign up for these events, we want to show up and amaze our fellow athletes. We fear being the one that holds back and worse, holds others back.

In life, my friend knew that I haven’t been able to do everything that I usually do. They told me “it’s fine, when you get back we’ll just double our efforts to make up for what we didn’t do.” I responded with “nope, We don’t need to. We have grace and mercy to take care of us.” My team carrying that log represented a lot of life right now for me. They were my grace and mercy that carried me through that point where I could hardly keep up. I found myself saying “Sorry” to my teammate (I think it was Faith) and she said no Sorry’s allowed. We got it done.

I hope that someday, when someone else is struggling with their log (literal or figuratively), or I’m in a situation where I recognize someone is struggling, I will have the raw strength it takes to take on the weight they think they should be carrying. And smile like Faith did. I know that this wonderful body of mine isn’t the strongest it has ever been, but I’m pretty proud of what I did that night. Every moment. Except that log carry. Room for improvement, but grateful that I was able to go to work. Gosh that log still makes me cuss under my breath.

As I anticipated this event and read so many posts on Facebook, I kept reading things like “this made us a Family” and I would kind of scoff. Family is a pretty tight bond to claim in one night. But having experienced this whole show, I think I may understand. When a group of people come together and work to accomplish something incredible and only support every member, even members who are struggling, that is what family is. Lifting together. Everyone lifts what they can and together we get stuff done. Even if this member is still cussing about that log.

)

Warrior State of Mind
Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade