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Mike Ergo

Honoring My Fallen Friends

By InnerVoice

August 4^th, 2017

honor the fallen by helping the living

In 2004 I was deployed with my infantry battalion to Iraq, where my unit spearheaded Operation Phantom Fury. It was known as the 2nd Battle of Fallujah. We fought house-to-house and kicked in a lot of doors. More than a few friends were killed that month. When we heard a casualty report over the radio the dread set in. Who was it now? I didn’t have time to mourn them in Iraq, we were still at war and trying to survive. Having a memorial service on base brought out many of those compartmentalized feelings. I was ashamed to meet some of the parents of our fallen Marines. I came home and their son didn’t. Shortly after, I finished my enlistment and came home to California to start college. It was a rough start.

Sometimes I would have panic attacks in the parking lot at school. Sometimes I'd have them when driving my car. Then I started down the rabbit hole of binge drinking and self-pity. I was definitely having a hard time re-adjusting to civilian life and dealing with intrusive thoughts, which are like short clips of the things in combat that I was trying to forget. I started feeling sorry for myself and blaming everyone else for my problems. “I wouldn’t be drinking so much if it wasn’t for Iraq!” It was the perfect way to excuse my behavior and drink myself stupid.

Eventually my wife had enough and gave me an ultimatum: her or the booze. I quit alcohol and started seeking help in the recovery community. I hated it. I didn’t want to face the feelings of fear and sadness that lay just beneath the surface of my anger. During the process I came across a spiritual teacher that helped me face all of those fears and all of the psychological pain I had been avoiding for so long - it was terrifying, but the only way I could get past it. I started to notice I had much more energy and hope. I didn’t have to spend so much energy pushing away scary thoughts and remembering which lies I had told which person.

"I started using fear as a guide to lead me to my next step in life."

First it was examining my past, then it was calling people in my life and thanking them for how they had helped me or been an important part of my life. Marines don’t do that. We are trained to run towards the sound of gunfire and into buildings with men waiting to shoot us, but telling a friend you love him is absolutely terrifying. I noticed that exact fear when I was on vacation in Hawaii. I just happened to be in Kona the same week as Ironman without knowing it. Watching the race live, I felt terrified. And excited. My wife saw the look in my eye and knew the gears were turning. I signed up for my first half Ironman less than a month after that vacation. I didn’t know why I was doing it, but I knew it was my next step. Then, one day I watched a clip about Lisa Hallett who lost her husband in Afghanistan. She started running to honor his death and heal her own wounds. They invited her to race in Kona and she finished. I balled my eyes out watching it. Then it hit me: I could do this too.

I had finally found a way to honor my fallen friends by becoming the best version of myself. I got a triathlon jersey with all of their names on it and contacted their families to let them know their sons had not been forgotten. It felt really good. Now I write about it and raise money for charities I believe in; honor the fallen by helping the living.

Mike Ergo

Mike Ergo

Mike Ergo

Mike Ergo

allow the discomfort to be there

Triathlon is a spiritual practice for me. I love running, cycling, and swimming especially, but the intention behind them helps me find purpose in life, post-combat. When I came home from Iraq and left the Marine Corps, I was a wreck. I lost over twenty people in my unit, many of them friends, some of them close friends. The pain of that loss and the physiological and psychological symptoms of PTSD (the nervous gut wrenching fear that something bad was about to happen), always being on-guard, the anger masking intense sadness and grief, the daily intrusive thoughts of combat and killing - I was trying to avoid feeling that pain by drowning myself in alcohol. I had a profound spiritual experience in 2012 and sobered up to face my fears head on by letting the pain and fear be there - going right through the middle of it and making friends with it. It was very scary but incredibly liberating. Now during a hard interval session at the pool or a tough ride I can accept the discomfort and allow it to be there. This translates to other areas of my life where things aren't always easy, like parenting. It also helps me as a clinician to sit with the pain of my fellow veterans and help them see that avoiding it does not help them.

Mike Ergo

"After a race, I take a couple days to lay around and play with my kids. I sleep in and love it. I enjoy silence and a couple days with no watches, HR monitors, or training plans."

Mike Ergo

Make friends with your inner voices

Like many people, when times get tough my mind gives me doubts and reminders of past failures. The inner critic arrives to tell me that I didn’t train hard enough, that I’m nowhere near the level of the elites in the sport so stop pretending and just give up. His close friend is the inner fear-monger. He tells me my legs are going to give out, that we’ll never make it to the finish line, that this is all pointless so just stop. One of my greatest strengths is that I have made friends with these inner voices. They are usually the loudest, but once I acknowledge them and thank them for being helpful in other circumstances in life, they quiet down and I can listen to the inner warrior. He is the voice that reminds me to never give up. He reminds me of the struggles I have gone through and come out the other side even stronger. “You made it through Marine Corps boot camp even though you showed up 30 pounds overweight and barely able to do 5 pull-ups.” He reminds me that I survived a month in the Battle of Fallujah, kicking down doors and fighting a waiting enemy who had his weapons trained on me before I came into those houses. The inner warrior reminds me to stop resisting the pain and discomfort. It’s okay to feel it. This helps me, especially before a big race: Half Ironman races, my GORUCK HEAVY challenge (24-hour endurance challenge carrying heavy stuff), and now my first full Ironman. The inner warrior has the vocabulary of a Marine, full of cuss words: “Bitch, no one’s shooting at you today so it’s a pretty fucking good day to be alive. You don’t need to be afraid of getting tired.”

I think of my fallen friends, like Todd Godwin, and how I am persevering to honor their sacrifice. I keep pressing on so that by becoming the best version of myself I can honor their deaths. But, by far the biggest source of strength is love. Last week I had a tough interval session running in 95ºF. It was the 13th anniversary of my best friend Todd being killed. I surrendered to that grief and allowed myself to feel the pain of loss and realize how much love I had (and have) for him. I let the tears flow and thanked the universe for allowing me to have had such a great friend. This is my secret weapon, my rocket fuel. I am able to take the pain and convert it to gratitude. Much like I pursue being “fat-adapted” and using my fat stores as fuel, I have become “gratitude-adapted” and use that to propel me. This aligns my mind, body, and spirit with purpose.

there is no limit to the things i could do

The first thing I learned in this journey was that if I could allow myself to look stupid and be a beginner, there was no limit to the things I could do. Instead of being to afraid to ask for help or start something I was pretty bad at; I could improve. It was very intimidating to try something new that I wasn’t already good at, especially with pool swimming when I went to my first Masters practice. I swam in the slowest lane with 70- and 80-year-old's. And even before I was getting lapped by the old people, I had to walk past a US Olympic athlete license plate. “What am I doing here?” But, I was not controlled by my ego anymore and decided to be okay with sucking at something in order to get started.

I have also learned that when I am doing the right thing and being authentic to myself, serving others, and following my intuition, the universe opens up and I get to be part of some amazing things. I didn’t plan to be invited to Kona or even reach it in my lifetime, but it happened.

Through triathlon I found out I really, really, really love swimming. I had no background in swimming. I knew how to not drown, but I was not gifted by any means. A Vietnam Vet approached me shortly after I got sober and invited me to swim from Alcatraz to San Francisco, roughly 1.3 miles. I told him that sounded like the worst idea I’d heard in a long time. He told me that he’d led 12-year-old boy scouts through it, but understood if I wasn’t up to it. So, of course I did it. I figured it would be a one-and-done thing, but I ended up absolutely loving open water swimming in cold water. It was the best body-high I have ever had and sitting on the bleachers overlooking the Golden Gate and the Bay afterwards gave me the profound feeling that everything was right in the universe and I was exactly where I needed to be. Training for triathlon, I joined a US Masters Swim Team and ended up loving it too. Given the solo nature of most training, swimming with other people was great.

Mike Ergo

Mike Ergo

"My Ironman training can be a stress on my family, but we find ways to make time for each other. My wife prefers me to be out training for a couple hours versus the old me who was always drunk or high. But the best is that my 3 year old daughter told me recently, “Dada, when I get older I want to do a tuh-ra-thuh-lawn with you.” Oh, you can be sure we will do many, sweetheart."

Mike Ergo

Mike Ergo

There are a lot of things that I’ve taken from triathlon into my everyday life

1: Consistency and steadiness beat infrequent, intense bursts of effort. I remember early on in my triathlon training that I'd be feeling frustrated that I wasn’t going hard enough. I wanted to treat it like a crossfire workout and go all-out. But this leads to over-commitment and burnout. In athletics, it means depleting or injuring the body and having to sit out for days and weeks. In work, it means taking on too much at once and then falling behind in the long run and even breaking promises by failing to deliver on things I committed to. When I feel the need to try to take on too much or bury myself in max-effort on some side project at work, I am sometimes able to stop and notice that it is usually just me trying to avoid anxiety or something I don’t want to deal with.

2: Stepping outside my comfort zone to allow growth. Just like signing up for my first Half Ironman, my first full Ironman, or my first marathon swim, I have allowed myself to face my fears of failure and inadequacy by taking on bigger and newer challenges at work.

3: Not taking things so seriously. The race-day jitters at any triathlon are palpable. So many people are tied up by expectations of their performance and getting a personal record. It doesn’t matter! I’m not a pro depending on the race for a paycheck. I am here to celebrate my training and be grateful for the gift of life, health, and fitness. Once I step back from the seriousness, I can see the bigger picture. At work, that means not worrying about perfection or having expectations of things working out. I can pursue excellence and improve my own performance incrementally each day. This leads to the fourth thing…

4. Staying present. The past has already happened and the future will happen regardless. If I can stay present, I will handle whatever is happening in the moment. If I am not present, I miss out on the subtle nuances of conversation, out-think or second guess my intuition and innate abilities, and then worry about the task at hand failing. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. When I am present with someone they know I value them. The contrary is almost always noticed and as a therapist this is detrimental to the work I do with combat veterans - it can erode or shatter trust.

Mike Ergo

"I have weeded the garden of my daily time. the biggest weeds were TV, Xbox (I consciously gave that up even before alcohol and drugs), and of course alcohol and cannabis. The time spent acquiring, using, and recovering from frequent binges was a humongous time suck."

Mike Ergo

A great reminder

I place physical health and fitness towards the top of my priorities. This gets tricky; to overdo my triathlon training or place it above family time is easy to do if I'm not careful. When I can reflect on my values consistently - through affirmations, a mindful check-in, or meditation time - I am able to re-focus and see the imbalances in my life. When I am Googling triathlon training tips or trying to blog during family time, my wife will check me hard. It’s a great reminder, although humbling.

I am writing a book about transitioning from combat to home, and going through PTSD and addiction, but coming out alive and using triathlon. Athletically, I have just completed my first full Ironman in Santa Rosa and now I will be training for Kona. My goal is to finish Kona and in the process raise over $18,000 for Sentinels of Freedom, a nonprofit that helps severely wounded vets through school and get into fulfilling careers, becoming self-sufficient.

Mike Ergo

Footnotes

Words by Mike Ergo, Photos by Melissa Ergo, Editor Cody Royle, Published by Travis McKenzie, Copyright NTSQ Sports Group Inc.

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FootNotes

Words by Mike Ergo, Photos by Melissa Ergo, Editor Cody Royle, Published by Travis McKenzie, Copyright NTSQ Sports Group Inc.

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