April is Talking.

A few years back, I was sitting on a bench outside a coffee shop at about 6:45 in the morning. It was early April — still cold enough that you could see your breath, but the sun was doing something different than it had been doing in January and February. You could feel it. Not just temperature-wise, but in the way it was sitting there on the horizon like it had somewhere important to be.

A guy I know, not a triathlete, not a runner, sat down next to me and said, "I was supposed to start training for a 5K two months ago."

I asked him what happened.

He shrugged. "I don't know. Life? Winter? I just...didn't feel like it."

I nodded. I've been there. WE'VE all been there.

Then he said something that I've thought about almost every day since: "I think I was waiting to feel motivated before I started moving. But maybe I had that backwards."

He did. He absolutely had that backwards.

Here's something nobody tells you when you sign up for your first race, or your tenth, or your twenty-fifth: motivation is not the thing that gets you out the door. MOVEMENT is the thing that creates motivation. You don't wait to feel ready. You lace up, you get out, and the feeling follows. Every single time. Not sometimes. Every time.

April is the cruelest month for the athlete who is still waiting to feel ready. Because April doesn't care. The calendar moves. Race day moves closer. The water in Cape May doesn't get warmer on your schedule. Escape the Cape is June 7th. Women's Philly Tri is July 12th. The Atlantic City Triathlon is August 9th. These dates are locked. They are coming for you regardless of whether you "felt like it" in February.

But here's the flip side — and I mean this — April is also the greatest gift on the calendar for the person who decides TODAY is the day. The weather is shifting. The days are longer. Something primal wakes up in us when the earth starts warming back up. There is a reason people have celebrated spring for thousands of years. Your body knows. Listen to it.

I want to ask you something, and I want you to actually sit with it for a minute. Not skim past it. Not nod along and move on to the next thing in your inbox.

Why did you sign up?

Not why did you sign up in the abstract. Not "to get healthy" or "to challenge myself." Those are fine answers but they're not YOUR answer. Dig a little. Was it because someone you love did it and you wanted to know what they felt? Was it because a doctor told you something you didn't want to hear? Was it because you needed to prove something to yourself after a really hard year? Was it because you turned a number that ended in a zero and decided you weren't done yet?

THAT is the thing. Go back to that thing.

When the alarm goes off at 5am and you are warm and the last thing in the world you want to do is get in a cold pool, THAT thing is what gets you up. Not motivation. Not a playlist. Not a foam roller. The WHY. The real one.

April is talking. It's asking you the same question it asks every year: Who do you want to be by the time summer comes?

I already know your answer.

Now go show me.

-DELMO