Guest post from Walid

Part of any adventure includes overcoming all of the obstacles involved.  In my own personal opinion, it is not adventure if those obstacles aren't to a high degree, personal in nature.  For me, personally, I suffer from an irrational fear of heights, which is not uncommon, though it is uncommon in those people who choose to scale the worlds highest mountains.  I derive a great deal of personal growth from facing head on my irrational fear and "possible shortcoming" to achieve my goal.  

Colleen suffers a similar irrational fear, though it is harder to put a name to.  The adventure she chooses give provide the same effect, or result, as a persons irrational fear of heights, but are derived from a variety of sources.  For example, during a triathlon, there should be no reason why Colleen, who is a wonderful swimmer, a decent biker, and an excellent runner, should have any more to worry about than any other triathlete, and yet, prior to an event she is riddled with deepest fears and anxieties for weeks.  As her husband, best friend, and confidant, it took me a while to understand this and I realized that is simply as irrational as my own fear of heights, and for her surmounting each challenge has much less to do with the physical difficult than with the psychological one.  It is for this that I have so much respect for what she is doing.  

Overcoming physical challenges, whether it is forcing the pedals around when your legs burn or putting one foot in front of the other while running is relatively easy.  The hardest part of a really true and honest adventure is overcoming the psychological because that digs deepest into your own personal shortcomings as an individual and requires the most courage.  One has to be courageous to admit his or her own fear.  One has to be courageous to jump into water with 2,000 people, when, for whatever reason that has been keeping you awake and occupying your mind for weeks.  

The purpose of Colleens adventures and blog is to raise awareness for women who have endured things that majority of us can't even wrap our own minds around.  How does one continue to put one foot in front of the other, or get out of bed, when faced with some of the challenges or past experiences that these women have endured.  Clearly it is a psychological struggle on a Herculean scale.  It requires facing ones own fears, being honest, having the courage to reach out for help and digging into the depth of ones own strength and integrity.  What Colleen is doing in the sporting realm, or that of adventure, is worlds apart in intensity but similar in principle and we have a lot to learn from her and those women who she has chosen to represent in this year.  

Maybe one of the most important things we can take away from this year, and these challenges, aside from the awareness to the injustice in this world, is that a drive for self improvement through awareness of ones own psychological limitations and the desire to overcome those makes life both richer and more rewarding.  I'm not proud of my wife because she can run, bicycle, or swim any giving distance, I am proud because she chooses to do things that make her scared, uncomfortable and anxious.  She chooses to believe in herself even when her mind doesn't want to....