Everything You Want Is On The Other Side Of Hard – Ken Rideout

Watching my wife take our new daughter in her arms, I felt overwhelmed in the best way. Shelby is a beautiful woman, a stunner on her worst day. But I’d never seen her shine the way she did cradling our daughter in her arms. There was this majestic sense of completion. The battle had been tough and we’d fought so hard for so long, but we kept the faith and we never gave up.

Now, we’d done it. So many feelings ran through me all at once when I held my new daughter. I was nervous, anxious, overjoyed, and awed by the sense of responsibility I felt. It was like being born again, but in the healthiest way. I thought of my own parents and all the mistakes they’d made and felt determined to give this child the exact opposite childhood that I’d had.

We kept the Amharic name that our daughter’s birth mother had given her, Tensae. It referred to Easter, a holiday more important than Christmas in Ethiopia because in Ethiopian Orthodox theology the Resurrection of Jesus is more important than his birth. In the Ge‘ez language, Tensae literally means “to rise.” It fit perfectly with how I felt in that moment. Tensae had been born severely malnourished and, at four months, was still only seven pounds and change with a big, distended belly.

We were concerned that she hadn’t been getting adequate care. The adoption process is lengthy anywhere, especially for an international adoption, and the Ethiopian officials seemed like they were in no rush. We were very intent on making sure Tensae got whatever medical care she needed as soon as possible. At the end of the day, one of the organizers gathered all the families together before we climbed into the van to head to our accommodations for the evening.

“Tomorrow,” he announced, “we have arranged for a sightseeing tour of Hawassa. We’ll meet in the reception area at the hotel at nine. Around five, we’ll return to the orphanage for another brief visit before dinner.”

“Engrossing, moving, energizing. A book that will inspire you to try something hard. Few people are as multifaceted or have led as many lives as Ken Rideout. This memoir’s big lesson: give yourself fully to the pursuit of something great and, in the end, you will find peace.” —TREY HARDEE, TWO-TIME WORLD DECATHLON CHAMPION AND OLYMPIC SILVER MEDALIST “I’m just glad I never partied with Ken Rideout back in our Wall Street days—if I had, I’d be a chalk outline instead of a spectator watching him break the tape.

Rideout reminds us that the only thing harder than facing your past is outrunning it—somehow, he does both. This memoir is proof that the impossible is possible. It will make you want to achieve more.” —TURNEY DUFF, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE BUY SIDE “A crowd-pleasing knockout. Rideout is that opponent you never want to face, someone who can take immense pain and never, ever gives up. As this story shows, what is most impressive about Ken is not that his back never hit the canvas; in fact, in many different types of arenas it did so regularly.

Rather, his secret has been his ability to always get back on his feet. If you want a megadose of inspiration, start turning these pages.” —DUSTIN POIRIER, FORMER UFC INTERIM LIGHTWEIGHT CHAMPION OceanofPDF.com Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook. Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox. OceanofPDF.com OceanofPDF.com For my wife, Shelby. For my children: Tensae, Jack, Luke, and Cameron. And for everyone trying to get better. OceanofPDF.com Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom. —General George S. Patton OceanofPDF.com PROLOGUE BLOOD AND DIRT I HIT THE DIRT HARD and by the time I came up, I was already drippping blood.

Several times while training for Ironman, I’ve crashed my bike and jumped right back up—there was so much adrenaline flowing that I didn’t feel pain in the moment. This fall was the opposite. My exhausted body exploded in pain, and my elbow was quickly drenched in blood. I was two days into the Gobi March, a brutally difficult six-stage, 155-mile ultramarathon through the steppes, sand dunes, and rock valleys of Central Mongolia.

I’d journeyed sixty-five hundred miles from my home in Nashville, and I was here to win. On the first stage of twenty-one miles, I’d gone out super hard.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: f8c9a960711e0bf6
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 58,398,949 bytes (55.694 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 257
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 430.88 minutes
• Total Words: 86,177
• Total Characters: 462,273
• Average Words per Page: 335.32
• Average Characters per Page: 1798.73

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