Things that don't change

The picture is from another good arentinean artist called D. Paz and illustrates perfectly what is the topic I wanted to raise today. No matter how much assistance we receive in terms of gadgets, the gains in performance are most times results of a change in attitude. I'm pretty young to the sport and as I said before I like many things about it, probably one of the things I like more is the fact that your work ethics pay a dividend, something that sometimes doesn't happen in real life ; ). This season was very particular for me for reasons that are outside the triathlon world, and I raced three races in total, one in November, one in Feb and the Nationals in March.

Chatting with the coach after the race in Nov. I said I had taken the swim easy as I didn't want to be too hyped in the early stages of the bike, I then had an OK bike and run steady but not fast (going gastro, another post is needed for that). I was asked why I had taken it easy during a race, what was the reason for that given that after the race I was off for 6 weeks to get married and a holiday.

After the second race in February (I was on the feet of Cam Brown for the first 100m of the swim) I said to my coach it was a "cruizy" race, this time I was told off, this was my last chance before Nationals and I have cruized?.

I'm not a guy to miss a training session and I love racing, but somehow the spice wasn't there. For nationals, the feeling after the race was a bit different, I knew I couldn't have gone any faster, I just messed up transitions... but that's another story.  Reflecting on what changed between then and now I can say that it was what I was thinking at certain points in the race: on the first two ones I was too worried about the future (it's 90k to bike after the swim, I need to eat to have something on the legs for later, it's two laps like this one, save a little for the second, and things like that), on the third race I was cold, it was a typical wellington morning and all I could think was: "bloody hell, this is cold conditions here, keep going". And as I got onto running I couldn't feel my feet, so I just run like there's no tomorrow until they started to ache.

Moral of the story here, I don't know what I'm gonna think next time I'm racing, but for sure I'll know what to do when thoughts about the future come to mind.

Today was a day off, so here's the workout for yesterday

Date: 17 Apr

Sport: Run

Time: 55mins

Distance: 'bout 12km (longer version)

Comment: I felt I could to two laps, pitty it was only 1 hour lunch!