New kids on the block

Starting something new brings some fears and feelings of unease, may it be a new job, buying a house or getting to a new pool squad. As an immigrant I kind of got seasoned in starting from zero at many, many things (fortunately not the english language, although its kiwi variety proved to be enough of a challenge) so when I slowly crawled my way into triathlon (thanks to Leon, a mate now in Spain) I had my ways to be "the new guy" for as little as posible and Valentino as soon as it could be.

There's no clear line that separate when you are the new guy at the training group and when you're "one of the guys/girls". It depends a big deal on personalities, and triathletes personalities many times are quite, ahem... how to word it:....arsy?. Anyway, we all have to go through it at some point or another and the good thing is that as I said before it does not belong to triathlon only but to the general dynamics of any group.

Today I started a covering for someone at my work, and  although corporate politcal correctness rules dictate that many people would be very supportive on paper, there were a couple of genuine shows of support that really made my day.

Other guys started training for a beginners group that the tri club sponsors, it was a huge crowd running the badly lit carpark where the magic happens. I spoke to some of the guys to show a bit of the camaraderie I mentioned in my first posts, and to get to know them as they will be buddies of some kind any time soon, I think it is important to build those bridges and make sure people keep wanting to come back, otherwise races and group trainings are like a boring replay of Friends, and to be frank, that takes the fun part of the sport.

I guess that where this post is going it to the fact that in this sport, as in life in general, we are the new kids on the block many times, in training, in racing, in getting out of town to a race for the first time, in writing your diary, in racing your first time on a distance, and the list goes on for as long as one can think of. I found many times that there's always been someone there to check how was I doing, and I take pride in being that someone to someone else now. So I'm smiling

Back to training, today was the first late arrival to a training session for the year, I just don't know what happened but never heard the alarm and missed the first 10 mim of the morning swim

Date: 10 May
Sport: Swim /// Run
Time: 50min /// 60min
Dist: 2.5km /// bout 9km
Comment: big tick on all boxes