DNF the amateurs' big No-No

Sunday was a day off before a hard week. I made the most of my day off by catching up with some uni reading (more sleep time for the week), tidying up the house (we’re both studying, so housekeeping has lost priority) and getting myself a rain jacket for the first time in 3 years as a triathlete. (Gear review tomorrow)I also went to the see the Time Trial of the tour de Fance with many other athletes from the tri club. It was a pretty cool day.

I also tried to follow some of the many races in the northern hemisphere, I followed IM Lake Placid, The ITU world championship series and I’m still looking forward to catch up with some of other bloggers’ race reports. (IMLP1, IMLP2)

The men’s race in London was pretty interesting, there were a few Kiwis I was expecting to see go hard, but certainly not Clark Ellice. He had a solid race and finished top new Zealander. Olympic medallist Bevan Docherty had another DNF following last week’s. Gemmel looked strong and on the way up. I think he is on track for a good finish at the Budapest race. Many other guys appear to be in top racing form, wich is a bit of a worry as they may not be able to carry that top form for five weeks till the grand final.

I was once at a talk that Docherty was giving on an Adidas store and asked him if he ever regrets DNF’ing. He said he never does, because many times the decision prove to be the correct ones for his training and overall goals for the year. I guess that if you race as often as this guys do DNF’ing is less of an issue as it is for many of us weekend warriors. By not doing a 30min 10km he may have saved fitness to invest in more training and be able to race 29.30km later on (but there is a twist to it, because when you DNF you don’t get points for your National Team, so you cut your Olympic and World Cup spots… interesting, hum?)

I only did one DNF, and it still hurts, for many reasons.

The first one is that because it was the first race of the season I missed the chance to have a benchmark for later in year. The second one is that I could have continued as I was physically OK. And finally, it was a waste, as I could have learned a hell of a lot, should I continued racing. But one thing I learned for sure. Unless I’m seriously ill or injured, I will never ever quit a race again. I s’posse you have to go through one at some time in racing. A second thought on this one also said that it's good also not to DNF on training workouts, something I am occasionally guilty of.

Today was a hard swim and it is all uphill for the rest of the week. I couldn’t be more pleased,

Date: 26 July

Sport: Swimming/Running

Time: 60min/60min
Dist: 3.2km / 8km
Comment: we changed the 4x2200m run in 7.5min to an easier workout thanks to a freak weather bomb that dropped 7 degrees of air temperature in 20min just before we started running