To the unfamiliar, my decision to race the 2010 Chapter of the Aviva Ironman 70.3 would seam like a pretty trivial decision- If I can finish it, why not jump in and give it a go, have fun doing it and enjoy the race?
But those that know me, know that I enjoy the race in a different way.
I love to race. I love to set PB’s and push myself to new levels. This is what I enjoy doing. I race when I know that I’ve put in my best efforts into planning & training & recovering- in short, I love chasing that perfect race. I’ve had that experience a few times now and not much comes close to putting out your absolute best effort on the day, having worked hard at it for the preceeding months. That is how I respect the sport. It has given me so much ( a story for another day perhaps), that just to jump in for the sake of it would be selling myself short.
This time round however, I feel that I haven’t been able to give my best effort. There’s a whole lot of other stuff going in the background- growing up stuff, career stuff, getting married stuff, Church stuff. So my brain is telling me to let go of this one and forget about 70.3. But my brain is also telling me that everyone else has “stuff” too; why should I be excused from “stuff”?
As triathletes, we all juggle too many things than we should and we want to be good at all of them- swimbikerunworkfamilykidsrelationshipssociallife anyone? But thats who we are, thats we we love it. The sheer audacity of pulling out a sub 5 hr half-ironman while keeping everything else undercontrol- Well, that’s something special!
So I set myself some tasks this weekend to get a sense of where I’m at fitness wise; Saturday-90km TT, Sunday- 12ks worth of trail intervals. Nothing superhuman (to be expected) but not too shabby either. There’s a little bit of time left- am I dreaming to think that a few good sessions, a sensible diet and some tightening up of the core will get me to the start?
We'll see you there!
Shem
7am, Macritchie Carpark
