For the past year There's been denial that I've transformed into one of the crazy, intense triathletes that my dad and I used to make fun of. After all, this whole tri thing is just recreational activity, great exercise, and a lot of fun, right? WRONG!
Yes to the above, but there's more to it. Kyle AND I have been working hard together for the past year. When we opened the running shop, we came to an agreement that one of us needed to be a hardcore athlete (being a couch potato and owning an endurance shop is LAME), and I had potential to make that happen with his coaching. While racing will probably never pay the bills, coaching can. Since then he has taken on excess responsibilities: coaching the local masters team, leading a weekly speed work session for me and my friends, and voluntarily assuming the role as coach for other local athletes.
Naturally, when you work hard to achieve something it's easy to become consumed. Some may call it obsession. To each his own. I look at it as setting a goal and having a very strategic plan on how to accomplish that goal. Along the way you have benchmarks, in our case, races. Each one carries it's own weight of importance because the desired endpoint is different. Things rarely go exactly according to plan, so you adapt to overcome those obstacles.
Earlier in the year we planned to race the Lifetime Fitness U.S. Triathlon in Dallas. In order to make the trip worth our while, I needed to race under a 2:20 for an Olympic distance tri. Unfortunately I got injured and took the first half of the summer off from running to nurse my ITBand, which set me back a bit. Music City was close at 2:25 on a challenging course. I expected to shed some time at Rocketman, but hindsight realized that I needed to change my plans to have a strong finish to the season. Instead of Dallas, I would do Girl Power and the Santa Rosa Island Triathlon.
4 weeks, 4 races: The Crusader 5k, Girl Power, Santa Rosa, and Mighty Magnolia. The first two are in the books and this week was prep for Santa Rosa. Unfortunately, I received an email Thursday afternoon with news that the event would be cancelled (or postponed until further notice) due to tropical storm Karen. On a competitive standpoint I was disappointed because I was ready to race. This was my A race; I should hit my season peak, I'm perfectly tapered, and I was in race mode, so the news was defeating.
After spending some time thinking about what we were going to do, Kyle informed me that it wasn't too late to go to Dallas. After weighing the options, I couldn't think of a legitimate reason to NOT go... other that the fact that traveling 7 hours each way at the last minute for a race I haven't been planning for is COMPLETELY insane! I should point out that any other serious racing team would do the same!
No comments:
Post a Comment