So, wow, apologies due. I just realised that I haven't blogged for two days in a row. That never happens. My mum thought I had fallen off the planet. I don't have many excuses other than to say I had a busy day on Sunday and then I had an impromptu date night with my wife last night. To be honest by the time I got to yesterday I had forgotten that I hadn't blogged on Sunday. If I had remembered the lack of blogging on Sunday I think I would have made more of an effort yesterday. Oh well. Apologies again.
Now that I am here blogging, got an interesting topic to write about, this might even be the topic of a couple of blogs, see how it goes.
So yesterday a good friend of mine got some not so good medical news (he reads this and so he knows who he is). It wasn't anything terminal, but the doctor pretty much said he wasn't to run anymore. Wear and tear on his knees over the years had been too great and more running was going to accelerate that damage leading to a knee replacement sooner rather than later. Pretty cut and dried. No more running, which of course means no more triathlon. Pretty devastating news for a triathlete. More or less the the news that a triathlete dreads hearing the most.
So, what do you do when you are a triathlete and you get news telling you that you can't be a triathlete anymore? Well that is a pretty tough question and it is unfortunately one that I have had to ask myself in the last 12 months.
When I was told to stop racing I think the best bit of advice I got was 'take time'. Up until that point I had been working in a world where every missed session meant three that I would have to do to regain the fitness. There was a real sense of time pressure, I had to get back to training as quickly as possible. I was so used to that time pressure that it was the norm. Once I wasn't able to race that time pressure went away and so I did have time to sit back and think about what I wanted to do. The advice I got was to make sure I let myself take that time. It was pretty important advice.
Taking some time gave me the chance to have a think about what I actually enjoyed doing. Triathlon may be off the table, but it didn't mean that life stopped. Cycling, open water swimming, coaching, being a dad, paddling, just generally hanging out with friends, the list of alternative activities is a long one. The advice I was given was to give myself some time, perhaps 6 months and see what I was gravitating towards, then do more of that. That is pretty much how I ended up coaching.
Taking that time and finding something that I enjoy has meant that I have avoided falling into a motivational hole, where I am down because I can't do what I want. Certainly I feel frustrated because I can't do what I wanted, but I have been able to shift that motivation and focus on to something else, which has really made the process of shifting away from training and racing much easier.
There were a couple of other things that I had to realise too, but I think that is a good start and I will save those for a post tomorrow.
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