Mind over Matters that Matter

                                                   Human Race Events Eton sprint weekend

 

In the last few weeks, I have been doing much more than is anything like normal to keep my mind occupied.

I have had a new personal stress peak, due to unforeseen circumstances way beyond any area that I could even dream of being in control of.

So, I have had to double down on normal effort.

When there is a situation that is out of your own known world, you need firstly to accept that you have no part to play.

Especially when you are told bluntly that this is so.

The only option is to try not to get too depressed about the situation.

Yeah right! That is not possible.

 

 

So finally, after the fullness of time as our politicians so love saying, you know for stone bonk certainty that the one in charge of you is YOU.

You have to take up the reins of your own life’s horse.

During the last 13 months I have made myself as busy as possible to get through the loneliness of lockdown.

It has been a lonely time. I have had the company of my absolute saint of a husband, we have been together for 44 happy years.

Stephen knows me inside out and has not complained whilst I have struggled to keep busy for as much of the day as is left after our daily training.

During the covid times my main pastime were my writing (poetry/blog and messages), which is most absorbing once I sit down, my fingers cannot keep up with my brain.

Then needle work galore that is the most relaxing pastime.  Things like gardening and housework have come right at the bottom of the list on the essential things on the ‘to do’ list.

 Keeping the house spick and span seemed to me to be unnecessary in the light of there not being any friends or family coming in for a chat or dinner or coffee.

 Having seen that I had hit a new low mentally, Stephen has tried to make sure that I have as much time as I am asking for the extra programme I have set myself.

He is still making sure of my fitness levels as my coach of over thirty years in triathlon.

This is still top of my list too, since I am thinking of the rest of my life in my sport which also provides for another love, which is travel.

My first event that I hope against hope will go ahead, will be at the Eton Sprints weekend held at Dorney Lake that has regularly been on the race programme since the event started.

This may be the first year that I have not competed on both days.

The race I have my fingers crossed for is the qualifier for the ITU World Sprint Triathlon Championships later this summer.

The only problem will be the tiny amount of swimming I will have done beforehand, but I will be getting back in the water very soon indeed.

My biking and running are race ready… more than ready with the amount of training I have done since my last event, The National Aquathlon Championships September 2019!That was the week after the ITU World standard distance age group Championships in Lausanne, Switzerland. it been a while. 

Back to the plot.

I do love a good coincidence.

Toward the end of last year, I decided to try to learn a bit of Italian since apart from basic greetings my Italian was almost non-existant.

I can get by politely in German, though nobody would call me fluent. Beyond basics though.

A friend who speaks a half a dozen or more languages well, recommended I sign up for a course with Duolingo on my phone.

 It is a fun course and presses the student to be competitive with a very clever points scoring plan and encouraging more practice.

So, with this you can climb up into another league and then another and keep an eye of those near you trying to overtake or at least hold your position.

There is extra benefit if you take the challenge to complete a five-day streak of an everyday study period for the initial goal of the five days.

I got sucked into that and made time for short period every day, the time I spent working away through level after level of the section they present for you.

 

 This is where the coincidence occurs.

Today the funny little green thing that goads me along pointed out that I have now come to time when I am on a 93-day streak!

This means that next Sunday will make that a 100-day streak. No start finish plan for ever set down.

 

 

That will be Easter Sunday.

Steve and I get to celebrate in style because we can have Ice Cream then, because we gave it up for Lent and have stuck to it, dare I say religiously.

To make this a triple celebration I hope the sea is calm enough for me to get into the water again for the first time since last summer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Injury Monster

 

Something I have noticed that I share with some of my sporting friends on Instagram and Facebook, is a dread of injury interrupting the rock-solid training schedule that we push ourselves to maintain. There has been enough stress for over past year, with all aspects of our lives buried under the Covid cloud. We are though, a determined band of hard-line triathlete’s living with their hearts and souls set on being ready, when eventually, there will be an event that does not get postponed for the third time.

 

On flicking through the Instagram posts each morning, it seems that our many hard worked muscles, lead from the darkness inside our super stressed minds almost every day, that there has been a well tightened muscle that has pinged out painfully in protest to all work an no play regime. I do think that the added stress of this time in all or our lives, has caused many of the injury’s that I have read about. So, if some other negative thing bursts into your life unexpectedly, you can well build up so much tension that can in all honesty cause something to give out suddenly and badly.

 

I have suffered from pre-race nerves from the very beginning of my very long career in the sport, to the point where before a big race, the second Steve moved to pull up the zip of my wetsuit, that my body would take that as a cue to throw-up anything I had made the mistake of eating for breakfast. I never eat before a race now and have not for many years.

So, living with our races being cancelled or postponed again, it builds that old stress bank up like an oncoming storm. In the light of a recent extra dose of worry and upset, my body reacted to the tension by seizing my back up violently, to the point where I could hardly move and most certainly could not move without pain. 

 

Of course, it is freaking well annoying, when you get a, ‘stopped you in your tracks’ happening.However, it is best to just try to be a little stoic about the whole thing.From my own point of view, I am glad that it has happened now, when my first three events have been moved for the second time.

Now I have time to do what we all know is the only option which is to take time off and allow the stress to dissipate and those poor old seized up muscles to slowly loosen out again. 

My back has been so bad, that the only two positions I could manage after a slow painful struggle, were either to lie down flat or after an even bigger struggle stand up straight. Sitting down in my great big Eezi-boy arm-chair with my legs elevated to watch TV was a complete and utter NO-NO.

Sitting rigidly upright, supported by hard pillows, with my feet square on the floor, just about allowed me to sit and eat. This is why any action photos of me of late on social media sites have been from my photo memories.

It has been a slow process. 

 

 

I have tried to breathe deeply and slowly and try to stay calm which is almost impossible for me since I am a world class fidget.

I have read a lot of books and listened with Steve to others on audible.

Thank God and all the angels I am starting to move and breathe normally again and have taken a couple of woodland walks but much slower than usual.

Try to find to relax and do more gentle stretching is my advice.

It is not the end of the world to pull a muscle or two.

Time is indeed a great healer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hopes and dreams postponed again

 

 

Having kept our training up all winter long, so that in the face of all the hazards we earthlings have suffered, we would be race ready when the moment came, yet the path is still by no means clear.

 

 

 

So far this month, our first three events that we were entered in for last summer, and were then all postponed to roughly the same date this year,have now been moved again.

 All three would have been early season, in May and would have fitted just about into one journey, they are:

May 2^nd Ironman 70.3 Venice-Jesolo

May 9^th Ironman 5051 Laguna Plava, Poreč, Croatia

May 22^nd Ironman 70.3 Graz, Austria.

 

We could still do all three of these races because our entries places have again been carried forward to the new dates.

All three are moved to dates much later in the summer.

We will keep our fingers crossed that the plague numbers will be in a better state by then.

 

Both Steve and I had our first jab eight weeks ago and on TV it was stated this week, that the second jabs would be given on time, still within the twelve weeks.

Everything crossed then, that much is true, since at first, they said the second jab should be three weeks after the first one and then changed that to twelve weeks.

 

People have told all my life that I am just a dreamer.

I see nothing whatsoever wrong with holding on to your hopes and dreams.

It is not a fault to hope for the best.

It is not wrong to work for your aims and goals.

 

All the photos on this page were taken at the during the IUT world Triathlon Championships in Edmonton, Canada in 2014