“Someone in the
world is training when you are not. When you race them, they will win.”
This quote feeds the obsessive athlete, it torments the slightly less obsessive
and niggles at the mind of the dedicated. Either way, as an Elite athlete,
being told to take time off is cue for some form of unease. Being told to have
a week off running and swimming, when you only have two weeks until your next international
race, is not exactly a comfortable prospect for any type of athlete. Over my
years of running, I have had instances of being sick before major competitions,
or just generally, a plethora of instances where things have simply not been
ideal. I can usually garner some memory of some event sometime in my history that
can settle me, whatever predicament is thrown at me. The last two weeks
however, was a new one for my record books but one I will cherish and remember,
to be used again sometime in the future.
To cut a long, boring,(and after a decent result in
China, largely irrelevant) story short, I ended my first of five A-races in six
weeks, with foot blisters that rendered me completely unable to wear shoes for
four days, forbidden to train for an entire week and not allowed to defend my
overall female Victorian Duathlon Title. It wasn’t a stress fracture, it wasn’t
a stress response, but the timing of it sucked. I left my race in Singapore
motivated but unable to act on that motivation. I arrived in China two weeks
later unsure whether I’d even be able to get around the run course. The ball of
my foot takes the full brunt of my stride and to have a hole in it was not what I wanted playing on my mind. It
wasn’t the end of the world, but it was far from an ideal situation.
The ITU Singapore Asian Cup was a predictably hot and
humid affair. It was a challenging weekend in many ways. Certainly one lovely
thing to come out of the weekend though was that I got to meet some of the
other Australian girls who showed me once again that you don’t have to be
ruthless to achieve in this sport. It is possible, whilst also being a support
to those around you. I thank them for that because those are the values I was
always brought up with in athletics. Being a support to team mates is something
I place great importance on, so it was not easy to see a team mate fall victim
to an unfortunate flat tyre.
My own race was largely predictable. I’m getting quite used to my races becoming games of catch up… well hopefully only until I build some upper body strength and perfect my swim stroke. A lead pack of 8 formed, making it very tricky for our little chase pack of 4 to gain any ground. Instead, expectedly, we lost time over the 40km. My first 5km of the run was solid for me. Time splits called me as having made up one minute on the first girl…. But then the blisters came. Honestly, it wouldn’t have changed my placing, certainly no more than one or two places at the very best, so I’m most definitely not making excuses. It’s more that what ensued from km six was probably the biggest mental battle I have ever fought in a race. The problem with blisters is that slowing down doesn’t actually help. You do slow down because the pain instinctively makes you slow down and you naturally change your gait, but then in reality, that just makes the pain last longer. I wanted to stop more than I ever have. But I knew I was still hanging on for 8th, I’d left the rest of my little pack behind me as well as the girls behind that, and I did not want them sneaking up and stealing valuable ranking points from me. I had to continue, albeit in a rather deplorable fashion. Thus my day naturally ended in the medical tent with a rather unnecessarily large contingent of medics working busily, selecting where to take skin off and where it was best to keep the blisters intact. The storyline of the following 2 weeks, in pictures, looked something like this…
My own race was largely predictable. I’m getting quite used to my races becoming games of catch up… well hopefully only until I build some upper body strength and perfect my swim stroke. A lead pack of 8 formed, making it very tricky for our little chase pack of 4 to gain any ground. Instead, expectedly, we lost time over the 40km. My first 5km of the run was solid for me. Time splits called me as having made up one minute on the first girl…. But then the blisters came. Honestly, it wouldn’t have changed my placing, certainly no more than one or two places at the very best, so I’m most definitely not making excuses. It’s more that what ensued from km six was probably the biggest mental battle I have ever fought in a race. The problem with blisters is that slowing down doesn’t actually help. You do slow down because the pain instinctively makes you slow down and you naturally change your gait, but then in reality, that just makes the pain last longer. I wanted to stop more than I ever have. But I knew I was still hanging on for 8th, I’d left the rest of my little pack behind me as well as the girls behind that, and I did not want them sneaking up and stealing valuable ranking points from me. I had to continue, albeit in a rather deplorable fashion. Thus my day naturally ended in the medical tent with a rather unnecessarily large contingent of medics working busily, selecting where to take skin off and where it was best to keep the blisters intact. The storyline of the following 2 weeks, in pictures, looked something like this…
Eight days later, another few plane rides beckoned and
the ITU Meizhou Asian Cup was upon us. More fantastic people to meet, and another
race to learn from. Whilst many curse the lack of social media in that part of
the world, to me it was somewhat of a blessing. Meizhou presented a perfect
location for an ITU race, even if the “flat” ride course included a steep
incline that had some of the age groupers actually dismounting their bikes and
walking! Again, my game of catch up eventuated. But I’m happy to say that I
survived my first Elite pontoon start and actually did not get a) dived on or
b) entangled in the arms of the girl next door mid-air.
I rode the entire bike solo, in the awkward position of
missing the front pack but not wanting to slow down to join the group behind. With
only 5kms to run, and me not being sure how my feet would hold up, continuing
on solo was really the best option for the bike. Running the fastest run split
by 40seconds, whilst pleasing given the blisters, was something of a
frustration and very much a “false trophy”. As a wise man (my coach) once said,
“there’s no point running the fastest run
split from the fourth bike pack.” I wasn’t in the fourth bike pack but his
words were still completely accurate (and are a constant reminder of what I
need to work on). But thrilled I was to earn my first top 5, my first pay
cheque and my first drug test….Even if the heat during our race meant a few
hours of sculling a mountain of water bottles before being tested.
So here I sit, aboard another airplane, my seventh flight
in two weeks, with the words from Up in
the Air on repeat in my head: “All
the things you probably hate about travelling -the recycled air, the artificial
lighting, the digital juice dispensers, the cheap sushi- are warm reminders
that I'm home.” In 8 days, I’ll be aboard again, returning for another
Asian Cup in Lantau, HK. 
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