2016 ... (My debut long course season)

I am an analyst: by nature, by training, and by profession. So, when my season is complete – the only way I find to adequately dissect my year and move on is by some clean and simple analysis with some quick and dirty facts and figures. Given my four year ends in this sport have not quite ended on my preferred terms too (what I now call the curse of the final race), it is so important to remember the good that has come from each season and to be able to head off on break able to actually celebrate the good. 

My “curse of the final race” theory started in my first year racing as a professional (then an ITU athlete) in 2013 when I was forced to withdraw from Noosa in the preceding week due to a chest infection I’d picked up in Hong Kong the previous week. 2014 saw me crash my bike while riding in a torrential downpour and flash flooding the day before the Cartagena ITU World Cup in Colombia. In 2015, I slipped two discs in my back ending any chance of a finish in Noosa or a start at Challenge Shepparton. Today, I had a slow leaking flat tyre. The circumstances have certainly been varied.

Under the above circumstances, amidst the disappointment, it is so easy to forget anything good that has come before it. If the final race is a bust, then the whole year has been too. Right? Of course not! That’s completely irrational. But I think I’ve mentioned in a previous post – possibly when trying to extrapolate the “good” from a previous year – that athletes tend to be quite irrational when it comes to our approval of our own performances. The reality is this: I started my season – and quoting my very words – wanting “consistency.” I even ventured on to request that this be the “ultimate word that I hope to attribute to 2016 come its end.” I didn’t say anything about podiums, or places, or results at all. So how did my year go from that, and being happy just to be training again (post a potentially career ending injury), to being happy with a top 10 (9^th female overall) in my first Professional (and first ever) attempt at a 70.3 distance race, to being thrilled with a 6^th place in my second race, and from there only wanting more and more. Once I stepped on my first Professional long course podium in July, I wanted every race to end with flowers and champagne. “Just” a top 10 suddenly looked so inferior. My perceptions had changed and a 7^th place in Zurich was deemed somewhat of a disappointment (the race was won by Nicola Spirig!). God forbid, a 9^th place in Slovakia at the end of August! And when another podium came in Korea, I could argue that it wasn’t as good as my podium in July because I wasn’t happy with my finishing time or my bike time and the field wasn’t as deep. Gosh, we ARE a hard lot to please we athletes. And when I pulled over today, 40km of riding on a slow leaking tyre later, well that just apparently made my whole year a total disaster and left me feeling totally undeserving of a break because ONE out of my eleven races this year ended in disappointment (well actually three out of eleven had – still not bad odds though in reality) but this just happened to be the last race of the season and so deemed every race before it, good or bad, irrelevant…. In my irrational athlete mind.  

So going back to my original words from April this year: “consistency. The ultimate word I hope to attribute to 2016 come its end.” Did I achieve that? Yes.

And the quick and dirty race figures for 2016, after which I hope to prove to myself that 2016 was, despite today, a pretty satisfying debut long course season:

·       11 international professional start lines toed (2x Olympic distance and 9x70.3 distance events), of which 3 were DNF’s (2x punctures and 1x sickness all at 70.3 distance)

·       Of the 8 races finished, 2 were podiums (2x seconds over the 70.3 distance), and 3 more top 6’s (a 4th and 2x 6ths), making 5 out of 8 top 6 results (overall and within the pro fields)

·       In no race was I outside the top 10 overall female (pro and age group)   

So why am I not happier right now? Even putting to bed today’s disappointment, it’s probably attributable in at least some part to these other “quick and dirty figures” for my 2016 race season (current BEFORE I venture home tomorrow):

·       60 flights

·       17 countries

·       242 hours spent on a plane (not including transit in airports)

·       167,398km travelled by plane

To those people who smirk and say how lucky we professional athletes are to be “living the dream,” ponder for one moment please, the toll we choose to take on our minds and bodies in doing this – the above should shed some light. Don’t get me wrong though; To me, I AM living MY dream. I’m pursuing something I love to do, and giving myself the chance to reveal my true potential. I’m representing my country at an Elite level – something I only ever dreamed of as a junior runner. But I’m no fool. The way this phrase is intended by those who say it, is not the same as that which I have just said. It is intended as a dig, a negative remark that totally discounts the trials and tribulations that we as professional athletes subject ourselves to on a daily basis. Not to mention that we totally put ourselves out there to have every single result judged. We spend the above number of hours on planes each season, navigating airports and battling airline staff (with bikes) for 11 months of the year while our friends and families are carrying on with life without us. Forget NOT also, that many professionals are also studying and/or working in some capacity. I, myself, included. Because in order to live "the dream” as so many say, I had to temporarily give up living my other “dream” of being a mining analyst with a Wall Street Investment Bank that I worked so hard to achieve throughout my five year university degree. I am fortunate, but I’m not lucky. I, like all other professional athletes, work so hard and sacrifice so much to be in this position. Like other jobs, there are good days, and there are bad – only our bad days are fully observable by others. There are sacrifices and there are also huge thrills. This may be MY dream, but not THE dream.

And with that, I will later this week embark upon my two weeks of “annual leave” a year, fully cleansed and reasonably satisfied with the season behind me. On the other side of those two weeks, season 2017 begins in earnest. There’s a lot of work to be done. My body is exhausted for now, but my mind can’t wait. Thank you 2016; for the good, the bad and EVERYTHING in between!       

More than a Simple Result... (The other factors)

Last weekend I crossed the line second in the Ironman 70.3 Gurye in South Korea. It was just my fifth race over the distance, my second podium for the distance and my first in an Ironman branded event. I was more than satisfied with that result. After all, I had gone into the race thinking third or fourth would have been my eventual finishing place. So a second place was above expectation and a result with which I was more than happy …. But a few people close to me remarked over the following 48 hours that I should have been happier than I appeared to be. It wasn’t that I was sulking around but rather that I should have seemed happier. Even a training buddy and close friend of mine said he’d been slightly annoyed with how not overjoyed I had appeared in the afternoon after the race. I knew inside that I was more than content with the result, but the observers were right; I wasn’t feeling the way even I would have expected following such a result. It made me realise that results and performances are so much more complex than a simple finishing number. So much more. You can still be absolutely thrilled with a finishing place (an outcome), but there are so many more variables at play when you finish a race than just what place you have finished…And this became an interesting train of thought that nicely occupied me over the 36 hour journey home.

Sunday was a battle for me. One of those races that are just tough. We’ve all had those days. In over four and a half hours, I didn’t feel any form of rhythm. Not even once. I was fighting the pedals all day on the bike, constantly getting out of the saddle just to try to increase the momentum. My Di2 was jumping constantly, leaving me only two gears to ride in safely. It frustrated me. But on I battled. It was just a long, tough day out. I applied every mental game I’ve ever played on myself to get through. Make no mistake, this description is the furthest thing from an excuse (remember, I am actually thrilled with the finishing place), but rather an explanation for a battle weary athlete crossing the line.

Reason number one for a lower than expected level of joy and excitement: I was oh so battle weary.

There was also a hint of disappointment in my own personal performance, falling short of prior performances, especially on the bike. This disappointment was completely and utterly, 100% independent from the finishing place because a personal best performance still wouldn’t have changed the end result, or even come close to it. It is the distinction between a “performance” and a “result”. I was thrilled with the “result”, but disappointed with my “performance”. That actually IS possible. Remember, it’s not black and white. It’s not simple. And it shows how much athletes are often driven more by personal bests than by results.

Reason number two for a lower than expected level of joy and excitement: I was somewhat disappointment in my own personal “performance”

The journey to and from Gurye in South Korea was nothing short of epic. It was a beautiful place, but to achieve such beauty, it really was quite isolated. There was only a limited number of shuttles for the four hour bus trip to/from Incheon airport so flights etc had to be planned around a very set bus timetable. This meant that we actually had to be on a bus within five hours of finishing the half ironman on Sunday. In that five hours, we had a soft presentation, waited for our bikes to be released from T2, returned to our accommodation (10km away) to pack our bikes, returned to the race venue for the official awards ceremony, and returned again to the accommodation in time for the four hour bus trip back to Incheon. Arriving at our airport hotel at Incheon at midnight, and being up for morning flights the next morning back to Hong Kong to then endure a seven hour layover before an overnight flight back home to Melbourne. You can understand then that upon finishing the race, my thoughts were not so much with the result but rather the mammoth task ahead to get back home. There was no nap time, no time for substantial food – just a few ice creams from the convenience store. By the time I boarded the shuttle that evening, I was sore, hungry and exhausted. Good result or not, nothing would change that. This is often the life of a pro athlete: finish a race, and get going …although I usually depart the following morning which is at least long enough to have an afternoon nap and some good food the evening post race. Unless generous flight and race schedules allow, there is rarely time to bask in the glory of a race well done. It’s pack up and move on home, to recover and prepare for the next job. The demanding nature of this particular journey home however, was the most dramatic example of this that I’ve so far encountered.    

Reason number three for a lower than expected level of joy and excitement: I could think of nothing but the mammoth task ahead of being ready for that evening’s bus ride, and the long, fiddly journey home. Add to that increasing exhaustion and hunger…

You see, a result itself is just an outcome. It’s one cog in a massive wheel – arguably the most important cog, but just one nonetheless. There is so much more to a day out racing. It is so much more complex, and we as athletes are also complex creatures. A great outcome can be brought about by a less than ideal “performance”, while a personal best performance can yield an - on paper – less than impressive result. Other factors too come into play: exhaustion, tiredness, hunger, stress. All these too can cripple excitement upon achieving a sought after outcome. Over time though, these other factors do fade, and the one thing remaining is the result. It’s through this process that I’m probably now feeling the way I “should” have on Sunday – it just took me a number of days.

        

Riding Rollercoasters.. (the ups and downs of pro sport)

I was aimlessly standing on a travelator in one of Hong Kong Airport’s numerous wings, letting it carry me nowhere. I had a number of hours before my flight, and I was in a fog. People were rushing around me, and normally I’d be the first one to push back. Usually, I’d be so eager to get to the gate, the airline lounge, anywhere as quickly as I possibly could no matter the collateral damage along the way. I have never been known to actually move slowly (or not at all) in an airport. I was travelling alone, returning back to Australia from a disappointing outing in Japan. Disappointing because I felt I’d let myself down. Yes, I was unwell - I had woken the day before the race with a sinus infection. But whether or not I was weak in a moment kept haunting me. Could I have kept going? And why had my illness not waited just two more days to rear its ugly head? So here I was, amidst the emotion and fatigue of a long travel day, being unwell, being disappointed, and honestly, I really was in quite a funk as I rode the endless succession of travelators.  

“This is SO cool, this is SO cool. How cool is THIS?!” – Far from articulate but genuine excitement rarely is. I was trying valiantly to capture every second. I wanted to bottle this feeling. I had never seen nor heard crowds like this. And I had most definitely not ever had the privilege of them cheering for me. Not even four weeks since my pity party on the travelator in Hong Kong, and here I was on cloud nine, in Spain, approaching the finish line for my first ever long course international pro podium, in my third ever long course event, and finding myself ahead of girls I’d only feared when I’d stalked the start list the day before. Could any two consecutive races more perfectly represent the rollercoaster that is professional sport?!

But how did I get to these two races, from my first 70.3 outing in April….

April to the beginning of June is a tricky time for southern hemisphere triathletes. The weather gets colder, the days shorter. Winter exit strategies feel a little too far away to lighten the mood and each day – each session even – becomes a metaphorical (and literal) case of one foot in front of the other. It’s the day in, day out slog that those outside of our sport don’t see.

I chose to add a little sprinkling of summer to my taste of winter this year, firstly with the Noumea International Triathlon, and then two weeks later, with my second ever 70.3 attempt in Vietnam. Both races were satisfying days out. I finished 4^th in Noumea on tired legs, and in a field where I’d expected to be around 3^rd or 4^th. It was nothing amazing, but not at all bad either; just a day out where the job was done, some money earned …. Oh and it was a rather nice island to spend 5 days on, “working”. Result aside, the event itself was fantastic, and one to which I will most certainly return (despite the 5m draft zone).

Vietnam 70.3 had me again questioning why on Earth I seemed so obsessed with making these first attempts at the longer distance so much harder than they already would have been, adding stifling heat to an already daunting challenge. Fast forward 8 weeks to athletes complaining about the 30 degree heat during my race in Spain, and then I realised the benefit of being exposed to such ridiculous climates in my first two outings. The weather in Spain didn’t cross my mind once during that race… but back to Vietnam and whilst more tolerable than Malaysia had been, the aid stations were still my best friend with the repetitive routine - water, Coke, water, sponge – at every single one of the twelve aid stations along the route. I was proud of my more disciplined approach to my running pace this time, even negative splitting my last 5km. The overall time was an improvement on my first 70.3 outing and my finishing 6^th pro was also progress: job done, a couple of boxes ticked, but now I was starting to itch for that next step up and onto the podium.

So then, Japan happened, and we will leave that one floating along the travelator in Hong Kong. Enough said. Enough learned.

And so now I find myself five weeks into my European summer and two weeks post my “cloud nine” race experience in Spain. In those five weeks, I have survived the worst gastro I have had since I was ten years old: vomiting every hour, on the hour, for ten hours straight. Contrasting that, not two weeks later, I achieved the above mentioned podium in the Triathlon Vitoria Half Ironman – a career highlight. A week after that, I was on antibiotics for another sinus infection. But before that had time to strike me down, I snuck in two swim sets in a row on time cycles I had never before achieved. You see, as the first two paragraphs of this blog post show, and as the events of these past five weeks have highlighted, the life of an athlete is a constant up and down rollercoaster. But what I’m slowly developing is an ability to smile through it all, to follow that annoying cliché of “enjoying the journey”, to not get too caught up in the bad (but rather, to learn from it), and as a teammate said to me following my “good” day in Spain, to also soak up the good days. The one guarantee with professional sport is that there will be both kinds of days, and plenty of them.    

Patience & Consistency... (the beginning of my 70.3 journey)

Here are some truths; for the month of December, my average weekly bike volume was 72km. In January, it was 158km. February came and went with an average weekly bike volume of 148km and in March, I clocked an average 201kms per week. This is what a sensible return from injury looks like. With only these numbers in the bank, I lined up on Sunday for my first 70.3 (and simultaneously, my first long course professional race) with my best strategy not coming out of a fabulous preparation, but rather trying to apply the “ignorance is bliss” and “fake it til you make it” mentalities. In the end, I largely did fake it, finishing my first 70.3 and surprising myself to finish 9^th female overall and in a pro field in which I was the only athlete to have never raced the distance. Indeed, I felt like a school student at a new school with a field full of seasoned 70.3 champions and medallists suddenly all around me. People may baulk at my lack of volume. Indeed I’m not deluded enough myself to think of it as anything close to what I need to be doing for this distance, but the other truth is that I sit here today, with my back letting me fight another day. It was worth the cautious build. The build that I don’t anticipate nearing an end until much later in the year. “Consistency” – The ultimate word that I hope to attribute to 2016 come its end.  

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment that I decided to do a 70.3. I definitely remember declaring numerous times over the past few years that I would never “go long”. But when did that change? I really can’t remember. I think it was a gradual process. I remember entering Challenge Shep at the end of last year, but that was simply as an “end of season why not little fun challenge”. I subsequently pulled out pre-race with injury but how did that then become entering for Geelong 70.3 in February this year – and subsequently withdrawing pre-race due to the same injury. And when did that turn into my whole year now becoming solely about 70.3 racing and not ITU? These questions suddenly sprang to mind, quite inconveniently as I dove into the 31 degree waters of Lake Putrajaya on Sunday. How did I get here?!

 

With the race underway, I bluffed my way through 90km of hard riding. I rode an average of 36km/hr on a very lumpy 45km x2 bike course which is what I usually average for an Olympic non-drafting race. I had no bike computer, no power data, but just focussed on the girl ahead and making sure I maintained a legal distance (probably being overly cautious on that front in hindsight and sitting 15-20m back) whilst totally entrusting her to pace the entire 90km. I simply would have had no idea myself.

 

Come the run, I couldn’t quite bluff my way through. A half marathon in searing temperatures that had many of the pros walking (myself included) is a totally different beast to a 10km off a 40km bike in “everyday” conditions. With temperatures up to 39 degrees, and high humidity, it was quite simply a death march. The run was where I saw the eventual 4^th place getter slip away from me. I ran the first 7km like an ITU race and found myself in 6^th place after dismounting the bike in 8^th …. And then, like the flick of a switch, I was walking by 8km. At around 8.5km I decided to try walk/jogs. By the time I discovered my team mate and good friend, Will, sitting by the path at 11km (his day sadly over when he had ended in an ambulance a few kms earlier), I was sure my day too was done. To his credit, he got up and attempted to get going again himself, providing me pivotal support as I considered whether I truly could make it around another 10km. The problem was, I only had two gears: ITU pace and walking. It was only when we began to jog with the approach of “this is my warm down”, that I was able to find something sustainable to get me to the finish line.

 

My lack of volume going into this event was in no way born out of a lack of respect for the distance. Quite the opposite. I understand what it takes all too well, and that is a fully healthy body that can withstand all the mileage. So to that end, I wont be lining up for my next 70.3 with a sudden increase in mileage following a sudden realisation that I need to be riding 300-400km a week. I do know that’s what is ultimately needed, but I’ll be taking the sensible approach, progressing slowly and gradually. Consistency: That is what 2015 lacked and is my only focus for 2016.

Oh and I’m NEVER doing a full ironman ;)