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.