Somewhere between the hours of slog and drudge of study,
and amongst the many hours spent in front of a financial model, I
unintentionally “found myself” this May. I discovered what really motivates me,
and just like that, I discovered a clarity that I had thought I’d had, that I kind of had had but hadn’t really had, before now (still with me?).
Sadly, I think this also means I’m officially OLD now.
I write this (belated) update from my home away from home,
in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain. I’ve now been here for four weeks with this,
unbelievably, being my fourth summer here. This time though, I’m finding myself
appreciating things I haven’t appreciated before. I marvelled at an old church
the other day. What?! I’m finding
myself chuckling over things that previously would have driven me nuts, and I’m
even uttering a word here and there in Spanish – and attempting to bring back
my long lost ten years of French by throwing words over the balcony at my poor
neighbour, Luke. From a training perspective, I am, for the first time, feeling
deeply settled and eager to maximise every single day (rather than to simply
survive). The volume no longer daunts me and I’m finally “adventuring” on the
bike. Like music to a former room-mate’s ears (Rebecca!), I am breaking free of
my repetitive “out and backs” and finding roads and climbs never before travelled
by me. It’s quite bizarre but my mind seems to have undergone some kind of tectonic
shift the last couple of months.
Through all the hours of my head in the books in May,
bending my mind around financial mathematics in the lead up to a six hour exam
in early June, I caught myself actually really loving it. I was taking a study
break with a friend one day – a walking lap of our neighbourhood - and I was
having a massive vent about the nastiness of the exam I was preparing for, and
the lottery it is to actually get through it… and then I stopped myself. After
a solid fifteen minutes of ranting and raving, I ended with a “but”: “BUT I
live for this”. The thrill of chasing a reward that mathematically speaking,
“probably” won’t be achieved, is what I live for. I get bored with easy, and I
get lazy. As one of my junior school teachers remarked to my parents at the
time, I don’t try unless there’s a test, or a challenge. I am constantly
searching for that level where I’m only just holding on (whatever that level
may be), or I lose interest. It’s not the end result, but rather the pain and
stress of chasing the result that I love. That’s one of the reasons why I race
even when I’m not 100% fit (coupled with an intrinsic love of simply racing) and
it is why I am Hell bent on trying to juggle study, some part time financial
analysis work, and preparing for the 70.3 Professional World Championships this
year. It’s when I’m almost (but not quite) drowning, that I’m actually most
calm and happy, and I have finally, definitively, worked that out.
But I’ve
digressed …
So the year began for me after a far shorter off-season than
usual. Five or six weeks of training and I was heading to South Africa for my
first race of the season. I didn’t mind that I wasn’t super fit – I’m not an
ego driven competitor. I had one goal for this year. I worked backwards from
that and knew what I had to do in order to achieve it. Simple. The fact that
East London (South Africa) is known as one of (if not THE) most challenging
courses on the circuit, just made the challenge even more fun (read painful). I
finished 8th there, sunburnt, sore, a fungal infection in my mouth
from the swimming water, but I had earned Worlds points to complement my second
and sixth places from the second half of 2016. The job was done, albeit messy,
scrappy and painful. Not all days at the office are under “ideal” circumstances.
Of course my preference is to race fit, and to race well, but if the choices
are either to not race, or to race under done, I will choose the latter every
time. Little did I know though that this would become a common theme as I
battled my body through the first part of this year.
In the interests of brevity, the months of February through
the end of April can be summarised by the following ailments: a heart murmur that
required investigating (and a temporary cessation of training until,
thankfully, all was deemed A-ok by the cardiologist), an awful gastro from the
swimming water in China (along with most of the pro field!), a nasty flu only a
few days after the gastro, my ongoing back issues (actually behaving more than
my immune system thankfully!), low vitamin-B and low iron. Amidst all this, I
continued to race. Training may have been marred by inconsistency but racing is
why I am a professional athlete so as long as I could be on the start line, I
would be. For me, it was also simply a case of having to get on with it. I had
no choice if I wanted to qualify for World Championships. I finished this
period of racing with a fourth, a fifth, an eighth and an eleventh on the
international stage and a first and second back home.
Finally, with one race left of the qualifying period – I was
selling my soul to study and work for the month of May and thus shortening my window
for World’s qualifying races – I was actually healthy. I had put together three
full weeks of training, and I was excited to race. And then, mid race, my bike
broke. Fifty kilometres into the bike leg in Vietnam, my entire front end
dropped 90 degrees. I held it up for a few kilometres, attempting denial, and
then realised that I was a bike crash waiting to happen. A thirty minute wait
for a mechanic (that never showed) evolved into a slow roll back to transition.
Slow (I mean really slow) and steady
was the only speed at which I could keep myself from toppling over the front of
my drooping handlebars. At no point was I not finishing though. With my total
focus being on staying upright for the remaining thirty or so kilometres, it
wasn’t until a few kilometres into the run that my human side came forward and
I started to sook. I walk/jogged the remainder of the half marathon, trying
desperately to take any positives from the situation – encouraging fellow
athletes around me, assisting with passing drinks around at the aid stations
and absorbing the atmosphere that you don’t often have the chance to do when
fighting to the line. I also kept reminding myself that I am a professional
athlete and thus need to conduct myself like one despite the circumstances. I
was largely able to achieve this until the final straight when, in a state of
hunger flatting (I’d been out on course for an hour and a half longer than
normal!), I pulled my visor a little lower over my face and started to cry: the
months prior taking their toll. I thought that because of this mechanical, I
would fall out of the World’s top 40 – the level required for a round 1 invite
to World Champs – and it was going to be because of an “uncontrollable”.
Within 48 hours, I was head in the books – another reason
why I so strongly advocate some form of “balance” in sport – with my next task
(this time an academic one) staring me right in the face and the events of the
weekend buried in the past. When I received the email a few weeks later, saying
that I had indeed qualified for World’s in the first round, it was a huge relief.
And so, with certainty of the task ahead, I arrived in Spain in mid-June, able
to sink my teeth into training for Worlds (starting with shedding some of that
study weight!). With some “brain” work to keep me balanced, and some fun preparations
for the next academic challenge, it all makes for a happy and excited Sarah.
Everyone is so different, so unique. Some thrive on having
one focus, and I’m in awe of those people, but that’s not me. To ignore my
academic ambitions is to ignore a key part of my identity. With a heightened
focus on academic endeavours, I find myself more focused on my sporting ones
too. I’ve finally, definitively worked it out. For me, it’s not “all in” to one
thing, it’s “all in” across academic and
sporting endeavours and striving to achieve all that I can in both, that truly makes
me happy and makes me who I am.
