One of the best feelings in the world is when everything comes together on race day and you have the performance of a lifetime.
Unfortunately, that didn’t happen for me yesterday. But that’s OK. I’ve come to realize that not every race is going to be a PR… and one bad race doesn’t mean my Ironman training isn’t working.
Yesterday, I raced the Wildflower Long Course Triathlon. I can come up with quite a few reasons why my race results were sub par, but I won’t list those here. I am choosing to focus on the things that went well, and yesterday that was the fact that I finished. I have never felt so bad in a run before, and there were multiple times during the race when I was seriously considering dropping out.
Fortunately, I never went through with those plans.
One of my favorite things about Wildflower is that the course takes you through the campgrounds where thousands of athletes and spectators have gathered for the weekend. I can’t really explain how incredible the atmosphere is. If you haven’t raced Wildflower, you need to put it on your bucket list so you can experience it for yourself.
I owe my finish to the people along the run course who kept me going:
– The dude with a microphone who yelled, “Chick that guy”
– The kids shooting me with water pistols
– The people handing out “motor oil” (Coca Cola)
– The girl from my age group who always had an encouraging word every time we passed each other
– And last but not least, my parents who came the whole way from Pennsylvania to watch me race.
While I didn’t have the race I was planning on yesterday, I am happy with the fact that I finished when I felt like quitting. I know I’m capable of much more, and luckily there’s always another race…
48 days til Ironman Coeur d’Alene! 🙂
Update: I just found out that on Saturday I had my fastest bike split ever on that course. Something else to be positive about! 🙂
