I don’t remember ever having a race, no matter the length, in which I felt I couldn’t push myself to the extent that I expect. Even if, during the race, I know I am not going to get the result I am aiming for, I can usually push myself to get as much as possible out of my body on a given day. However, during Ironman 70.3 Geelong, four weeks ago, I learned about the vital role that a healthy mind will play in the process of pushing your body to its physical limits.
The race didn’t turn out how I had hoped and I didn’t fulfill my main objective of qualifying for the Ironman 70.3 World Championships, to be held in Queensland later this year.
My overall time was 4:44:11.
My splits were:-
Swim 1.9km – 30:29 (a new PB for the swim leg).
T1 – 2:54.
Bike 90km – 2:26:55.
T2 – 1:37.
Run 21.1km – 1:42:16.
It was very pleasing to start the day with a new PB for the 1.9km swim and I was heading out on the bike with very high hopes that this trend would continue. Initially, the ride seemed to be going along the way I expected it to but on the second of the two 45km laps, I felt like I was labouring more than is normal and I found myself getting easily frustrated with this, particularly in areas with rougher road surfaces and slight headwinds. The weather was excellent for racing so the wind wasn’t that strong and I couldn’t blame the conditions for feeling bad.
Although, it’s expected that it will feel harder to pedal on rough roads and/or into headwinds, it was more than that. It was an emotional sensation as I felt I was tiring quicker than normal. A sense of disheartenment which made me want to grown and sigh as I attempted to maintain forward momentum at a reasonable speed. Despite this, I kept telling myself “c’mon, just keep going. Stay consistent”.
After checking my watch as I completed the swim, I didn’t look at it again until I had put on my running shoes after racking my bike. It was showing 3 hours and 1 minute which was about 10 minutes later than where I really hoped to be and 5 minutes more than where I felt I should have been as a worst case. Initially, I said to myself, “just bury yourself to get a PB run”, because a PB run would have resulted in an overall time around 4 hours 25 minutes and that would have been satisfactory. However, within the first kilometre of running I felt very off but it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary in terms of my physical feelings. My legs felt heavy just as they have at the same point in any other race, which is pretty uncomfortable, but this was different. Something was definitely wrong. Instead of psyching myself up to push on and push my limits no matter how hard, I felt stagnant. My body was somewhat willing but my mind wasn’t going to allow it.
Throughout the duration of the 21.1km run, I felt more and more emotionally unstable. The run had started badly and progressively got worse. I was on auto-pilot turning my legs over in order to make it to the finish line and it even briefly crossed my mind to pull out of the race altogether. In the last 10km I actually walked through most of the drink stations as I took on water and used it as an excuse to rest. The only drink stations I didn’t walk through were the ones where the most people were watching and where I had seen my family. Somehow I could force myself to keep going through those stations for fear of embarrassment but I couldn’t get myself to go harder in pursuit of my goal. This is not like me at all because I am so determined to push myself to improve in this sport and try and win an event one day. What was going on?
The realisation that it was all psychological didn’t come until about a week and half after the race. In the couple of months before that I had increasingly become very anxious and was experiencing symptoms of depression. In that time I had been getting very frustrated with my job. Nothing had really changed at work because I still worked the same type of rotating shifts which contains a wide variety of start and finish times. But, for some reason, I was convinced that work was the main reason I was feeling excessively tired, making it difficult to train as desired and get the most out of sessions. There had been a couple of issues/incidents at work which I seemed to take badly when normally they wouldn’t worry me for very long at all. However, they turned into just another reason to hate going to work.
Then, I was struggling to sleep well, sometimes taking a very long time to get to sleep and if I woke up during the night it was often hard to get back to sleep. I was thinking a lot about whether or not I want to continue doing this job because of the lifestyle and maybe I should look very seriously at going back to a career in health and fitness. However, the very reason why I am in this job – for those who don’t know I work in a public transport customer service role – is that the fitness industry is notoriously unstable and difficult to make a good living without many years of establishing yourself. However, my current job is very stable, secure, well paid and I am good at it. I get to help people every day and never have to keep working when I get home. My passion lies in the world of health, fitness and triathlon but I still get to enjoy that on a daily basis in a variety of ways, not the least being through this blog.
Along with my work related stress, I was constantly feeling like I didn’t have enough time to do everything including spending time with my wife and son, training enough to satisfy my preparation for races and preparing good meals. It was as if, out of nowhere, I had so much piling up on me and I didn’t know how to fix it. I was getting terribly frustrated with what I believed was unnecessary pressure from all angles. Truth be told, there was no added pressure on me. I just perceived it that way but why were things feeling different all of a sudden? How did it come to this? Why can’t I just do what I want and everyone else just deals with it?
But, what exactly did I want and what did I actually need? I started to try and convince myself of what I thought I needed to feel better again. This included finding the perfect, secure job where I worked in health/fitness/triathlon coaching or perhaps a bike shop that still paid well enough to get by. I needed a new bike, I needed to be able to train when I wanted to so I could ensure I was doing everything I could to get better, I needed to be able to prioritise sleep however I needed because of my weird shifts, I needed to race more and I just needed everyone else to understand what I need. However, even I knew that I was only thinking of myself despite believing I was trying my hardest to give time and priority to others too. But, I couldn’t get these thoughts out of my head. I kept dwelling on them and wondering how on earth I am going to get back to normal without being selfish.
These feelings built up over a couple of months. I can’t recall a specific point where things started to weigh on me but my suspicion is that it was probably at a time where there was a combination of the following;-
- A string of very early shifts at work whereby I struggled with sleep deprivation.
- The sleep deprivation effected the quality of my training at, what I felt was, a very important time in my build up to racing.
- The sleep deprivation had a big impact on the quality of time I spent with my family. I was grumpy and worrying about not being able to sleep properly or train well.
- Some incidents at work had made me feel very anxious about being there.
From then on, I began to feel like everything was against me and nothing seemed to be improving. I felt like I was in a hole I couldn’t get out of and I couldn’t even imagine the future where things would be good again. I was desperate to do something about it but I couldn’t figure out what I should do. The things mentioned earlier which I thought I needed to be happy were all about me and I was hardly considering anyone else. I knew this and it contributed greatly to my negative mental trajectory as I was viewing myself as a bad person. But, the other big point not yet mentioned is that I was doing all of this inside my own head and hiding it from everyone else. All everyone else saw was a grumpy Lincoln who just wanted to do his training, eat his healthy food, get more sleep and not be bothered about it. But, I was blind to this.
I wasn’t talking to my wife about this, discussing our life and working on finding a better balance together. I wasn’t looking to find what I could do for her and our son. I wasn’t using professional help which I have used before and know that it helps me. In fact, I had put off sourcing those services on several occasions over the last year as I had gone through brief patches like this before. I was waiting for everything to work out on its own, like magic, so I wouldn’t have to do anything. Previously, I hadn’t been doing anything and just kept thinking ‘it’ll be Ok soon.’ In retrospect, it was never actually Ok, it just became less obvious.
Without talking about these issues when they were most present, I never dealt with them properly. Fortunately, this time, I talked about it. I talked to my wife a lot and did several sessions with a psychologist who helped me to understand better communication and different personalities, among other things. The first session was a few days before the Geelong race and weekly thereafter. During the second week after the race, I had my third session, and my wife and I had been having some very productive discussions at home and putting some new plans into action. It was at this time that everything seemed to turn around. Suddenly, I had my energy back. I noticed it during training because I could feel the extra spring in my step/pedal stroke/swim stroke which had been lacking for so long. I felt motivated to read more and get back to regularly writing blog posts. But, importantly, I was fully determined to balance my life better to ensure that I truly make time for my family and enjoy life with them as well as satisfying my personal interests.
It was an incredible feeling. Almost like an epiphany. I felt like I had found what I was looking for all along and it wasn’t what I expected. All of those other things I was thinking I needed were simply things I would like to have. Some more than others and for different reasons but none of them were going to truly change how I was feeling at this time.
It turns out I just needed to communicate better with those closest to me. By holding it in and running things through my own head over and over, I was compounding the problem and this time it came with the added reaction of inferior race performance. The return of my energy allowed me to see what I had been lacking for weeks, possibly months. I had been battling these demons alone, unnecessarily, and it was sucking the energy out of me.
A further two weeks on from that point where things seemed to move in a positive direction, life feels as good as ever. I don’t feel pressed for time and I feel like I’m achieving much more on a daily basis including some wonderful quality time with my family. Also, training is slotting into life quite nicely and the quality of training has been excellent.
Training is now focused on Ironman Port Macquarie on May 1 and it has started very well. I will write a separate blog post in the near future about how I am approaching that race but for now I am glad to be enjoying life again and all that is wonderful about it.
It must be said that I am very disappointed about what happened in Geelong, mostly because I have missed my chance to qualify for the first 70.3 World Championships to be held in Australia. Although, I am still in with a tiny chance of receiving a spot in the event via a lottery system, I won’t be holding my breath on that because I won’t find out until July anyway. So, I will focus on the Ironman eight weeks from now and look forward to developing myself further as a triathlete in the future. Along with this, I will remain very focused on maintaining and further developing my balance in life.
Although, I’m not certain how things went downhill so quickly, I remember how bad it felt and the early signs that I can keep an eye out for in the future. This will be essential in avoiding such events again but I am sure they will come up from time-to-time and it will be of high importance to recognise them for the benefit of training and racing. I now have a new factor to consider for performance which I hadn’t considered much previously and it can play as big a role as any training session might.
Cheers,
Lincoln.
