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Saturday, 03 February 2018 23:10

Remember to find your reasons for triathlon and go back to those each time, writes Meredith Atwood.

By Meredith Atwood (triathlete.com)

There’s a sentiment in triathlon that you should work your “weakest” sport the most. Makes sense, I guess—if you aren’t great at something, you should keep practicing to bring it up to proficiency. Sometimes however, that one sport we need to practice really becomes a drag.

Dreading the workout or that leg of the race starts takes the fun out of what we are doing in the first place. We start to think: I hate to run. I hate to ride. I hate to swim. 

Sort of begs the question: why are we doing this sport? If we are saying those words, what are we doing? If we hate any part of it, why do we keep showing up? Sure, there’s a testament to our commitment and our speed and our amazing discipline.

But are there valid reasons to keep coming back to something when we say things like, “I hate to run” over and over again? Perhaps....

I wrote this post last year about how annoyed I was when people told me to do triathlon for FUN. I was annoyed because I realized that people out there having all this alleged fun were actually good at swimming, cycling, and running. No wonder it was so much fun! Those of us struggling with the mere execution in proficiency of aforesaid sports were actually doing triathlon for other amazing reasons—we had to. Because fun was hard.  READ MORE