Rather annoyingly today I had to use them. I should have listened to my body this morning saying “don’t do it, you feel like shit” but I thought I’d give it a go.
The short back story is that my two little boys got hit with a cold at the start of last week which typically means I get it 4/5 days later. Friday… The cold appeared. Nothing to serious, but enough to be pretty blocked up and a little bit chesty.
With my Tripal Rachel in the van that morning, we were chatting about it on route to the tri. I felt awful, but would give it a go anyway. All experience is good experience right?
I had some great encouragement from friends & fam on Facebook and some comforting words from people I’ve never met, like Skip, a first tri timer like us, over in the US. It shows there is still some great people in this world!
Another instagrammer, Anthony said he had to miss his international race the day before, because a cold came through! That sucked to hear!
Getting ready, my head just wasn’t in it. Tripal said afterwards she’s never known me to be so quiet, so something clearly wasn’t quite right.
Briefing complete, we moved to the waters edge. I must have only gone about 200metres when my cold got the better of me and I couldn’t really breath. My chest felt like exploding and I was wheezing worse than when my asthma was bad as a young kid.
I floated on my back for a minute to sort myself out, as Tripal Rach came up to see I was alright. She said afterwards she’s never heard me sound like that and was a bit concerned.
With the big tri coming up in 8 weeks I thought it better to stop and recover properly so I don’t blow my training for the big one. I would rather take a few days out now, than a couple of weeks to recover.
I’m not going to lie, it was a bloody difficult decision to make, especially when I consider the swim to be my strongest discipline, but I grabbed the lifeguards board, caught my breathe and turned for the swim in.
Getting to the beach, I couldn’t unzip my suit, but my chest still felt like exploding through it. The lifeguard did the honours and I sat on the stones (it’s a pebble beach) and started to breath properly again. I felt completely and utterly rubbish.
Re clothed and with coffee in hand, I went back down to cheer on Rachel. It was a difficult swim, so much so that they closed the second leg of the swim, so I was stoked to see her out of the sea and heading off on her run. Proud training partner moment right there!
So back to my first words “every experience is a good experience” I wonder if I should have listened to my body from the start. That would have been the better experience I’m sure, but I can learn from this. I can take a few days out of training now and build up again towards to end of the week. I know what it’s like to not finish, so will build up stronger and isolate the kids from me the week before the big one, so no colds affect play!*
Annoyed? Yes. Disappointed? A little. Proud of my Tripal? Hell yes!
Thanks for all the messages of support yesterday, they were really appreciated!
Onwards and upwards and all that.
Matt
*i clearly won’t really isolate them! Love them too much!
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