Balls

Haven't posted for a couple of days, mainly because I did a crappy session on Wednesday and felt pretty rubbish about it. I could lie and say I feel great but truth is I felt bad on Wednesday, heavy legs, no bounce, on the bike it was like I was trying to drag a cart up the course's only climb, the energy I had on Saturday and Sunday seemed to have vanished, not what I wanted this week. Today has been better and hopefully things will only improve as race day approaches.

Today's thank you is linked with the theme of the post and that is to my coach. I rang him as soon as I got back in from the session I'd rather forget and he got me thinking about my prep, my training, the sacrifice and got me to correctly point out that things couldn't have gone better. In 6 months I missed one session, I hit/exceeded every target and I'm right on the money (on the topic of my tired legs he rightly said I still had four days of taper and a day off before race day). All this training made me realise that I should be fulfilling my potential as an athlete on Sunday. Not my full potential, at 23 there is still plenty more to come, but I should be doing the best that I, at this point and place in time, can do... maybe that's why I'm bricking myself. There are no excuses, no injured leg missing hundreds of Ks on the bike, no bad taper, no over training, no "it's my first long distance outing", everything has been perfect (or as perfect as it could be considering external factors beyond my control). All that remains is to find out whether on Sunday, when the going gets tough, which it inevitably will, have I got the balls to reach that potential, have I got the balls to stick to my plan? Woosing out for me isn't stopping, I never stop (that's a slight lie, I once stopped on a 4x500m session when I was a rower but went back and completed the session that evening as I felt so bad about it), but not having the confidence to let people pass me on the bike and the first section of the run. Balls for me is knowing what I've done and what I can do and not deciding that everyone who goes past me needs to be chased down... on Sunday we'll hopefully find out what my potential is.

As an aside my confidence was raised this morning when, having just finished what I thought was one swim loop in a disappointing 34 mins, a marshal informed me I'd swum about 400m too far. Nice to know...