The ego has disbanded

A chain, they say, is only as strong as its weakest link. It’s a fair point. It does indeed take two to tango, and you certainly cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs. But such age-old words of wisdom do not always hold true. 

A journey of 1,000 miles doesn’t always begin with a single step – not if you’re on a bike or in a car at least. I’m pretty handy with the old vocab but I draw like a blind toddler – my pictures are in no way worth a thousand of my words. And anyone who holds the belief of ‘first come first served’ has clearly never been in any sort of queue in Dubai – ‘pushiest most arrogant knob, first served’ would be more appropriate here.

And – kerpow! – I’ve only gone and exploded another myth. You can, it seems, teach an old dog new tricks. As I’ve moaned on and on and on and on about of late – mainly coz it’s been the only thing really going on in Mattmundo (like Disney Land but I’m the star) – I was fairly ill, rundown and suffering from a spot of overtraining a few weeks ago; this inspired me to re-evaluate training, work and my general lifestyle and I decided to make some changes.

Now, it’d have been all very well to say I’d change things up and not fall into the same traps again but discover that, when the nonstop whirlwind that is life in Dubai swept me back up, no lessons had really been learnt.

Happily, however, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

First and foremost, I’ve taken my time getting back into training and only now, 10 days after my first session back, am I properly cracking on with my full programme. Last Friday, for example, a few of my team mates, our coach and I had a power-endurance morning: three back-to-back mini triathlons of 600m swim, 13k bike, 2.5k run. Between each was a short rest of around 5-7 minutes. We were due to do three of these, back-to-back, and I was feeling better than I expected after two tris... but I still let the others go on with the third while I headed out on the bike for an easy spin. This is a bit of a revelation for me – I think I could have pushed on and done the third mini tri; but, given how few session I’d done in the weeks before and that I was still finishing a course of antibiotics, I also could definitely not tell how it would affect me. Therefore, I stopped.

It was the right decision.

Feeling good after that session, I could have dived straight back in the following week. But I didn’t. It was still early days. Sunday was my rest day on my programme, while I had a friend in town on business on Monday. In the past, I’d have got up super-early to fit a session in before work, or tried to squeeze an hour’s run in between work and meeting my friend for dinner. Instead, I accepted that I had a busy day in work, embraced a second day off from training and had a great evening of catching up, a huge bowl of moules-frites and a few tasty Belgian beers.

By the end of the week, I was feeling the benefit.

Now, I’m back into full training, conscious that Ironman Austria is only just over three months away, but rather than feeling like I’ve missed out on a few weeks and a load of sessions, I’m actually more confident than ever that I’ll perform well in Austria. And if I could sum up how and why I’ve been able to make these changes and think longer-term instead of chasing shorter, harder goals and ever-increasing volume, I’d put it down to one thing: I’ve toned down the ego.

Triathlon is an endurance sport that requires patience. And that’s every bit as true of training as it is of racing. Now I know that, it's time to put the virtues of patience and maturity into action - not entirely instead of enthusiasm and determination, but as well as.