Right, now that you're comfortable...
I'll start with an apology for being so incredibly lax with my blog. As you'll read in this post, a lot of things have happened lately which have resulted in some ups and downs in my loving relationship with the sport of triathlon, and since that is what this blog is all about, I feel like I have neglected it on purpose.
I was feeling bad about the lack of attention I'd given it when I looked at all my friends' blogs and discovered most of them hadn't posted for 6-8 months either, so then felt better :). While doing that (and also halfway through writing this blog) I discovered Madeline Oldfield's latest posts (if you don't follow her, go to http://madeleineoldfield.com/ - one super talented Tasmania triathlete!) and it was eerie to read her first post back as it almost mirrored exactly what I had written so far in this blog (although she is far more concise than me!)
So you're about to read all about my journey over the last six months, where I am now and the reasons behind my return to the blogosphere. Please don't think I'm sharing this for pity's sake because I'm well over that now - I'd rather share it in the vain hope than any athlete who reads this might find it easier to recognise these problems in themselves and avoid making the mistakes that I've had to learn from the hard way.
Let's start by going all the the way back to December 2012.
Jason and I had just settled into our new place and our new jobs in Adelaide, South Australia.
I was training hard for the Canberra Ironman 70.3 in mid-December, in which my aim was to finish as the first overall age grouper, going a couple of places better my result from Yeppoon 70.3 in August.
About two weeks out from race day, I was doing a brick session when I jumped off the bike and found my left leg extremely painful to run on. I persevered (as you do) and finished off that session, but the next morning when I went out for an easy jog, I couldn't even get five minutes down the road. Cue panicked attempts to find a new physio I could get into straight away - which resulted in me seeing a guy who was probably about as ancient as the 1800s building he treated me in.
"It's a knee injury" he pronounced, wiring it up to some crazy looking electrical thing that made my leg spasm like it was having an epileptic fit. "Just rest it for a bit and it should be fine". But it did not improve, so I reluctantly went to an expensive but triathlon-experienced physio at the Sports Medicine hospital.
"It's just a soft tissue injury," he said.
"Rest up, stretch it, but I won't tell you not to go and do the race."
I was in two minds about what to do, but knowing that if I pulled out of Canberra I would lose all the money I'd invested in the entry, flights and accommodation, and I didn't know when I'd ever be able to afford another one - and that it was "just a soft tissue injury" and it wouldn't cause lasting damage to race on it - I committed to racing.
Mentally, I prepared myself better than ever to make up for my lack of physical preparation (I hadn't been able to run and only ride lightly in the 2.5 weeks leading up the race). I knew it was going to hurt but I told myself I would have to be stronger than I'd ever been and just push through it.
Race day arrived and I couldn't even do a jog warm up. Not boding well, but still I crossed my fingers for a miracle to occur by the time I reached the run.
I really enjoyed the flat, smooth swim in the lake with easy sighting. I was in a good position when I got out, and the bike course was not crowded for my first of three laps.
I was a bit miffed they had changed the course just before the race because of roadworks happening on the planned course- it meant the hill and technical descent had been removed, which was the bit I thought I could get most advantage on due to using a roadie as opposed to a time trial bike.
However I had a fantastic bike leg, felt really strong despite the headwind, and came into T2 among the front age groupers.
I then had to tackle three 7km run laps, all flat. I didn't even feel the pain in my leg for about half the first lap, and although I didn't feel amazing, I was making good progress.
From then on in things started getting progressively worse. By the end of the second lap I was in agony and kept having to stop and walk, which is really unlike me! I wanted to pull out at the end of the lap and if it hadn't been for Bel and some of the other Balmoral guys (my adopted club for the weekend) cheering for me, I totally would have - which shows how bad it was, because I never give up!
The last lap I think had more walking than running and you can see the pain I was in from my face and my running style. I was limping like an idiot, was in tears and in a really bad place - I said to myself 'I know I was going to be strong and push through the pain, but this is not the kind of 'I'm tired and sore' pain, this is something different, something you can't push through'.
Finishing was just sheer relief, I wasn't happy with the time I'd done or the place I'd got, I was just happy to get to the end. I went and sat down and had some food and drink, and it was only about 20min later when I got up to go and see my uncle Jas, aunt Milka and cousins who had come to support me, that I realized I actually couldn't walk.
That made collecting my bike and getting back to the hotel really difficult, and I must say I was extremely grateful for the help of people like Laura Harris who did so much for me!
Despite being so tired from the race I could barely sleep through the pain and I must've looked a sight trying to crawl or hop around and pack my bike up the next morning!
Poor Bel had to deal with one cranky, tired bitch the next day when she drove me back to Sydney to catch the plane home.
Back in Adelaide, I did absolutely nothing for a couple of weeks, and no running for another few weeks after that. Just walking around was painful enough. I went to about four different physios, each one had a different diagnosis, then I saw a doctor who told me I had some kind of tendonitis, but he'd like me to get a bone scan "just in case" it was a stress fracture. When I found out a bone scan was over $600, "just in case" was not strong enough reasoning, so I just waited until the walking pain dissipated. Soon after that I started attempting to run again, but I'd only get to two or three runs before the pain returned.
About two months of that and I cracked it, I was so frustrated, so I took a fortnight's pay and went to the hospital where the radiographers took great delight in telling me I had a fracture right into the medulla (middle part of the bone) in my tibia. Although this meant more time off running, it was a relief to finally know what was wrong.
The problem with us triathletes is that we can be kind of "all or nothing" people and what happened to me was when I couldn't run, I got so frustrated and fed up with the sport, I stopped swimming as well (this coincided with the winter closing of my local pool and my lack of friends to swim with). This went on for a couple of months until I finally got my act together. There were more false starts to be had with my running, where I'd get a couple of runs in and then feel the pain returning and give up again. About six months after Canberra, I was finally able to start building up with some consistency, but I still find it difficult to mentally deal with how much my running has deteriorated compared with when I was at my best. I know that with hard work it will return, but remembering the pain of all the sessions I toughed out to get where I was all went to waste, has been hard to reconcile.
Meantime I found an incredibly supportive and cool bunch of guys in the Fuse Multisport squad here in Adelaide who have been kind enough to let me train with them on the odd occasion I can make it in between work and Uni. It's amazing how much motivation training with others gives you! I do miss my squads and bunches in Launceston, but I certainly don't miss having to get up in -3 degrees!
So early in the year when I started Uni I decided that I would give triathlons a rest in 2013 because of the injury, the lack of time to train, and the lack of the financial ability to race.
I started doing some open bike racing, because I missed the adrenaline rush of competing, and the great intense training that it is. I've only been able to get 4 Saturdays off work to race so far but I've loved every single race and surprised myself at my results. I actually finished 3rd (out of 4!) in the elite women's state road race championship, against one girl who is currently competing for the Australian team in Europe, and two other girls who race for domestic professional teams in the National Road Series. Just to stay with them over a 90km course with four big hills in it, was an achievement for me. I would seriously encourage any triathlete who hasn't done this, to enter bike races. Not only does it improve your bike handling out of sight, it is a huge confidence boost and more than anything an amazing training session, because you get some really intense bursts of effort, not like in time trialling where it is constant, measured effort.
But as any triathlete who has tried to give up for a while would know, you just want to be doing it more than ever! It's like trying not to eat chocolate! My motivation has been slowly building back up to the point where I'm excited about going out to train every single day, and it's pointless telling myself triathlon has to take a back seat to my studies and work.
I knew I would do MurrayMan again in November because I won a free entry and accommodation last year, so it would cost me nothing to race and I could possibly win some money which would finance some more races over the summer. But I thought I'd just do it for a bit of fun, going in well undertrained as it coincides with my end of year exams. Slowly it changed into my focus for the season, but still seemed quite a way off.
I hadn't expected to find out with 4 weeks notice that I'd be competing in the Samoa Half Iron on August 10 - an opportunity I've been given through Team Latitude, an awesome group of triathletes who go around promoting regional races. It's been a year since I rode a TT bike (I don't own one, so am now scrambling to get one organized to train on) and 8 months since I ran a race, or swam in a wetsuit, or did a transition. So it's going to be interesting - lucky I believe in being undertrained as opposed to overtrained!
Tomorrow we head back to Tassie for a visit with family and friends - I have a feeling it's going to turn into more of a training camp!
The last thing I will mention - another of the action stations currently occupying my world and my head - is the Witsup scholarship. If you haven't heard of it, go to www.witsup.com right now and have a look at their "scholarship ambassador competition". The website was started by the editor of Australian Triathlete magazine, Stef Hanson (who many of you might have met at the Coles Bay 100 this year) with the idea of supporting women in triathlon. The scholarship gives one lucky woman the opportunity to basically be sponsored for a year - this includes a Giant TT bike, Funkita bathers, Oakleys, a trip to the Fiji Triathlon, series entry to the Elite Energy series, nutrition, shoes, and heaps more (all up worth about $18K). You enter a written application and a 90sec video, and the judges come up with a shortlist (which was announced last week - I made it!) and later this month, announce the winner. In return, the ambassador promotes the sport and encourages women in triathlon, as well as the sponsors of the scholarship.
For me, to win the scholarship would mean the opportunity to race this season (given the trip to Fiji and the Elite Energy series). Otherwise I'm in for a long summer of training for next season or the season after (when I finish Uni and hopefully get a good job!). It would mean the opportunity to experience what is like to be a professional athlete - how to interact with your sponsors, how to promote them, how to give them the best return on their investment. It would be an absolutely invaluable experience for anyone who aspires to go further in the sport, because in reality the only way you can make it is to have those sponsorship contacts (unless Mummy and Daddy are funding your campaign as a professional athlete!).
The increased media exposure that comes with winning the scholarship also provides an amazing opportunity to not just promote the sport, but promote change in the sport. I guess if the judges are looking for someone who wants to stand on a pedestal and scream "triathlon is awesome, everybody come and do triathlon" then they aren't going to pick me. I don't believe you can have a passion for something without having a passion to improve it and make changes for the better of the people who participate in it. Triathlon is still quite a "new" sport and in my opinion it's still kind of finding its feet - it's changed so much since the 80s when hairy-chested men rode steel treadlies in their budgie smugglers. It's still changing, and it needs people in it and around it to push that change in the right direction. Luckily we have a lot of those in triathlon! But it could always do with a few more perspectives along the way and a few protagonists who aren't afraid to sacrifice personal popularity for the "greater good". Anyway, there's another time and place for a rant on sports governance so I will leave that there :)
I just want to thank Stef, Nat and the Witsup team for putting the scholarship out there, because it's a fantastic initiative no matter who wins it. The fact is, at grass-roots level we're often seeing more women than men compete in triathlon (sprint/novice/enticer races). But when you look at the stats for say, argument's sake, wins at Kona; Australian men have won 7 and women only 2. I would say that shows that somewhere along the line, women aren't getting the support to transition from an entry-level or participation-level athlete to an elite athlete. And that's largely because we still find it harder to get that all-important sponsorship dollar. So Witsup connecting athletes and sponsors, and using their ambassador to help other women realize their potential and make this transition, is a huge step forward for women's triathlon in Australia.
Now it's well past time I got off my soapbox and get packed for Tasmania - thankyou so much for your time and thankyou to all the people who have continued to support me, racing or no racing, injured or not. Hopefully it won't be long before I'm out there making you all proud again!
Holly xx
