One of the things that I love is that every year there has been a new point of focus or a new goal for my racing. For Half IM Coeur D'Alene it was a continuation on an old classic "trust your run". I have been negative splitting every run in a triathlon, more so due to fear and holding back out of the gate, I was always concerned I would bonk, or barf, or even worse WALK or crawl. 2016 was all about trusting my run, opening up hard and finishing hard with little left in the "tank". (I may have had so much energy after my first Half IM that I was dancing around and causing Coach Sam to scold me that I had not left it all out there). So the first 5-6 miles of this race all I could hear was Sam playing on repeat in my "race brain"....say strong and pluck those suckers off one at at time, your time is now, this is what you've trained for. At the turn around point I considered my work to be done, had found a person who was my pace and we pushed each other to the finish (don't worry we weren't in the same AG). Trusting my run in 2016 got me to finally get under 1:30 on the run, and now I feel like the sky is the limit.
For me it's has been and always will be all about the racing...i.e. training with a purpose. The race is the motivation, it's a demonstration of the training, and for me a chance for me to shed and face my fears. Now that I have been with Sam for several years I can see the macro level growth that has been woven into the seemingly mundane day to day workouts. With each year I have developed as an athlete and my racing focus continues to shift.
This year my focus during the race is focus itself (very meta).
At this stage in our coach/athlete relationship Sam has trained me through grad school, a move across the country, a clavicle fracture, several 1/2 IMs, and a few open road races. She knows my strengths and weaknesses and has helped me develop as an athlete in ways I thought were lost to my days as a competitive youth athlete and I cannot wait to see where we go this year.
