I’m aware that I was awfully quiet on the blog front leading up to Ironman France. There could have been many reasons for this, like training very hard, lots of work or similar. Unfortunately it was much less pleasant. My mum was diagnosed with a brain tumor. That’s bad in any case, but made worse by the fact that I’m in a different country. She’s also not been one for telling us things like this until she had to, and even then she still tried to keep us away. Not an easy situation, but one that does happen more often than we think. 1 in 3 people are affected by cancer, I think the statistics are.
I don’t want to go on about just how ridiculously rubbish I felt, and all the things I failed to do during the first few weeks. What I want to talk about is how much the sport helped me cope once again.
Firstly, I was incredibly emotionally drained, beyond tired. But that was my head, and while I struggled to exercise the first few days, I eventually found that the sleep I got didn’t seem to help. Only when I managed to add physical tiredness, did the quality of my sleep improve.
Secondly, my first thought when I found out was obviously how quickly can I get home. It was hard when I was told not to come straight away, but I tried to respect her wish. But I felt lost. Thankfully I have a very fixed weekly training routine, which really helped me keep going. Tuesday: Ride some hills, work, swim. Wednesday: Run, work, run some more. I didn’t need to think, and it was comforting to just follow the plan, a piece of security.
Thirdly, exercise makes you feel better about yourself. And I really needed to feel less useless.
And lastly, if it wasn’t for this wonderful sport, I wouldn’t know all the wonderful people who looked after me, and made sure that I was alright.
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