I hear so many reasons why a potential athlete gets stuck from achieving his/her goal in triathlon. Some are:
Money
Time
Scared of riding a bike
Don’t know how to swim
Slow in swimming
“Bad” knees
Past failure/setback/disappointment
Previous injury
Weight
... and so on.
On my first Ironman (2.4 mi swim, 112 mi bike, 26.2 mi run), I wore a discounted tri suit ($25), basic shoes and used an elementary heavy bike (under $1k) with regular wheels and the wide, cushiony, cruise type saddle. I had just gotten this bike 11 months prior. I had to learn how to clip and unclip my shoes. I’m sure that I fell at least 4x when I tried to learn how to ride with clipped shoes.
When I finished the swim part and came out of the water, all the barricades were gone? Why? Because I used to swim very slow. in fact, I lacked confidence and was scared of open water. I was always the last one out of the water.
I really didn’t have lot of triathlon friends because I was very busy with my full time job as an engineer while completing a masters degree in engineering at UCLA. I had limited time to train. On almost all my races, I registered because I wanted to improve and not necessarily out of peer pressure. I didn’t overthink the races and ended up completing the hard ones first (because I didn’t do enough research). In my head and heart, I had to keep showing up & do things for myself.
I discovered that what really mattered was:
DESIRE to keep improving and learning
STRENGTH to keep getting up during setbacks
HARD WORK to achieve excellence
LOVE for oneself
FAMILY SUPPORT
If you really wanna achieve your dream, you will stop having reasons why you are not currently pushing yourself to achieve it. Instead, you’re gonna find ways and make things happen no matter what. Why? Because you deserve to find your true potential. Don’t wait. Act now.
——— Until now, I am thankful that my parents, brother, sisters, sister-in-law, nieces, nephew and even my 2 yr old pug came with me on my first full Ironman race 😍😍😍
