As a Sports Therapist i believe that you must have an empathy and an understanding for what your clients/athletes are experiencing whilst training. I believe there is a sense of respect and camaraderie that a shared passion of setting a goal and striving towards it brings. That is the reason that after a year off Triathlon two years ago i decided to dust off my pull bouy and oil the chain on my bike and get back into it. Last year was a great season which gave me a good base to build from this off season and a renewed enthusiasm for a sport that i have competed in for 12 years this season. I am fortunate to have made my passion my job and i get to train and race with a lot of the athletes that i work with each week. This i believe gives me a good insight into both their physical and psychological states. Recently i worked with an athlete that after a couple of bad races bore the emotional scars that a DNF brings this had led to a string of injuries and niggles that persistantly plagued their training and has left them questioning the reasons that they take part in Triathlon and look for solace in other sports and challenges. Personally I experienced this a few years ago it was a tough time that led to me questioning my own character. I completed my first Ironman at 21 and had raced them most years since. It had become an integral part of my character and i had linked a great deal of my self esteem and belief that i was a good person to the fact that i was an “ironman”. After a DNF in Roth in 2011 i started to question whether i was a good person. It took a long time and a lot of searching to realise that one bad race does not make an athlete the same as one good race does not. I realised that its not the medal that they hang around your neck that is important. It is the days where you don’t feel like training but manage to get out the door or get to the end of a swim session that looked impossible at the start that really matters. My advice to the athlete in question was to enjoy exercise for the natural atavistic pleasure that it brings and don’t get too caught up in all the extrinsic things that go with our sport. A DNF in an Ironman is still a lot further than most people ever get, learn from it and move onto the next one.

Happy Training.

Oli