It's funny when you've been away from something so long that you forget how much you loved it. 2008 has been my year of false-starts. I've tried so many times to get back into the training groove, and so many times I've fallen out of that groove, only to revert back to slobdom. I committed to a marathon that I did not run. I've worked out no more than 4 days a week since last February, and more often than not, I've been lucky to get in one workout a week. From September until mid-October, I was doing fairly well--swimming with the club team, getting fast and fit again. But then the dissertation took precedence and I lost the will to train again. I feel it--that competitive fire--bubbling up under the surface, waiting for the right moment to break through. My will to race is strong. My desire to train ebbs and flows. It's been a long year of fighting with myself, a battle with self-doubt, illness, and exhaustion.
If I really think about it, I mean really, truly dig down deep inside myself, the self-doubt stems from gymnastics. From the acknowledgment that I never really lived up to my potential. I had the talent, but not the mental toughness required to make it in the sport. And I've spent the last 15 years trying to fill the void, to find some other venue to reach that potential. I hoped (and hope yet) that triathlon will fill that void. But I am haunted by the past, by the sport that I loved so much but left when I just couldn't push through the injuries and the fear any longer. Sometimes I wish I could go back, and do it all over again.
It has been a tough year in many ways. I have questioned myself and my choices at every turn. But I keep pushing forward, doing what I can to make it through. We can't change the past. But sometimes I fear that I live too much in the past. Am haunted by the things that I cannot change.
2008 draws to a close. And with it, I am taking the self-doubt, melancholy, and fear, and telling it that I will bear it no longer. 2009 will be a year of promise and change.
