Monday, April 15, 2013

Its been awhile


To quote the band Staind:

"Its been awhile
since I could
hold my head up high,

Ands its been awhile
since I first saw you."

So whats happened?  Why the long absence?

Well while bits of this year have been fantastic, other bits have not quite panned out as planned.  Broadly, I was thinking that 2012 would have been an excellent opportunity to get a range of bits of my life sorted, the reality has been different.

I was expecting to get fitter, leaner, stronger and demonstrate this by completing one 70.3 triathlon and competing (a very different thing) in another 70.3.  This has been amazingly successful.  I was also planning to be a much more disciplined in my blogging and photography – in short I planned to do more of both – in this I have been stunningly unsuccessful.

In short I completely underestimated the impact on my life of adopting a triathlon based lifecycle.  In short there have been three problems.  The first is bleedingly obvious, simply fitting in 15+ hours of training a week does not leave a lot of time for other activities   Overlay personal circumstances that require a lot of travel and the time pressures become even more acute.  Still physical, but a little less obvious, is the fatigue the training leaves me with little energy to devote to other activities even when I do have the time.  Quite often I will be finished my long ride or run by mid morning on Saturday or Sunday but I’m simply to tired to do anything in the afternoon other than collapse on the couch or just potter around the house or apartment.

Honestly I did foresee these problems and was ready for them, what blindsided me (to the extent I wasn’t even aware it was happening until quite recently) is the emotional myopia that becoming a ‘triathlete’ gave me.  Frankly I stopped really caring about much that wasn’t directly related to training or racing.  Its one thing to really want to go out and take photos but not have the time or energy, its quite another to simply not be that interested anymore.  The first case you notice and are motivated to fix, the second you don’t even realize is happening so do nothing to address.

Well I have noticed this now, mainly because no matter how interesting triathlon is, even it cant sustain 100% of my brain 100% of the time.  I’ve now noticed that other parts of my life have been neglected and more than that, I missing those parts of my life.

So here I am, back to blog, shouting into the vacuum, whether its gets heard or not doesn’t really matter.  And in particular I'm getting back into photography.  Now, I'm doing that by combining the old and the new, my interest in photography and my life as a triathlete.  So get ready for more but as a teaser, here's a couple of recent shots of the pro's from the recent Melbourne Ironman triathlon.


Clayton Fettell - giving it some



Jordan Rapp - The Whippett