Triathlon SBR Magazine June - December 2020 | Page 13

ED’S LETTER RESET, STEADY, GO! PHOTOGRAPH: SANDY COFFEY R ight now we’re surrounded by fear and negativity. From political corruption to environmental destruction, fake news and now a global pandemic. We can so easily get caught up in all-consuming doom or we can choose to take time out from worrying and recalibrate, take stock of how good it feels to be alive and back outside in nature. Load shedding provided an excuse to head out and do some deep thinking on your bike but then we hit lockdown and were faced with forced downtime and deep introspection. A new world awaits and whilst we are all unsure of what to expect, this is a chance to start over. Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life. I was raised a free ranger, never comfortable indoors for too long. A combination of high energy and a desire for freedom of choice has had me chasing new places and faces all my life. I’ve always been fascinated with open spaces and was never far from a beach, forest, river or mountain. Years of boarding school, and military and university institutions have resulted in my grabbing every opportunity to hike, run or ride bikes to nowhere and to swim in open water. These moments are my therapeutic church. This is where I’ve always felt at peace, where my thoughts are optimistic and I’m always smiling. Chances are you feel this way too. That’s the beauty of what we triathletes do and why, often, the most memorable moments in races are when we helped a fellow competitor get across the line. That has made lockdown hell for us, especially those without pools or Zwift. For most of our swim-bike-run kind, it’s when the endorphins are flowing that our sensory awareness is uncluttered and free from the noise of the daily grind. We’re each entitled to our therapies. As we just learned in a glaring way, life is short, unpredictable and very often www.facebook.com/SBRmag stressful. Trying to control it all will only frustrate you. We need to allow this journey to unfold and in these still moments of uncluttered reflection, allow our inner voices to be heard. During training and especially racing, our narrowed focus on a positive personal objective, combined with vigorous blood flow elevates our bodies and minds, raising our consciousness. We gain fresh perspective, like a soaring eagle looking down upon routine life on the hamster wheel. When returning “ALLOW THIS JOURNEY TO UNFOLD. ALLOW YOUR INNER VOICES TO BE HEARD. ” to our primal physical-survival and adventure roots, we experience an emotional reaction to the world around us, the way an art lover may appreciate a masterpiece or a surfer that elusive barrel ride. In a world where we’re taught how we should feel, react and behave from the moment we’re born, we begin to lose our primal instincts, we numb our yearnings, we curb our instinctive reactions and make choices we’re taught to believe are appropriate and will deliver accepted norms of success and happiness. www.instagram.com/paulingpen We need to feel to be alive. Many people live their entire lives without feeling deeply connected to their raw spirit, something we all felt as barefoot laughing kids on bikes with the wind in our hair. We can only learn about ourselves by exploring our unknown, beyond our comfort zones. Sometimes this means racing a little further or faster, but most often it’s in appreciating what’s around us and the health we have to explore it. Whether you’re doing your first sprint, an ultra-distance tri, or the gruelling IRONMAN African Championship in PE, the sport of triathlon provides moments that’ll keep you sane, alive and optimistic. The impact of Covid-19 could easily change our way of life. The next six months at least will see us living by strict rules of social distancing so we need to remain prepared for further race postponements, perhaps into 2021, and when they do happen, there may well be no pre- or post-event parties, no awards and no finish-line gatherings. Time will tell; watch our social media feeds for updates. In the meantime, now is the moment to recognise why we love to push ourselves on race day but, more importantly, why we love to train, to be optimally healthy, to explore our surroundings and to feel alive. Heck, we non-drafting, waveswim-start triathletes thrive on social distancing, we can easily manage online race briefings and staggered racking. Embrace the changes the way you’d embrace the pain in training; it’s temporary but the effects and memories are everlasting. This is where the magic of being alive happens. It’s all a matter of perspective. Sometimes when watching a sunset, someone may say, ‘It doesn’t get better.’ Perhaps we should start by saying ‘it doesn’t get worse’. Paul Ingpen [email protected] 13