over the last few days i have been reading back over this blog. from the very beginning to now and it is quite the little journey. i have written some great race reports, written some absolute bullshit crap and there are things i cannot believe i actually did. i use to train ALOT. i am pissed off that i never wrote a race report for sunshine coast 70.3 in september 2019. it is the only major one that is missing. a number of posts (when things had slowed down) talk about me making a training comeback and then months go by and nothing happens. i will try not do this again. i have accepted that things have changed but i havent given up on getting back to something more like my old self. it is interesting to see how i went from complete triathlon newbie to multiple ironman finisher. there is some really stupid shit when i thought i was okay at something but in all reality i was total crap.
anyway the reason for this is that i have been debating whether to continue or not with the blog. i think while some things i wrote are fucking embarrassing, stupid and naive it is part of my journey over the last ten years. with no one else along for the ride it is also a very good way of remembering and having something to remind me of those experiences. so if it is staying then i need to contribute more than 2 or 3 posts per year.
i have come to realise that everything that happened from the time that my dad starting showing signs of decline (around 2016) to probably 12 months ago has left a deep and permanent scar. i am not the same person i was before. i will never be that person again. accepting that helps. on top of all that the world is not the same place and will not be again for a very long time.
sometimes i dont like talking about personal shit or dwelling on it all too much. even going into too much detail. when i do talk about it i would rather just keep it simple and then move on. it is hard to explain. so after mum and dad passed away within 18 months of each other, being made redundant from a long term job, losing casey dog and jingles the street gang cat and after two toxic jobs that were beyond anything i had ever experienced before i was pretty much head fucked. to this day i sometimes still struggle with a little bit of what i would imagine is similiar to ptsd. covid 19 did not help. before i could handle a reasonable amount of stress and having curve balls thrown at me. now not so much but the more time passes the easier it gets and consistent training has been the best thing for me although a catch 22 situation.
one of my current and long term problems is my back. now that i have read over this blog i didnt realise just how much pain my back has given me and just how painful it has been over a long period of time and i just took it as being one of those things. well this time it was far worse and i probably injured it (bulging discs) and aggravated an existing issue (facet joint arthropathy) with gardening and painting to the extreme. bad habits when it comes to lifting and bending etc certainly did not help. being given advice from a physio that it is just old age and there is nothing you can do about it did not help. so i got better help, had an mri then saw a good sports medicine doctor and life has improved. pain makes life very miserable. there are still some things that need to be into place to manage it but at least being aware of the what the problem is makes it so much easier to find a solution. coming to accept a permanent injury as such is difficult. even now i struggle to understand that i might have limitations or the seriousness of it all. it is really weird.
this year it is 10 years swimming with swim smooth. that is a lot of laps at claremont pool and a lot of driving. swimming actually aggravates my back the most. it is the turning and twisting thing at the end of each lap. if i was slow turning before now i am like the titanic. anyway the last month has been very consistent and i am getting back to where i was before the worst of the back pain. lets hope it continues. 😎
