The End of a Triathlon Season or an Athlete’s Racing Career?

I make my living in the sport of triathlon, not as an athlete, but as a coach and event director for the Luray Triathlon and She Does Tri Camps for Women.  I started racing as a triathlete in 1995 and have completed something more than 100 triathlons including 28 Ironman-distance events since then.

If you believe in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s model from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, it takes either learning new skills and performing increasing challenges (e.g. getting faster, placing higher in a big race, etc) to continue to obtain true enjoyment from an activity.

I’ve slowly come to the realization that because I’ve been doing triathlon for so long that I’m just not getting as much of a sense of accomplishment from training and racing triathlon that I once did.  I had my best year in 2007 then suffered through an injury that kept me sidelined for most of 2008 followed by a mediocre year in 2009 and a “so-so” year this year.  I had good intentions to do another Ironman in November (Beach2Battleship), but my body is telling me no – first bronchitis and now general fatigue – plus low motivation. I seem to have this issue every year about this time.

In a nutshell, I’m currently not able to obtain what Csikszentmihalyi describes as flow: “The state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”

Will I do triathlons next year?  I don’t know.  I’ll see what the New Year brings.  Maybe I just need a break.

In the meantime, I will continue to obtain triathlon enjoyment vicariously through my coaching clients’ successes in triathlons.

Live strongly and boldly!

David

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David B. Glover, MS, CSCS
Coach, Athlete and Writer
Author of Full Time and Sub-Nine: Fitting Iron Distance Training into Every Day Life
Web: enduranceworks.net

© 2010 David B. Glover