New Perspective

So this weekend provided me with some new perspective with regards to my triathlon training and racing. In short, I went to Scituate yesterday to do the first annual Scituate Duathlon, I've never done one before so I thought this would be a good experience for me, plus it was my last race of the season. Well, lets just say, I had a bike flat on the way to the race start, it took me about 15 minutes to change but I did it, so things weren't starting out like I wanted but I was still in good spirits. I brought my bike over to the bike service people at the race just so they could make sure I did my job right, they gave me a big okay and so I racked my bike, did a subpar warm-up given what little time I had left and headed for the start.

I was in the last group of people to go off and the first portion of this race was a 2 mile decent course with a lot wind but otherwise not too challenging, I felt my HR go up fairly quickly and thats due probably to my subpar warm-up so my time I knew was going to fall short but given that I started feeling really good towards the end of the run was getting me pretty pumped up for the bike. I get into transition, grab my helmet and shoes and I'm off. Well, right after I crossed the timing matt and mounted my bike I flatted again, same thing, rear wheel. I was so pissed, I must of missed something in my tire, a piece of glass something. I didn't have a spare tire so I went over to the same bike people and they rechecked my tire, nothing, replaced the tube, so after about 20 minutes I decided to forget about my race and head home. As I approached my car after biking 2 miles I noticed a huge bulge on the outside of my rear tire, of which, I flatted again, #3. Anyway, after bringing to the bike shop they found that it was a defective tire that they put on last week which most likely caused the flats, sucks for me.

Heres my point in telling this story, I needed to leave my husband with my 4 screaming kids to drive to scituate to race/not race and go through all this crap for almost nothing, its another race for me that ends up with me complaining about my performance or that something went wrong, I'm getting pretty sick of this and I'm getting pissed. Training and racing has helped me become more focused as a person and a parent and keeps me balanced in my life but times like these really throw me for a loop and I ask myself, " is this worth it?". Well, to me yes, but maybe not my husband and kids sometimes, but in the end, I know there will be lots of races for me in the future and hopefully these experiences will help me grow as a person as well as a an athlete. I do know that I am pretty confident in changing a flat at this point and I'm a girl who wears grease pretty well and if I can become more confident with all my defeats as well as my successes, isn't that teaching my kids something better about how to live life, I think so.